Michael Rader
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theoryof.games
Michael Rader
@theoryof.games
970 followers 1.1K following 4.8K posts
chaotic good xennial ND nerd in the coastal empire. vp at Frakture. longtime digital strategist + policy wonk. If we must do without hope, there is always vengeance.
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theoryof.games
My mom has a collection of artifacts from a trip taken by my great x 3 grandma to visit the grave of her son, who died fighting in WWI. Incredible stuff.
Very old photographs, documents, and a passport sit in an open suitcase. The photos are black and white, displaying a man in a WWI era uniform, and a mother posing next to a grave marked with a cross. A typewritten card, marked Identity Card for an American Pilgrimage for gold star mothers to France. Lists her hotel and instructions for the trip A certificate in memory of my distant relative who died in service of his country, as part of the American Expeditionary Forces, WWI A framed photograph of the US Republic, on a pilgrimage to France, 1930
November 27, 2025 at 8:18 PM
theoryof.games
the classic XKCD cartoon "Duty Calls" with the punchline replaced with "someone made a bad joke on the internet".
November 26, 2025 at 5:03 PM
theoryof.games
In King's Quest II on the Apple IIe, this monk refuses to acknowledge or interact with you, and if you get frustrated an type "hit monk" into the parser, the game responds:

"Anyone who would hit a man of the cloth does not deserve to play this game," followed by a HARD SYSTEM RESET.
a pixelated, 16-color graphic of the interior of a church. a pixel-y guy walks up the between the pews towards an altar, where a monk kneels praying before a golden cross.
November 24, 2025 at 2:15 PM
theoryof.games
Drunk on the Karl Rove Kool aid.
Quote from the Bush 43 era, widely attributed to Karl Rove. Guys like [Ron Suskind] operate in the "reality based community." The gist is that Rove thinks by being president you create reality by acting, and everyone else is just watching. Textbook proto-fascism.
November 23, 2025 at 11:38 PM
theoryof.games
The next paragraph is somehow even more wrong.
"She was sort of a modern-day political version of hunter s Thompson (gonza?)..."
November 21, 2025 at 5:18 PM
theoryof.games
Probably not the first game of hers I played, but I spent a lot of Tass Times in Tonetown. I was learning guitar at the time and I loved that guitar picks were the currency. Hard game too!
November 17, 2025 at 11:41 PM
theoryof.games
ah yes the verbal tic that incels can't hide.
Quark from Star Trek Deep Space Nine, looking skeezy, with "ffeeeemales" in white text above his head.
November 12, 2025 at 2:57 PM
theoryof.games
A deliberate choice here to exclude PC responses from the text scroll. Helps with readability but leads to some disjointed flows.
Some text from a conversation in Citizen Sleeper 2. Paragraph one references a sister, the PC says "you have a sister?" Then he responds "I did, yeah". You can see here that the text scroll doesn't include the PC response.
November 5, 2025 at 12:07 AM
theoryof.games
CS2 also does a better job of communicating the relative urgency of things to the player. Kept the cycle wheel indicators from the first game (effectively a countdown), but the narrative and the art better reinforce it. This water hauler is visibly leaking, only a few cycles to repair it.
A large white and gold spacecraft is venting small particles of water out its front end. The user interface shows several options for the player to help repair the ship.
November 4, 2025 at 11:08 PM
theoryof.games
Too real.
Some text from Citizen Sleeper 2, describing the PC experiencing pain, disconnection from their body, numbness. The titular Sleeper, the PCs artificial body has a number of deficiencies; one of the main goals of this series is to address or mitigate them to allow the PC true freedom.
November 4, 2025 at 1:26 AM
theoryof.games
Your character sheet. 🤩
An illustration of a genderless humanoid, clearly artificial, floating in zero-g. Some of their internal mechanical organs are exposed, and they are dressed in a mish mash of loose fitting clothes and accessories. Their arms are out of their jacket sleeves, with one hand adjusting a cybernetic interface extruding from their head, and another operating a floating tablet. Their eyes are closed. On either side of the character are menus showing the gameplay attributes of the character that affect skill checks and dice rolls.
November 4, 2025 at 12:45 AM
theoryof.games
I am choosing to be circumspect with this guy. He may have saved my ass, but I also have memory loss and he's just cutting me loose.
One of CS' famous character illustrations by artist Guillaume Singelin. A young man with blue pants and boots and an open orange jacket appears to float in zero-g, a sling bag over his chest. Some text on the side explains he's ditching us (temporarily) to try to find some work.
November 4, 2025 at 12:33 AM
theoryof.games
Almost every button and icon has a lovely little hover and click sound to it. The squishy sound the Drives menu makes is particularly pleasing.
