Games on Dr Paris Buttfield-Addison

Games Are the Art Form of Our Time

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Submissions for Australia’s next National Cultural Policy closed in May 2026. I wrote one, on behalf of Tasmanian Game Makers, because I want games taken seriously as what they are: the art form most of us actually play.

Read the full submission on Tas Game Makers

Here are the highlights.

Games are the art form of our time. In 2025, 82% of Australians played them, the average player was 35, and women now make up just over half of all players. On the government’s own data, digital games development has been the fastest-growing of all cultural and creative activities in the country over the past decade. Games are also one of our most export-heavy creative industries: 93% of the Australian sector’s revenue comes from overseas.

Leo wouldn't stand still

Thu, 21 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We’re working on an adventure game, Leonardo’s Moon Ship. The player character, Leo, has the usual pile of animations: idle left and right, walk in four directions, a couple of stair anims. Since implementing the basics of the character, Leo has had this slightly cursed behaviour where he’d grow about 3% taller the moment he started walking, then shrink back when he stopped. His feet would also lift off the ground by up to 27 pixels depending on which way he was facing. Not enough to be obviously broken in a screenshot. Exactly enough to make the game feel wrong.

Big Plans is out now

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Big Plans is out now on iOS and Android. We built it at Secret Lab for Bank of us, the Tasmanian customer-owned bank, as a story-based game for kids aged 5 to 8 about money. Specifically, the value of money, needs versus wants, and the basics of planning and making choices.

We loved making it. The brief was unusually thoughtful for a kids’ app: no ads, no in-app purchases, no online interaction, no marketing pitches at children. Just a small game that helps a five-year-old start thinking about how money works. There’s a parent guide that goes with it for families who want to keep the conversation going off-screen.

Tas Game Makers 2026

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We just had the AGM for Tasmanian Game Makers, Inc. (TasGM) in Launceston on Friday, and I was thrilled to (once again, somehow) be elected as President! For the fourth year in a row, I’m really grateful for the trust of our members, and I’m excited to work with the new board to keep pushing the video game industry in Tasmania forward.

The new board is:

President: Paris B-A
Vice-Presidents: Michael Hinz, Leo Febey
Secretary: Tim Nugent
Treasurer: Jon Manning
General Committee: Jason Imms, Dean Baron, Lindsay Wells, Lindsay Mansfield, Rhiannon Ross, Alonso Zevallos Fournier, Brie Ratten, and Jerome Phelps

With Oliver Potter continuing as our Screen Tasmania Observer.

We Made a Game About a 1993 Hint Line

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’m so proud of this.

Hint Line ‘93, a game we made at Yarn Spinner, is now on display at ACMI’s Game Worlds exhibition. We put up a big behind-the-scenes post on the Yarn Spinner blog, so go read that…

For those who don’t know, early last year ACMI (the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, a museum of screen culture in Melbourne) put out a call for commissioned microgames. They wanted playable experiences for a museum context: 5-10 minutes, compelling world-building, accessible to a wide variety of visitors.

We're all adults here

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The recent delisting of over 17,000 games from the independent platform Itch.io wasn’t a content moderation decision made by the platform itself. It was an act of financial coercion. Instigated by an Australian activist group and carried out by payment processors like Mastercard, it sets a dangerous precedent for all creative fields online.

The stated goal of the campaign was to combat media that glorifies sexual violence. An aim that sounds laudable, making it difficult to argue against in public. But like calls to age-gate social media, such goals can act as a Trojan horse. A socially acceptable pretext for gaining more information and control over people. And the outcome here reveals a profound and damaging overreach.

Constraints are the Point

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I get it. I disagree with it, but I get it. The tech industry is throwing obscene amounts of money at LLMs. VCs are salivating over AI startups. The big important executives are regularly bleating about how “we should integrate ChatGPT into our game” because they read some Medium article about the future of interactive entertainment.

But as narrative designers, we need to call this what it is: a massive distraction from what makes game characters work.

Beyond Bad Output

Tue, 11 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Deeper Problems with AI in Creative Work

“But AI will get better at writing stories, won’t it?” This response to my rant about AI-generated content misses the point entirely. Even if AI writing improved dramatically tomorrow, fundamental problems would remain that no algorithm refinement can fix.

The environmental cost alone should give us pause. Training even a small LLM produces carbon emissions equivalent to the output of several cars, over their entire lifetimes, and each query consumes significant energy. Game development already has a substantial carbon footprint—why increase it when human writers remain perfectly capable?

The Empty Promise of AI-Generated Creativity

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“Are you going to add AI writing to Yarn Spinner?” It’s a question I hear almost weekly these days. Whether at game development conferences, online, or during meetings, there’s an assumption that every tool is racing to implement some form of generative AI. I understand the curiosity—we’re living through an unprecedented wave of AI hype, and there’s genuine confusion about where these technologies might fit into creative processes. So I thought I’d share some thoughts on why we’re taking a different path.

Yarn Spinner at GDC 2025

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We’re thrilled to announce that Jon, from the Secret Lab and Yarn Spinner team will be presenting a talk at the GDC this year in San Francisco: ‘DREDGE’ and Yarn Spinner: Building Narrative with Open Source.

The talk will explore how the indie hit, DREDGE, uses our Yarn Spinner technology for narrative, and how you can do the same.

Join us at GDC! Email me via paris AT yarnspinner.dev if you’d like to organise a meeting, too.

SAGE 2025

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Today, I got back from the South Australian Game Exhibition 2025 (SAGE). It was an expo and mini-conference with a showcase, and an awards night, run by the South Australian Film Corporation and the South Australian Games Association, respecively. This was the first time at this fantastic weekend of events for me, and I have to say: I will definitely be back.

The South Australian games industry is doing really well. Their events were happy, healthy, passionate, and have a nice community feel that’s often lacking from games industry events as they try and professionalise and grow. It was wonderful to see how much camaraderie there is in South Australia. There were also some fantastic games on display, and many of them were hilarious.

TasICT Creative Technologies Event

Tue, 04 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Update: This event is now passed, and it went great!

I’m incredibly excited to be speaking at the upcoming TasICT event in Hobart, alongside the fabulous Procreate, Handbuilt Creative, and Screen Tasmania. I’ll be representing Secret Lab and Yarn Spinner, and no doubt Tas Game Makers, our Tasmanian Games Incubator, and other things will get a look in as well.

If you’re in Hobart, get along to the event to show your suport for the connection between Tasmania’s technology industry and creative technology industry!

Tas Game Makers 2025

Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We just had AGM for Tasmanian Game Makers, Inc. (TasGM), and for the third year in a row I was pleasantly surprised to be elected President. I’m really looking forward to working with the new committee to continue pushing the video game industry in Tasmania along, get the Tasmanian Games Incubator going as part of TasGM, and helping Screen Tasmania run Level Up.

With thanks to our outgoing board member, and our fantastic community and financial members.