Richard Moss
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mossrc.bsky.social
Richard Moss
@mossrc.bsky.social
1K followers 130 following 340 posts
Writer/Director: *TerrorBytes: The Evolution of Horror Gaming*

Author: *A Tale of Two Halves*, *Shareware Heroes*, *The Secret History of Mac Gaming*, a book on Age of Empires 1 dev (TBA)

Co-Writer/producer: FPSDOC

Australian

rich@mossrc.me
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mossrc.bsky.social
With the slipcover off.
Comparing the boxes with the same artwork
October 23, 2025 at 12:03 AM
mossrc.bsky.social
The Broken Sword: Reforged Collector's Edition is huge! About 1.5 times taller and double the thickness of a traditional big box game. My OG copy for scale.
The original and new Broken Sword boxes side by side. Another angle
October 23, 2025 at 12:01 AM
mossrc.bsky.social
The Continuum web/JS port now has a bunch of fan-made "galaxies" (level sets) in addition to the original one, and apparently one of the galaxies was just a 17-level sampler pack for the full 75-level set advertised in this incredible flyer.
A flyer for a Continuum level set, promising "75 of the hardest levels anywhere" if you send a disk and 50 cents (or $3 and no disk) to an address in Oklahoma. The flyer has several different fonts and a few custom graphics.
October 8, 2025 at 3:29 AM
mossrc.bsky.social
Apparently this is called AI SEO, or LLMO (Large Language Model Optimisation), but I really think they've missed a great chance to call it AIEO or genAIEO. And then they could have made a song set to the tune of B-I-N-G-O to promote their services.
Create content that gets your brand into AI search. Create award-winning content in hours instead of weeks, crafted by our network of expert managing editors and optimized to appear in ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and other AI search tools.
October 7, 2025 at 5:11 AM
mossrc.bsky.social
I've been talking over email to the developer of this port, and he has info about how the sound interruption system works in the original. One sound plays at a time, with interruptions based on priority score, but with some nuance:
Our discussion caused me to look back at the game code and realize there was a subtlety in the original implementation I had missed. The game didn't JUST implement a simple priority system for sounds. For certain sounds it also had the priority "decay" over time, meaning every screen refresh the priority would drop a little. Why? This allowed later sounds with lower priority to interrupt them IF the original sound had been playing for a while. There are a couple places this enhances the experience 1. If you kill a bunker and then another bunker shoots, which normally has lower priority, if you are very near the end of the original bunker explosion it will be allowed to interrupt because the priority has "faded". This is probably what Randy/Brian meant when they told you there was a "fade" system. 2. When bunkers shoot very rapidly you get a cool rapid fire effect because the later shot can interrupt the earlier. Level 9 is a good example of this. It's pretty cool and I'm glad to have that working.
September 26, 2025 at 1:22 AM
mossrc.bsky.social
The delightful 1980s Mac game Continuum is now playable in a browser. Originally released under a joke "send us beer if you like it" licence after issues with its publisher, it's a Gravitar and Asteroids-inspired black-and-white space game that even John Romero told me was awesome. continuumjs.com
A screenshot of the beginning of the first level of Continuum.
September 18, 2025 at 1:49 AM
mossrc.bsky.social
I might need to check in with my transcription software. It went on like this for almost two hours.
Screenshot of a transcript that keeps repeating the line "Come and talk to me, I just wanna have that conversation with you" over and over again.
September 17, 2025 at 4:01 AM
mossrc.bsky.social
One of these chairs would make it even more of a late 90s throwback.
results for an image search of inflatable bubble chairs
September 15, 2025 at 12:08 AM
mossrc.bsky.social
The students of today who use genAI to write their school/uni essays are unwittingly signing themselves up to a devil's bargain, and harming the rest of us in the process. Interesting insight from cognitive scientist Gary Marcus. Source: www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/arc...
Kasparov: Are you sure, Gary? I mean, let's be realistic. So I hate pouring cold water in your concept of our hot resistance. But do you seem to think that people today—I mean it starts with students will stop using ChatGPT. Marcus: I think it's very unlikely. But the reality is that the students, by adding to the revenue streams and user numbers— massively, like students are a huge part of it-they're adding to the valuations of the companies. They're giving companies power-and what the companies are trying to do is to keep those students from ever getting jobs. And the companies probably are gonna succeed in that, right? The people who are losing their jobs first are students. The students graduating are entering this world where junior workers aren't getting hired as much. And probably in part because of AI. In some ways, they're the most screwed by all of this. And they have given birth to this monster, because they drive the subscriptions up. So, you know, OpenAl can raise all of this money, because a lot of people are using it. A large fraction, I don't know the exact numbers of those people who are students using them to write their term papers. If students just stop doing that, it would actually undermine OpenAI. It might lead to the whole thing collapsing, and that would actually change what their employment prospects are like. Kasparov: Yeah. I'm very skeptical about them, just—
September 6, 2025 at 10:02 AM
mossrc.bsky.social
This is pretty cool. The 18 year old founder of Kaiko Fidgets is up for a global entrepreneurship award. Screenshots are from a press release. I have a couple of these fidgets; they're fantastic. I didn't know the kid behind them was so young.

