Frank Lantz @flantz Twitter profile

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

1 year

My book is coming out this year. It’s called “The Beauty of Games”. Yes, I would love to be on your podcast.

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

2 years

Remembering the greatest videogame article ever published

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

My new game, in which you play an AI who makes paperclips:

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

3 years

Babble Royale is now live in early access! I think it's the funnest game I've ever worked on. Come see for yourself.

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

2 years

Yeah social media is bad, the internet is terrible, sure, but youtube comments on song videos are a vast reservoir of the deepest, most powerful expression our shared humanity. Stuck in time and cut loose from time. They are not literature or criticism, they are better than both.

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

11 months

This glitched out scan of a children’s book is a modernist masterpiece

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

5 years

Feels like a watershed moment for the new form of the "interactive essay". I am very excited by the work being done in this area. Here are some highlights:

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

5 years

Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy, 2018

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

4 years

@michael_nielsen @joshu

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

9 years

The critic's job is to provide insight and elevate the discussion, not help children maximize the purchasing power of their allowance

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

10 months

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

1 year

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

6 years

This is game design

Simon Carless

@simoncarless

6 years

Great anecdote from Yu Suzuki about how they set the color palette for Space Harrier:

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

this is a very in-depth interview with me that ended up getting pretty intense...

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

The official mobile version of Universal Paperclips is now available in the App Store

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

4 years

One lesson that GPT-3 might be teaching us: the tell-tale signature artifact of simulation is not the spiky glitch, it's the smooth, shallow, facile surface. It's not the errors, it's a certain kind of boring flawlessness, that's what we should be on the lookout for.

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

2 years

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

Status: we melted the server. We are upgrading the server. Back online soon. Love, the swarm

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present, with no further ado: the Android release of Universal Paperclips

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

3 years

Next week we are releasing a major update for the mobile version of Universal Paperclips. We've rebuilt the game from the ground up. Expect bug fixes, UI improvements, massive performance upgrades and... a few surprises.

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

5 years

This is what happens when you simply change the blend mode to multiply. Let’s do this!

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

4 years

One of my students figured out you could run zoom from inside of tabletop simulator. I think we maybe broke the universe.

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

5 years

Hey Robot - a game for smart speakers

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

1 year

Another angle on this question - are there any books, movies, or paintings that are permanent art in the way that, say, Backgammon or Go is - enjoyed and appreciated for thousands of years, not as a historical artifact, but as living culture?

Zach Weinersmith

@ZachWeiner

1 year

Do you think there are any video games that are permanent art, in the same sense as a great book or movie or painting yet? Like, such that you'd bet they'll be read in 100 years. Not a series, but a specific game.

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

The Universal Paperclips Gift Shop is now open for business. T-shirts. Mugs. Hoodies. The holidays are coming, go bonkers.

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

4 years

Steam is chock-full of janky conceptual art, Russian troll farm postmodernism, and gamer bedroom dada provocations and I love it

One Dollar Simulator on Steam

This is, in truth, the best simulator of 2020! This simulator will transform your dollar from your ordinary and everyday world - into a DOLLAR of the world of beauty and harmony!

store.steampowered.com

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

coming soon...

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

consciousness explained

Roberto Alonso González Lezcano

@robertoglezcano

7 years

A camera falls from an airplane and ends at a trough for pigs.

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

3 years

The new version of Universal Paperclips is now live in the app store. We've totally rebuilt the game from the ground up to fix bugs and improve performance. And we've added a major gameplay feature- a whole new prestige system. Android version coming soon!

‎Universal Paperclips™

‎The OFFICIAL mobile version of the hit browser game. No ads, no in-app purchases, full gameplay. "The game is click-crack." - Wired "This paperclip sim will cause your next existential crisis." -...

apps.apple.com

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

3 years

That's what I'm talkin about

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

2 years

Getting the World Record in HATETRIS, the version of Tetris that always gives you the worst piece. A fascinating deep dive into games and problem-solving in the age of machine learning

Getting the World Record in HATETRIS

HATETRIS is the world's hardest version of Tetris; it's Tetris that hates you. In this post, we chronicle our eleven-month journey to get the world record, and some of our wrong turns along the way.

hallofdreams.org

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

5 years

This talk was amazing. I'm still thinking about it weeks later. First and foremost it was a genuinely informative talk about a complicated and interesting topic - the algorithmic muck that coats the floor of the mobile ecosystem 1/

Bennett

@bfod

5 years

Also don’t skip the best talk from this year’s GDC, “1500 slot machines walk into a bar” by @popcannibal and @gtjuggler

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

8 months

This is the civilization-scale version of having motion smoothing turned on on your TV. Earth has reached peak boomer.

caleb gamman

@calebgamman

8 months

basically every pre-2010 music video on youtube has been ai upscaled, with even the low res versions replaced by the upscale. good news for fans of crap that looks like a dogs shit

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

5 years

I just want there to be an anime about counter-strike surfing, about a kid trying to break into the scene and learning about courage and determination and friendship, in the style of ping pong the animation, with a killer drum & bass soundtrack. Is that too much to ask?

