Ben Kirman
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ben.kirman.org
Ben Kirman
@ben.kirman.org
Postdisciplinary games academic: Make/study/teach the playful, weird, wonderful and radical. (he/him)
#criticaldesign #speculativedesign #designfiction #gamedesign

Projects:
https://ben.kirman.org
Just had to ssh into a pumpkin because it was playing amen break too frequently
October 28, 2025 at 7:39 PM
October 17, 2025 at 8:17 PM
Decolonisers of Catan (with dice that only roll 7s) #boardgames #catan
October 17, 2025 at 6:12 PM
from the Dog Internet archives. WHAT DO THEY KNOW?
October 9, 2025 at 4:12 PM
bloody eck
July 25, 2025 at 1:46 PM
Great news from a kickstarter project that's collecting fart noises
July 8, 2025 at 12:16 PM
"Jessica... what fucking size shoe do you have?!" - best line from the horror film Clown in a Cornfield (2025)
June 21, 2025 at 8:01 PM
Fun tour of the emerging irreverent voice in UK games magazines in the 80s from Robin Bootes at #BDiGRA25 . Tag urself im a wally/gremlin
May 21, 2025 at 9:19 AM
Great to hear from Prasad on his great applied game work at #BDiGRA25 good to see some @iggi-phd.bsky.social folks here!
May 20, 2025 at 11:01 AM
March 11, 2025 at 2:56 PM
One for the collection. This illustration of a "Direct Drive Extruder" on Wikipedia - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fused_f...
February 20, 2025 at 9:10 PM
Steam: "flesh might be the most thought-provoking currency we have" store.steampowered.com/bundle/24095...
February 17, 2025 at 4:11 PM
Added some details about the BRANNEN interactive theatre/mobile game project with Teatret Vårt in Molde and Ålesund, Norway. Another fantastic project with great collaborators. ben.kirman.org/projects/bra...
February 7, 2025 at 4:24 PM
Wrote up some technical details of the Utopia Concreta project, that I worked on in Portugal last year. There's a lot more detail but it was a cool and fun mix of complex technologies for an interactive, gamelike, outdoor audio-walk/live theatre experience: ben.kirman.org/projects/uto...
February 6, 2025 at 11:11 AM
Played some Ouija Manor this week (boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/43...). A ghost communicates through a mini ouija board, and by possessing other players' figures to point at clues in this cleverly engineered cardboard house. #boardgames
January 30, 2025 at 9:35 PM
Why yes I do have a PhD. (from www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwYm...)
January 21, 2025 at 4:55 PM
Came across this horrorshow in a review of beige paints...
January 21, 2025 at 2:52 PM
We're running a game jam this week @iggi-phd.bsky.social and the first activity a researcher suggested is for everyone to make their own name badges. This was a really good idea and I recommend it if you organise jams. Really gets the creative vibe going.
January 7, 2025 at 10:57 AM
Got a small resin 3d printer and now need to explain to neighbours that the reason I dress like breaking bad and have a garage full of toxic chemicals, is just to make a tiny pug that is also a dragon. It's a Puggon.
January 4, 2025 at 7:08 PM
Got to wonder who at the University of Lincoln approved their sponsorship of Lincoln City's third kit (the black one - look closely...). Did they get a discount? Doesn't really give a good impression of the uni, but the good news is nobody can tell they are the sponsors anyway.
December 5, 2024 at 12:57 PM
"Dad thought he was smart - but little Timmy's Surface-to-Air Missile site just got a lock!" www.wargamevault.com/product/2422...
November 29, 2024 at 5:40 PM
Probably since I did the non-league football project, the algorithms have decided that is a good angle to sell me stuff. Now I get ads that think I am interested in drinking 90 cups of beef gravy before it goes off in 2 weeks.
November 14, 2024 at 9:21 AM
I recently worked on a project with Nils Zweiling (zweiling.com) and Julian Jungel (julianjungel.de) where we used a ton of smart IKEA light bulbs to interactively animate an outdoor path. It's really got me thinking more about this kind of "display"
November 12, 2024 at 11:16 AM
I'm building a list of 1-dimensional games, especially those played on LED strings. Have you played/made or seen any that I should know about?

@robinwobbles.bsky.social's Line Wobbler and Alex Johansson's Glow Golf are great examples.

(pic: Line Wobbler from IndieCade flickr.com/photos/indie...)
November 12, 2024 at 11:08 AM
Further project sneak peeks, this time in 🇵🇹
October 4, 2024 at 4:43 PM