Here's their website: kaikofidgets.com
AUSSIE, 18-YEAR-OLD AUTISTIC FOUNDER OF KAIKO FIDGETS FINALIST IN GLOBAL YOUNG ENTREPRENEUR AWARDS # KAIKO FIDGETS WAS STARTED BY 11- YEAR-OLD KAI SEYMON IN 2017 # KAI IS NOW A FINALIST IN THE GLOBAL STUDENT ENTRAPRENEUR AWARDS, WITH THE WINNER TO BE ANNOUNCED LATER IN JULY # SEE THE FINAL INTERVIEWS FROM COMPETITION FINALISTS HERE: START IT UP GSEA AWARDS 2025 # NOW JUST 18, KAI'S COMPANY HAS GONE GLOBAL, SELLING 250,0000 PRODUCTS A YEAR # SENSORY PRODUCTS ASSIST IN MANAGING ANXIETY, SUPPORT FOCUS, & PROVIDE 'SAFE OUCH' TO REDUCE HARMFUL BEHAVIOURS # PRODUCTS ARE DESIGNED TO PROVIDE PRACTICAL SUPPORT TO THE NEURODIVERGENT COMMUNITY & HELP TO REPLACE HABITS THAT USERS WOULD PREFER TO HALT After it was co-founded in 2017 by 11-year-old Kai Seymon who is Autistic and dyslexic, Aussie start-up Kaiko Fidgets has now been recognised on a global stage in the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards, where Kai has been announced as one of 12 finalists out of 1000 competitors, with the winner to be announced late in July 2025. Kaiko Fidgets has been captivating and assisting those with neurodivergence and other cognitive differences both domestically and overseas, with purposetul products that are now also being sold by retailers in the U.S and the U.K The purpose-built sensory tools for teens & adults, are designed specifically for emotional regulation, harm reduction and to assist in reducing anxiety & increase focus.
July 4, 2025 at 11:26 AM
mossrc.bsky.social
3.5 year old decided to make me look "like Elsa", then added some extra creative touches. The result is "fabulous", she told me. (She also took the photo.)
A photo of me taken by my daughter to show my hair, as styled by her.
July 4, 2025 at 11:12 AM
mossrc.bsky.social
Messages like this mean the world to me (and other creators). If you value someone's work, it goes a long way to tell them so.
Again, thank you for your time and making a documentary that basically explained my childhood inspirations. You matter so much Corey Occhiato
June 29, 2025 at 1:51 AM
mossrc.bsky.social
Even setting aside the fact that the cultural value of art comes from its underlying humanity, as a uniquely personal expression, this fundamental misunderstanding of how creativity works is abhorrent and insulting to all artists. www.technologyreview.com/2025/06/17/1...
During a later visit to a Picasso exhibit in Milan, I came across a famous informational diagram by the art historian Alfred Barr, mapping how modernist movements like Cubism evolved from earlier artistic traditions. Picasso is often held up as one of modern art's most original and influential figures, but Barr's chart made plain the many artists he drew from-Goya, El Greco, Cézanne, African sculptors. This made me wonder: If a generative Al model had been fed all those inputs, might it have produced Cubism? Could it have generated the next great artistic "breakthrough"?
June 19, 2025 at 10:55 AM
mossrc.bsky.social
I remember when a Google Australia engineer came to speak to my computer science class in 2009 or 2010. He sold us an impossible vision of a Utopian workplace, and we bought it. Nobody thought of the devil's bargain; we all dreamed of working there post-graduation.
www.osnews.com/story/142532...
If you ever wanted to know what it was like to be an engineer at Google during the early to late 2000s, here you go. "Now even though Google is fundamentally a spyware advertising company (some 80% of its revenue is advertising; the proportion was even higher back then, we Engineers were kept carefully away from that reality, as much as meat eaters are kept away from videos of the meat industry: don't think about it, just enjoy your steak. If you think about it it will stop being enjoyable, so we just churned along, pretending to work for an engineering company rather than for a giant machine with the sole goal of manipulating people into buying cruft. The ads and business teams were on different floors, and we never talked to them." • Elilla Even back then, Google knew full well that what they were doing and working towards was deeply problematic and ethically dubious, at best, and reading about how young, impressionable Google engineers at the time figured that out by themselves is kind of heartbreaking. In those days, Google tried really hard to cultivate an image of being different than Apple or Microsoft, a place...
June 15, 2025 at 6:17 AM
mossrc.bsky.social
A reminder that my critically-acclaimed, gorgeous book on the history of football [soccer] games is currently £5 off from @bitmapbooks.com. I had the best time writing it, and it seems most folks love reading it too.

