Richard Moss

My latest book is about more than the making of Age of Empires. It's a story of brothers, camaraderie, innovation, and dreams—the cost of chasing them, the passion that drives them, and the joy when they come true. Available for preorder from @bossfightbooks.com www.kickstarter.com/projects/gab...

Again their callousness reminds me of the great poem Faces in the Street, which includes such brilliant lines as "I wonder would the apathy of wealthy men endure / Were all their windows level with the faces of the Poor?" https://www.australianculture.org/faces-in-the-street-henry-lawson/

This rules: Knoxville's NBC affiliate made an hour-long documentary about Cyberflix, a local CD-ROM developer in the mid-90s. Drawing on a lot of materials in the VGHF Library from the Andrew Nelson papers! (and feat. cameo from me!)

The idea for 'Skatekid' came when brainstorming Natla's goons. The male characters in OG Tomb Raider were deliberately created as quite buffoonish (except PD of course). The encounter a means to recover the Uzis and for some silliness to lighten the mood before the tension ratchets into the finale.

Recreating his first, revelatory experience of Doom modding was one of my personal highlights of working on FPSDOC. I'm glad we got to immortalise him on screen before he was gone. (Same with Becky and Jennell.)

In case you missed it; my new documentary project is now going to be a book instead.

Big new story! The best 8,000 words you'll read on Vib-Ribbon today.

read through this a bit ago. TONS of stuff i didn't know. and more info on the stuff i thought i knew. worth the read!

Let's make it official: The SCUMM documentary is on pause (indefinitely), but I'm working on a book version of our concept. It'll be based on dozens of new interviews with the people behind the LucasArts and Humongous adventures you loved, plus in-depth research. New site: scummbook.com

"The prisoner rebellion is already underway. A refusenik indie culture is returning, although it may look different from the bohemian micro-cultures of the past... And once this process starts, there’s no telling where it might end." www.honest-broker.com/p/the-most-d...

"We're not even the product anymore, which is why all these companies no longer give a solitary shit about whether their stuff is good or fun to use. We're the raw material that they mine." https://matduggan.com/you-know-gdpr-is-good-based-on-who-hates-it/

scummbook.com Exciting! A book about the LucasArts SCUMM based games, forthcoming from @scummdoc.bsky.social and @mossrc.bsky.social

I built a new website for the book project: scummbook.com Official announcement about the documentary going on hiatus will come next week, now that the paperwork's been signed. For GDPR reasons, I need a new mailing list (the new site), but we'll send a final update out on the SCUMMdoc list.

Fascinating essay about Brazilian footballing culture and how the nation found, then lost, its footballing identity — both times under the spectre of European influence. medium.com/the-polis/wh...

OMG. 29 years ago I put an Easter egg in Duke Nukem 3D Mac, that replaced two of the in-game posters with pictures of a couple plush animals I had. I never told anyone other than my wife about the code (DNGLENDA) and completely forgot I did this. 1/2

The deluxe hardcover edition of AGE OF EMPIRES by @mossrc.bsky.social is now up for preorders from our own site. And the ebook edition is available RIGHT NOW. bossfightbooks.com/products/age...

I keep forgetting to mention that the remaining Shareware Heroes paperback copies are now being sold by Wilton Square Books, via all the usual sales channels, in a profit-share deal. There will be no reprint, although I may do an expanded edition in a couple years. The ebook is still on Payhip.

It is often forgotten, but the origins of Bethesda Softworks were rooted in the European homecomputer demoscene, as Julian LeFay, director of Terminator and Daggerfall, grew up with the Amiga in Denmark trying to copy what his demoscene "rival" Sodan was doing.

30 years ago, I created my own football club on Sensible Soccer Luke United FC, with players such as my mum, dad, childhood teddy & David Beckham. I created match day programmes, mock interviews & organised transfers with friends. Childhood imagination is fascinating medium.com/@lukasroar/s...

We're open for freelance pitches! Have any ideas for oral histories, roundtables, Q&As, or other stories that feel in line with what we've published so far? Feel free to DM. Rates typically range from $250-$750.

The printers sent us our sample copy of the deluxe edition of AGE OF EMPIRES by @mossrc.bsky.social. I’m so happy with it.

I once heard a great argument about how AI is made of people. This gets at a similar idea, but with a firm anti-AI stance. "I've come to believe that quality software is not about [the number of] features or how quickly it is built but rather how cared for it is by [the people] who work on it."

