Mata Haggis-Burridge
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matahb.bsky.social
Mata Haggis-Burridge
@matahb.bsky.social
930 followers 590 following 710 posts
Writer of video games, horror, and more. Professor of video games, bi/pan, they/he, visibility still matters.
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matahb.bsky.social
Barcelona has some great street art layering - I took these in 2016. I'm pretty sure that's Steve Jobs looming like Big Brother...
September 25, 2025 at 8:43 AM
matahb.bsky.social
@keefstuart.bsky.social laying down the hard truths in this week's Pushing Buttons:
An screengrab of text from The Guardian's weekly video game newsletter. The highlighted text says "Columns on Game Gear is better than Tetris on Game Boy."
April 16, 2025 at 11:21 AM
matahb.bsky.social
Wouldn't it be great if giant corporations could exist without massive illegality? Some of my academic writing was vacuumed up into the LibGen database, and subsequently used by Meta (owners of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and more) to train their LLM (AI) models.

#DoTheWriteThing
April 3, 2025 at 7:27 AM
matahb.bsky.social
I was member #295,542 on Bluesky, and it's now over 10 million people. That's neat.
September 17, 2024 at 11:01 AM
matahb.bsky.social
I absolute loving seeing the responses to the writing in Satisfactory release 1.0.

Thanks so much to Hannah and the Coffee Stain team for inviting me to work with them on their awesome game! <3
A screen capture from the website Reddit, showing comments such as "I love ADA's sassiness", "I burst out in laughter", and "Her snarky attitude is just chef's kiss level writing".
September 13, 2024 at 8:40 AM
matahb.bsky.social
Whoop! New writing credit just dropped!

Satisfactory v1.0 (including story!) just released!
September 10, 2024 at 8:54 PM
matahb.bsky.social
Yes.
A moggie curled on a fluffy purple blanket.
August 15, 2024 at 6:26 AM
matahb.bsky.social
I'm rather proud of this short story. It embodies all the wholesome stuff of fatherhood.

Note: I'm not a father, so there may be inaccuracies, but I'm pretty sure I've got most of this right.

open.substack.com/pub/matahagg...

#parenting #horror #shortstory #fatherhood #horrorwriting
In front of a sunset, an apparently loving male-human-presenting figure flings a child in a dress upwards. Text over the image says "Short story: A good human father. A completely normal story about becoming a parent. It is a hugely relatable tale and should probably be used in instruction manuals or something."
April 13, 2024 at 4:35 PM
matahb.bsky.social
I'm continuing with my reviews of books I read/listened to in 2023. Today we've reached part 3 of 4!

Every audiobook I listened to in 2023 (my 'read more' resolution results (part 3)) : open.substack.com/pub/matahagg...

#HorrorWriting
A quote from the linked story. The quote says "An absolute horror classic, read in a wonderfully plum English tone."
January 20, 2024 at 4:23 PM
matahb.bsky.social
matahaggisburridge.substack.com/p/mittens-li...
Mittens, a cartoon cat, leaps towards the screen, teeth and claws bared, but failing to look very menacing.
November 23, 2023 at 4:08 PM
matahb.bsky.social
There's a new post on my Substack, digging into the writing choices on one of last week's short stories:

Post-mortem: writing The Longing Trees open.substack.com/pub/matahagg...

#HorrorWriting #horror #amwriting #HorrorCommunity
A quote from a horror-writing critique newsletter. The quote says: "it’s much weirder for something small and normal to be just a bit wrong than for something huge to be thoroughly f*****d up"
November 11, 2023 at 12:19 PM
matahb.bsky.social
You'd love the Mad Max video game then - it's a whole expanse that looks like that.
A screenshot of an early mission in the video game Mad Max. Max is carrying an injured dog. A rusty shack is in the background, surrounded by oil cans and other junk half-buried in the sand.
November 3, 2023 at 12:46 PM
matahb.bsky.social
Let's do this! #SpiderMan2 #SpiderManPS5 #PS5Share
October 20, 2023 at 8:22 AM
matahb.bsky.social
@keano.bsky.social nicely done.
A photograph of the credits from the Marvel Avengers video game.
October 13, 2023 at 6:42 PM
matahb.bsky.social
Season's greetings! We actually grew pumpkins! Not bad for a tiny, unruly garden ❤️🎃
Five homegrown pumpkins of various sizes. The largest about the size of a small head, the smallest like a large fist. They sit proudly on a black stone kitchen counter, challenging the photographer to cook them.
October 10, 2023 at 8:55 PM
matahb.bsky.social
I'm not a virologist, but I know what a tenfold increase in viral presence in wastewater means - there's a lot more COVID-19 around now than a few months ago. Mask up, folks!
October 3, 2023 at 2:10 PM
matahb.bsky.social
Ooh, your carving skills are way ahead of mine!
September 23, 2023 at 5:09 PM
matahb.bsky.social
I took this peanut to work with me, hoping to give it to one of the many crows that haunt the campus, but there were too many students around and the crows remained away.

Less people. More crows.
A lonely monkey nut (a peanut in its shell) sits unloved and alone upon a granite background.
September 20, 2023 at 2:57 PM
matahb.bsky.social
We do not own a cat, but this daily visitor to our house thinks otherwise!
September 17, 2023 at 1:34 PM
matahb.bsky.social
I love these old covers. Here's one I've got:
September 4, 2023 at 8:57 AM
matahb.bsky.social
Oops, I forgot these... They're the last ones for now!
The front cover of the novel The Cabin at the End of the World, by Paul Tremblay. The front cover of the novel The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi. The front cover of the novel A Matter of Blood, by Sarah Pinborough.
August 22, 2023 at 4:05 PM
matahb.bsky.social
More audio...
A screenshot of an audiobook's title page: The Spite House, by Johnny Compton. A screenshot of an audiobook's title page: My Heart is a Chainsaw, by Stephen Graham Jones. A screenshot of an audiobook's title page: Don't Fear the Reaper, by Stephen Graham Jones. A screenshot of an audiobook's title page: You See The Monster, by Luke Smitherd.
August 22, 2023 at 4:02 PM
matahb.bsky.social
And let's not forget the audio books...
A screenshot of an audiobook's title page: The Last House on Needless Street, by Catriona Ward. A screenshot of an audiobook's title page: The Southern Bookclub's Guide to Slaying Vampires, by Grady Hendrix. A screenshot of an audiobook's title page: Thirteen Storeys by Jonathan Sims. A screenshot of an audiobook's title page: The Rats, by James Herbert.
August 22, 2023 at 3:57 PM
matahb.bsky.social
Another two books...
The front cover of the novel Where I End, by Sophie White, displayed on the screen of a Kindle e-reader device. The front cover of the novel Camp Damascus, by Chuck Tingle, displayed on the screen of a Kindle e-reader device.
August 22, 2023 at 3:54 PM
matahb.bsky.social
Four more...
The front cover of the non-fiction book The Book of English Magic, by Philip Carr-Gomm & Richard Heygate. The front cover of the novel No Gods For Drowning, by Hailey Piper. The front cover of the novel The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson. The front cover of the novel Full Immersion, by Gemma Amor, displayed on the screen of a Kindle.
August 22, 2023 at 3:51 PM