The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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7:17am on Thursday, 17th September, 2026:
Anecdote
Yesterday I arrived suitably early for the BIGGI conference, having been delayed by "trespassers on the line" on Tuesday. I was delayed this time, too (by "overrunning engineering works"), but at least on this occasion I could claim compensation as I had a ticket for a specific train rather than an open ticket. They really don't want you to do this, though: I was required to upload a scan of my ticket's barcode, which given that my ticket was a digital one on my phone was something of a palavar. As any games-player will recognise, however, this only ensured I would not give up. I expect pence, if not pounds, to appear in my Paypal account sometime in the next twelve weeks.
The conference itself was excellent, as usual. There was a staggeringly good keynote by Constance Steinkuehler and Kurt Squire, which will entail my having to extend some of what I've written in Volume III of the Second Edition of Designing Virtual Worlds. I hadn't seen them in person for maybe two decades, so monopolised their time in conversation for a good 20 minutes before their presentation. For this, I feel no guilt whatsoever.
Apart from attending the other talks (none of which had enough time for all the questions people — myself included — wanted to ask), I spoke with a lot of old friends; these included former students. All of them have done amazingly well, although this is probably despite my influence rather than because of it. It's weird seeing them ten years older than they were when we first met: some haven't perceptively aged at all, others have done so gracefully, but others look twenty years older; I guess the portrait in their attic looks just like they did in their early twenties.
No, I'm not naming names, because they could punch me to the ground and kick me unconscious. Also, I myself look thirty years older than I did ten years ago.
I had lots of interesting conversations on topics to do with games, AI, babies, novel-writing, industry, academia, politics and retirement. I probably had more, too, but didn't take notes.
I'm looking forward to tomorrow, when hopefully I'll get to talk to the people I wanted to talk to but couldn't because either I or they were engaged in conversation with someone else when I spotted them.
This is the last IGGI conference, but if there's a reunion in ten years' time then I'll make every effort to attend (although if I'm dead by then, that may not amount to much).
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Copyright © 2026 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).