We’ve Turned On Attack Mode For Your Newsletter

Buttondown sent me an email titled “We’ve Turned On Attack Mode On Your Newsletter”. Ominous! My fully operational newsletter is now in attack mode and all that it means is that it’s applying more aggressive spam filtering. Boring! Yet disheartening! The dead internet theory strikes again: for every one confirmed human a dozen spammers and bots and firewalled subscriptions from ‘copyright@take2games.com’ or some corporate 7-11 account. I’m all for screaming into the void but, increasingly, the void is screaming back with crypto, ai, gambling, and phishing scams and it’s making me tired.

As a dad I fall into the older half of the average dad age curve. During school drop-offs, school functions, or extra-curricular activities with my son I’m one of the older parents. I don’t feel it. We regularly go to most kids movies that hit the cinemas. I feel great, I’m one of the normal aged parents. Last weekend I went to see Backrooms, on my own: I have never felt older. A turn of the century geriatric in a sea of Zoomers.

In some ways I get the appeal of these so-called “liminal spaces” and their aura with Gen Z, and YouTube kids, but having lived in the 1980s and the 1990s and having existed in or transited through those kinds of spaces, they are less alien to me. I had the CRT glow in my room, scrambled channels showing forbidden movies, memories on VHS, waking up at 2am to the voices in infomercials promising you women. It was all entwined in our lives like the buzz of fluorescent tube lights.

Every year new channels started broadcasting, in the 40s, the 50s, and incredibly higher channel numbers, and more of the world opened up. In the span of years we went from dozens to hundreds. Computers evolved drastically. The internet became a thing. Physical spaces evolved slowly and were left behind by the exponential increases to connectivity.

That feels very narrow now, constrained. Aesthetics of a forgotten time. People waiting in waiting rooms, sitting on corners waiting for people, with no phones to get in touch or distract oneself, waiting for things to happen. Existing in the space.

So yes I’m old: that backroom, liminal space aesthetic doesn’t have that generational connection with me. But also the movie was materially good! The backroom parts of the movie, especially earlier on, felt a lot like some old fashioned PC dungeon exploring, with paper maps. The staging and set design was fantastic. Some great vibes and spooky moods.

The script and the non-backroom parts could have been better, but this is the debut film of a 20 year old. A film in cinemas the same week another young YouTuber had their directorial debut. The kids are alright. It gives optimism. All that, and yet there was a concerted effort on social media to create an image that Backrooms was “ghost directed” by someone more experienced (read: “older”). Gives the kids their moment to shine. It's tiring.

For some reason I’ve been seeing this nearly 10 year old opinion piece from Ian Bogost on social media last week: Video Games Are Better Without Stories - The Atlantic. From 2017! Zoomers, and other kids, absolutely incredulous at this ‘boomer’ opinion that I, of course, mostly agree with. Is this an age thing again?

On social media the discourse starts and ends with the headline. The article is irrelevant: it’s a trigger to argue about boomers, to post pictures of the author, dismissively, to “what about” game X or Y and the usual Disco Elysium mention – which I previously wrote that the “game” aspect of it is ehhh. This is where my optimism fades. We’ve been through this before. This constant discourse. Twenty years ago.

Whatever your opinion of Ian Bogost you can’t deny that he didn’t pay his dues working the content and discourse mines of the 00s. Are games art? What is ludonarrative dissonance? Are games better without story? What is the Citizen Kane of games? Find yourself a random game criticism blog post for the 00s, like Against my Better Judgement, I Discuss Citizen Kane and Maybe Art, and you’ll find Ian Bogost in the comments.

For a moment I seethed at the idea of a new generation repeating all that video games discourse from first principles. Am I the old, remembering long deleted forums and forgotten blogs, disheveled, crushing a beer can on my desk and muttering about how time is a flat circle?

I give myself a kick. Good video game writing never stopped. I wasn’t paying attention. This week alone I’ve enjoyed:

• LET ME RUN AND I WON’T HIDE - ostensibly about Marathon.
• Final Fantasy IV and the Necessary Weeding of Kings – because people are still writing about 16-bit Final Fantasy games in 2026.
• A note dump at harmonyzone of scattered thoughts on indie games and why.
• In The Reality Lab - N+1 – ok a little more tech than game but definitely game related.

It’s on me. I’m the sucker. I got pulled into an algorithm powered bubble of bad, reactionary opinions and made a judgement call. In my defense, I am tired.

It’s been three days since github’s "One more thing: Price of the brick going up" policy has been in effect and it has already been funny. Already addicted corporations are very very quickly realizing that they can’t afford this. Our org has used 33% of included credits in less than three days. If I wasn’t so opposed to AI I’d be running an agent non-stop to increase those numbers. Have it “audit” some large repo on a cron job. But then I’d be using it and I’m too tired for that.

Edit: we are now ten days in. Available credits have been exhausted.

The free buttondown tier doesn’t have much in the way of custom design options but I was feeling that the “modern” design was a little cramped so decided to switch to the more barebones look. I’ve been thinking about the Manifesto Jam 2026 - itch.io and about submitting something but there’s a day left and I already had to edit this email like four times because it’s no longer the third of June.

Related Links

‘Backrooms’ Director Kane Parsons Calls AI “Genuinely Harmful” To Creativity: “Cultural And Economic Rot”

The more young people use AI, the more they hate it | The Verge

Backrooms uses the bluntest metaphors to capture a uniquely Gen Z fear

Radiator Blog: A survey of video game manifestos

Still tired,

sometimes