World Class Leader Board expanded on Access's impressive golf sim. I looked at it and their early examples of post-release expansion rollouts www.superchartisland.com/world-class-leader-board

A Tale of Two Halves: The History Of Football Video Games ⚽️ Explores the evolution of football games across four decades, featuring 400 titles spanning 2D classics and cutting-edge 3D simulations. Score a copy: www.bitmapbooks.com/collections/... #bitmapbooks #booksky #football #soccer #gaming

I’m thrilled to announce Knee-Deep in the’90s: The First Person Shooters 🔫 That Defined a Decade! 🎙️Based on new & archival interviews 💾Deep dives into 20+ games 📚Available in all formats 📆 Releases 12.10 (Doom’s anniversary!) 🧵1/4

This is such a bad faith and fallacious argument from Sony. It's perfectly intuitive to think that you are buying a (digital) copy of the binary data and that that copy should work for as long as you have the compatible hardware. (Text clipped from @stephentotilo.bsky.social's Game File newsletter.)

My new book, almost here! I can't wait to see that cover in person.

A couple of chaps in Sydney (one of whom worked on Good Game and Spawn Point) are trying to get a documentary series off the ground about Aussie games history, told by the people who were there, and they need your support. You can back the project on Kickstarter: www.kickstarter.com/projects/reg...

Hi, we're a new video game oral histories site. Want to read the story of Shadow of the Colossus, as told by 11 people who worked on it? Or hear what Will Wright has to say about Spore in retrospect? Or see previously unreleased footage of Nintendo's Sound Fantasy? Check us out at designroom.site

Brilliant game. We dedicated a thousand words and a two-page spread just to talking about its excellent Scenario mode, which dropped you into in-progress matches and had you trying to recreate (or change the outcome of) some of the greatest moments in international football history.

The goodreads page for AGE OF EMPIRES by @mossrc.bsky.social is up. To read?? www.goodreads.com/book/show/25...

Final cover (front and back) for the paperback version of my latest book, coming out as soon as it's printed. The hardcover edition will have photos and dev materials. Both can be preordered via Kickstarter at www.kickstarter.com/projects/gab...

With the #WorldCup just started, what better time to dive back into this beauty from @bitmapbooks.com 😀⚽️

World Cup fever has gripped Bitmap HQ 🏆⚽️ Check out our book - Tale of Two Halves: The History Of Football Video Games Featuring over 400 games! Who do you think will win the tournament? Score a copy: www.bitmapbooks.com/collections/... #bitmapbooks #worldcup #football #soccer #gaming #booksky

Sold-out for nearly a year, From Ants to Zombies: Six Decades of Video Game Horror is back in stock on June 17, along with several other excellent titles, including The Games that Weren't, I'm Too Young To Die & 50 Indie Games that Changed the World.

Written by the award winning @mossrc.bsky.social & published by @bitmapbooks.com we are delighted to have several more copies of the Secret History of Mac Gaming available now! Check it out: buff.ly/zr4PWqi

Mac OS 9 had themes too

Someone was inspired by my Shareware Heroes book to archive their collection of mail-order 5.25" shareware floppies, circa 1990-94, most of which came from a catalogue called Reasonable Solutions. There's a great mix of stuff in here. archive.org/details/525d...

People don't long for "inconvenience." They long for permanence. And though streaming services may be convenient, people are waking up to the fact that we are paying rent-seeking middle men month after month for things we will never actually own.

Cuba is out of oil. One of many ongoing, humanitarian crises. I’ve been keeping in touch with a Cuban game developer and it’s very grim. www.nbcnews.com/world/cuba/c...

I've recently read Zen & the Art of the Macintosh, a 1986 book that mixes new age stuff with the sheer sense of wonder the author felt doing graphical design on a Macintosh... It's weird, but gorgeous! And also nostalgic... a tribute to computers, from a time before we yearned for a Butlerian Jihad

Nel corso di un decennio, Soleau ha pubblicato più di 60 giochi shareware per DOS e circa lo stesso numero di titoli per Windows, Mac e Web. Di @mossrc.bsky.social. [dall'archivio]

General reminder, as Google continues its lurch to search awfulness, that Kagi is legit brilliant. Its own AI features can be turned off. You can customise your datasets and weightings. Also SlopStop allows you to downweight, or filter out entirely, AI slop results. Legit worth the $10 a month.

In nonfic it can be useful to drop in occasional reminders of the fallibility of memory: "I dunno," X added. "I might be getting it wrong. It was a long time ago." Inoculating writer & reader against the illusion that everything is perfectly verifiable, even as we all do our best.

I wrote about how AI is destroying my career and what it means that highly skilled jobs are being deskilled with nothing to replace them Link below 👇

Over the last six months, I've written histories of the 26 games to have reached #1 in the UK charts during 1986: superchartisland.com/timeline/#1986 Here is a thread on what I learned, with links to each post!

If you wanna create an old school website you can still do it. You don't have to use a huge CMS to make a site in 2026. If you tweak a basic page every weekend it'll grow into a cool lair of thoughts. That's all we did in 1997. The web can just be a bunch of weirdo's sharing. We ARE the web, guys