Richard Moss
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mossrc.bsky.social
Richard Moss
@mossrc.bsky.social
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
With the slipcover off.
October 23, 2025 at 12:03 AM
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.
October 23, 2025 at 12:01 AM
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.
October 8, 2025 at 3:29 AM
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.
October 7, 2025 at 5:11 AM
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:
September 26, 2025 at 1:22 AM
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
September 18, 2025 at 1:49 AM
I might need to check in with my transcription software. It went on like this for almost two hours.
September 17, 2025 at 4:01 AM
One of these chairs would make it even more of a late 90s throwback.
September 15, 2025 at 12:08 AM
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...
September 6, 2025 at 10:02 AM
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
July 4, 2025 at 11:26 AM
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.)
July 4, 2025 at 11:12 AM
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.
June 29, 2025 at 1:51 AM
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...
June 19, 2025 at 10:55 AM
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...
June 15, 2025 at 6:17 AM
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...
June 1, 2025 at 9:53 AM
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
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.
May 18, 2025 at 9:14 AM
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).
May 8, 2025 at 3:06 AM
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.
May 7, 2025 at 10:29 PM
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.
May 2, 2025 at 4:38 AM
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.
April 13, 2025 at 11:40 PM
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.
April 13, 2025 at 11:40 PM
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.
April 13, 2025 at 11:40 PM
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.)
April 13, 2025 at 11:40 PM
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.
April 13, 2025 at 11:40 PM