Jack Orchard
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jarona7.bsky.social
Jack Orchard
@jarona7.bsky.social
Content Editor @ Electronic Enlightenment
- Game Studies Events @ Centre for Digital Scholarship, Bodleian Libraries
- Researching Video Games and Historical Emotions
- PhD on Reading in C18th Women's Letters @ Swansea
- Editorial Board @ Multiplay
Not what you expect to be searching for (and getting increasingly frustrated at the lack of good results), while researching a fun little essay about vampires:
November 28, 2025 at 11:48 AM
Prepping for daughter's party this weekend - this is what sandwich prep for 60 looks like 😲😲
November 21, 2025 at 4:17 PM
I finally figured out what is wrong with our timeline - the dark Lord cthulhu has finally obtained the glowing idol of ultimate power, and is bending reality to his dark will.
November 12, 2025 at 7:34 AM
Finally got a phone with some decent memory, and responding in a perfectly restrained way 🤣
November 3, 2025 at 4:14 PM
October 20, 2025 at 9:29 AM
I'll be taking my nonsense to #BSECS again :) delighted that my paper on 'Big Feelings: Small Stories, Archival Encounters in the Ludic Eighteenth-Century' has been accepted - expect queer historiography, critical fabulation, autoethnography, and Ambition: A Minuet in Power 🇫🇷🪓👑
October 15, 2025 at 9:58 AM
Its a beautiful night here in Greece - I'm well fed - daughter Cherry is in a super cute Daddy mood and has been happy and playing all day - and Silksong is here. #smalljoys
September 4, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Working my way through the incredible #OpenAccess collection Historiographies of #GameStudies - punctumbooks.com/titles/histo... - an absolute must-read, I was really struck by this phrase in Dennis Jansen's Redirecting Ludification, quoting Halfmann & Radder, 'The Academic Manifesto':
#academia
August 29, 2025 at 5:44 AM
Just finished Foucaults Pendulum, which I started reading Xmas 2023 - my main fun book for over a year and a half, and I actually finished it - I always always thought I'd give up in the end but I didn't - tiny achievement in the grand scheme of things, but taught me something about myself
August 23, 2025 at 1:53 PM
Using CannotBeTamed's 'Ultimate Metroidvania Ranking' video - lnkd.in/dXUFtV2T - I put together a breakdown of Metroidvanias by country, working off a theory that the genre's ubiquity in the indie space has given it a wider global reach than you might expect
August 21, 2025 at 1:35 PM
Having a clear out of my phone I came across Franz, which I thought was a Kafka game, but turns out it is not, its the Pathologic devs version of Tamagotchi, an emotionally abused ghost haunting your phone and pinging you with notifications asking to be stroked
June 24, 2025 at 10:18 PM
Video Killed the Radio Star (1979) was inspired by the JG Ballard short story "The Sound Sweep" (1960), which anticipated computerised music in terms very similar to current discourse about AI.

Random fact brought to you by my desire to post more without anything much to say :)
June 24, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Having a great birthday - got my first tattoo at lunch time, which came with lovely homemade chocolate cake :) research proposal work shaping up super well, and couldn't be more excited for my first ever MTG prerelease event after work <3
June 10, 2025 at 1:14 PM
Second ever TTRPG rulebook, and first 'I will never have time to play this but isn't it beautiful' TTRPG rulebook, came in the post today <3
May 29, 2025 at 3:54 PM
Final paper (starting with obligatory reference to being the final paper) is @bettibo.bsky.social on cozy driving games and petroculture.

#BDiGRA25
May 21, 2025 at 11:07 AM
Now we have @sturrock.bsky.social (and @t0mm7.bsky.social in spirit) presenting on the British Game Design revolution in the early days of Games Workshop (pre-40k) and others #BDiGRA25
May 21, 2025 at 10:43 AM
First full paper panel of the day kicks off with @enwright.bsky.social and Ian McDonald talking about Rockstar games' British take on the American Dream #DiGRA25
May 21, 2025 at 10:22 AM
Our final lightning talk is Robin Bootes on the creation of the identity of the British gamer in early gaming magazines #BDiGRA25
May 21, 2025 at 9:04 AM
Now @leonxiao.com breaks down the UK Govt's Videogame Research Framework - www.gov.uk/government/p... and its biases and preconceptions #BDiGRA25
May 21, 2025 at 8:59 AM
Next up we have @charstevens.bsky.social talking about applying Hall and Williams-inflected British Cultural Studies to Chinese Television and the representation of games in them. #BDiGRA25
May 21, 2025 at 8:53 AM
Esteemed host @poppywilde.bsky.social steps in last minute for an emergency presentation on what Critical Posthumanism means for Britain and British Game Studies research #BDiGRA25
May 21, 2025 at 8:45 AM
Joanne Mills joins us virtually to lightingly talk about representations of Victorian London in Alice: Madness Returns and Assassins Creed: Syndicate #BDiGRA25
May 21, 2025 at 8:43 AM
Harrison Charles kicking off the day with a lightning talk on Edge magazine's 'the girl issue' (2003) and what it tells us about paratexts and gender in British gaming media #BDiGRA25
May 21, 2025 at 8:36 AM
Daniele Monaco traces the genius loci in British culture through literary and architectural history to modern festivals and videogame worlds #BDiGRA25
May 20, 2025 at 3:52 PM
David Cumming talks about how optional skins and the game logics behind them can help us conceptualise digital fashion #BDiGRA25
May 20, 2025 at 3:49 PM