www.bitmapbooks.com/products/a-t...
A photo of the Sensible World of Soccer entry from A Tale of Two Halves Another photo of A Tale of Two Halves A photo of a chapter opener spread, for the years 2007 and 2008 The Relegation Zone, complete with bespoke illustration, for highlighting some of the worst football games ever.
June 1, 2025 at 9:53 AM
mossrc.bsky.social
I'm proud of all of @terrorbytesdoc.bsky.social, but the episode we did exploring the indie horror scene feels like some of my best-ever work. Here's a brief excerpt from my fav segment, which discusses how four games (two of which you see here) deal with desolation, helplessness, and isolation.
May 27, 2025 at 3:38 AM
mossrc.bsky.social
There's a theme that makes your windows look like metallic fish, and another that decorates your window edges with monkeys and trees. And lots and lots of colour themes. It's delightful.
The metal fish theme Monkey Paradise theme
May 18, 2025 at 9:14 AM
mossrc.bsky.social
I'm a little over halfway through doing the final sound mix/master on @terrorbytesdoc.bsky.social Episode 4 (which I think is our best episode). Backers will be able to watch it in a week (and non-backers should be able to buy a digital copy not long after).
Screenshot of my Episode 4 WaveLab project with separate tracks for B-Roll, dialogue, music, and SFX, and loads of volume automation points to adjust the mix.
May 8, 2025 at 3:06 AM
mossrc.bsky.social
Here's a fun example of the convenient shoddiness and unreality of genAI. I was interviewed on a radio show a few weeks ago, and they generated the thumbnail from a photo I supplied. It looks vaguely like me from a distance, but move closer and it's like my evil half-brother coming to murder you.
The original photo. It's hard to tell here, but note that I have blue eyes. The generative AI thumbnail based on my photo.
May 7, 2025 at 10:29 PM
mossrc.bsky.social
We released Episode 3 of @terrorbytesdoc.bsky.social to backers today, which means people outside the team can finally see this beautiful we made about the rise, fall, and rise again of FMV games, featuring @graemedevine.com, Roberta Williams, Jane Jensen, Sam Barlow, Will Byles, and Rob Fulop.
Screenshot of TerrorBytes: The Evolution of Horror Gaming Episode 3's title card. The episode is called "Narrative Nightmares".
May 2, 2025 at 4:38 AM
mossrc.bsky.social
And Episode 5 is a study in taboo versus art while also being a revisit of some ideas raised through the other five episodes, like how the darkness of horror needs lightness to be effective, or how horror games provide safe spaces—literally, if you think of save rooms—for us to deal with our fears.
Episode 5 - Cursed and Controversial. Night Trap comes around again, along with looks at the controversy and reality of Doom, Rule of Rose, Manhunt, Thrill Kill, and more.
April 13, 2025 at 11:40 PM
mossrc.bsky.social
Episode 4 is focused on the emergence of the modern indie horror scene, and as such is a profile of unbridled, uninhibited creativity and the developers using metaphor, art, sound, and interactivity in unique, beautiful ways to either scare the pants off you or chill you to your core.
Episode 4 - The Indie Revolution. Loads of games squeeze into this one, thanks to a broader thematic discussion. Iron Lung, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Lone Survivor, Outlast, Five Nights at Freddy's, Exmortis, FAITH, The Missing, Slay the Princess, Lost in Vivo, and many more.
April 13, 2025 at 11:40 PM
mossrc.bsky.social
Episode 3, Narrative Nightmares, looks at the rise and fall (and rise again) of FMV games and interactive movies, told through a horror lens. It's a story about passion, dreams, creative and technological innovation, and a belief in an idea contrasted against reality and perception.
Episode 3 - Narrative Nightmares. Here you'll find Night Trap, The 7th Guest, Phantasmagoria, Gabriel Knight, Her Story, Until Dawn, and more.
April 13, 2025 at 11:40 PM
mossrc.bsky.social
Episode 2, Lethal Licenses, is pretty straightforward in thematic terms: it's about adaptations and how game devs find the core elements of a work from another form of media—books, movies, TV—and build interactivity around those...or otherwise end up with a bad game. (And why so many fail.)
Episode 2 - Lethal Licenses. Games in this one include The Thing, Alien Isolation, I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, Dead By Daylight, The Walking Dead, and Deadly Premonition, among others.
April 13, 2025 at 11:40 PM
mossrc.bsky.social
Episode 1 leans hard into the question of what makes something horror, and how horror in games works, to set up that series-wide discussion, but it also looks at how survival horror in particular has evolved and how the best horror games tend to delve into the darkest reaches of our humanity.
Episode 1 - Enter the Survival Horror. Beneath the text you can see box art for various games covered in the episode, including a few Silent Hill and Resident Evil titles as well as Clock Tower, Alone in the Dark, Sweet Home, Fatal Frame, and Eternal Darkness.
April 13, 2025 at 11:40 PM