November 4, 2025 at 12:24 AM
theoryof.games
The UI in Citizen Sleeper is a standout feature. Beyond being beautiful and supremely practical, they are as tactile and responsive as any craftsman could make them. @jumpovertheage.com rocks at this stuff.
Screenshot of a basic screen in Citizen Sleeper 2. A closeup of a small spacecraft docked at a flat space station, lots of blinking red lights. Some text describes the ship smoothly docking, and a sense of relief.
November 4, 2025 at 12:23 AM
theoryof.games
First written line of the game. Not bad.
A paragraph of text in a sci-fi user interface reads, "In the moment before waking, the dark space before conscious thought, you struggle to find the pieces of yourself." In a sidebar, your location reads, "Unknown. A vast and dark interior "
November 4, 2025 at 12:04 AM
theoryof.games
Finally sitting down with the sequel to one of my indie favs.
Splash screen for Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector. Interactive fiction, ttrpg-inspired.
November 3, 2025 at 11:57 PM
theoryof.games
I've got the jumbo version. Love it.
Wooden bookshelf with two shelves, angled up so you can easily read all the spines.
November 1, 2025 at 3:45 PM
theoryof.games
One of my fav Halloween experiences was walking from my apt in CoHi to your place in my Rorschach costume.
Closeup of my Rorschach costume from Halloween 2017 in DC. I walked in this mask through Columbia Heights on my way to my friend's party. The mask uses thermochromatic paint, so when I breathe out, the black patches disappear, my attempt to mimic the moving patterns of the "real" mask.
October 31, 2025 at 10:04 PM
theoryof.games
A good mug is worth its weight in gold.
closeup of an oversized black mug with an engraved NASA logo below a silhouette of a shuttle orbiter. many scratches, much used. a fantastic mug.
October 29, 2025 at 8:10 PM
theoryof.games
Putting on my Political Strategist hat to write "DON'T LISTEN TO LOSERS," in big letters on the chalkboard.
A closer look at the PAC's history will similarly reveal anything but won campaigns. In 2022, the group put on a series of press conferences in Ohio with Republicans and former Republicans who were supporting Democratic Senate candidate Tim Ryan over JD Vance. Tim Ryan lost the election. That same year, WelcomePAC supported California Democrat Will Rollins in his House campaign against Republican Ken Calvert. Rollins lost. Last year, the group ran ads for Democrat Sherrod Brown in Ohio's Senate race. Brown also lost.
October 29, 2025 at 8:00 PM
theoryof.games
I was going to follow up with a link to the HZD wiki or something, but I decided this YouTube summary was a better tldr
clip of a YouTube search result for a video titled "Ted Faro and the Faro Plague - A Deconstruction of Villainy". the description reads "Ted Faro accidentally killed everyone on earth, and then purposefully erased all human knowledge," which is as concise and apt a summary of Ted Faro as one could hope for.
October 23, 2025 at 9:13 PM
theoryof.games
Why would it be necessary to request or agree to anonymity here?
“It should be the purpose of the government to communicate to the American public everywhere as often as possible,” says a White House official, who spoke to WIRED under the condition of anonymity to speak freely about the decision. The White House is now on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, Truth Social, TikTok, YouTube, and X. “We’re just going to be there in as many places as possible because, as evident by the president’s ethos and his attitude and the sheer volume of open press stuff we do, we want to be as transparent as humanly possible and reach as many people as possible,” says the official.
October 21, 2025 at 6:03 PM
theoryof.games
Here in the Hostess City, we say #NoKingsSavannah
Woman in a crowd holds a giant US Constitution in a frame saying "Antifa Manifesto" Crowd shot of people holding No Kings signs in Emmet Park, framed by tree branches covered in Spanish moss. Another shot of the crowd at Emmet Park under the trees, an American flag held prominently. Close up of several No Kings signs.
October 18, 2025 at 7:04 PM
theoryof.games
Found one of my fav trash D&D novels from my early days and it is borderline unreadable. Absolute trash writing.
The first page of Pool of Radiance. Set in Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms, it was based on one of the first official D&D CRPGs on the Apple II computer. The first line starts "Shal had spent days scouting the markets..." Ugh, terrible voicing in the first line.
October 17, 2025 at 2:13 AM
theoryof.games
This is the only time that comes to mind.
Chicago Tribune headline from the 40s "[Roosevelt] Demands High Court of 15". Some if not most SCOTUS scholars believe that FDRs court packing plan resulted in the court taking a more favorable view to many of his New Deal proposals.
October 13, 2025 at 1:16 PM