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

6 years

as determined by the students in my intro to game studies class.

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

10 years

Some things should go without saying, but unfortunately can't. I speak out against #GamerGate . http://t.co/LyQzXryHDq

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

4 years

Wait, did GPT-3 reference Universal Paperclips in this poem it wrote?! 😳 (bold text is the prompt)

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

4 years

graduation was lit

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

6 years

My GDC talk about games and systems literacy

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

4 years

We made a quick & dirty online version of Hey Robot for people to play during quarantine. Have fun!

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

9 years

Against Design http://t.co/ND3uQygoY2

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

Just thinking about how all the players who made too many processors and not enough memory are stuck in a utopian paradise...

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

this tweetstorm by @arthur_affect is a pretty amazing exegesis of universal paperclips Part the first:

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

5 years

I wrote some metaphysical fan philosophy set in the Magic: The Gathering universe

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

6 years

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

6 years

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

2 years

Who's working on new interfaces for navigating the latent space of large transformer models? This was 2 years ago, and I still think about it constantly...

Mario Klingemann💧💦

@quasimondo

4 years

Since at the moment the head pose detection is the bottleneck I'll go back to joystick control, to show off the render speed.

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

2 years

just discovered these "full text" lands and I think they are amazing

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

9 years

The inability of prominent game critics to speak intelligently about The Beginner's Guide is an embarrassing failure of our shared culture

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

4 years

The more I think about it, the more I feel that, ultimately, America’s greatest contribution to history will be Black culture. In the wake of one of the worst atrocities ever committed, it created jazz, rock & roll, and hip hop - unprecedented, world-conquering art forms

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

@metasynthie

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

I won't be happy until Elon Musk tweets about it

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

4 years

The Stanford Prison Experiment failed as science because it didn't understand that it was actually a LARP. Likewise, QAnon fails as politics because its an ARG. Which parts of your life are you failing at because you don't realize you are playing a game?

Charlie Warzel

@cwarzel

4 years

New: Perhaps the best explanation I’ve heard for QAnon's dangerous popularity and growth came from @adrianhon who designs alternate reality games and sees very similar dynamics at play. So I talked to him about it.

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

I've designed an AI that is smarter than most humans (including me)

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

4 years

𝐻𝒶𝓅𝓅𝓎 𝐻𝑜𝓁𝒾𝒹𝒶𝓎𝓈

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

6 years

woah this tweet really blew up, please check out this tweet

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

@GarettJones here's my favorite

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

5 years

When I was a freshman I signed up for a grad seminar in contemporary art cause I didn’t understand how college worked. Anne Truitt let me stay because she was cool. I learned a lot. The internet is like that, full of opportunities to jump ahead of where you’re “supposed” to be.

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

4 years

The Olive Garden of Forking Paths

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

3 years

This tweet is our entire marketing plan.

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

@radiatoryang games don't have to be fun

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

6 years

This is incredible. I had no idea this was possible.

Malicious, perspicacious pangolins in a trenchcoat

@Perspicaciosity

6 years

It is possible to complete a pacifist run of the paperclip clicker game (), though I can't say I'd recommend doing it. Thank you, @flantz , for making this thing. It's beautiful.

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

5 years

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

6 years

I just played a Bionic Commando style game that explores themes of identity, depression, and addiction. It’s grappling with some serious issues.

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

12 years

The Valve employee handbook is amazing http://t.co/fDbqBoPO

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

9 years

After her talk @femfreq had one question: where's the Killer Queen machine??

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

5 years

Why isn’t he happier? Why aren’t we all happier?

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

11 years

Note to self http://t.co/qfIXF0cx0D

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

@metasynthie @molleindustria Every game is a parody of work.

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

6 years

It has come to my attention that not all of you are playing Cinco Paus. I intend to correct that with this helpful guide:

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

8 years

by any memes necessary

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

9 months

Move over Professor Lundy's Guide to Rock Music Connoisseurship and Muscular Christianity a Case for Spiritual and Physical Fitness, there's a new top dog.

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

5 years

I think I speak for all of us when I say... (checks notes)...“what?”

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

5 years

@Apple please, I’m begging you

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

6 years

the best thing about @microtrailers is that it is a daily corrective to the easily-held belief that most games are conventional, generic, typical, etc. Most games are bizarre. Machine dreams of a restless chip god, garbage fires of fractal sex poetry, ecstatic cries for help.

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

I’d kill for a Hanabi deck based on these

Present & Correct

@presentcorrect

7 years

6 Japanese firework catalogues, in full. Early 1900s. The original source:

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

Oh. Oh no. No, no. Oh... yes.

Andrew Sutherland

@asuth

7 years

So I started building an AI to play the Universal Paperclip game for me. If you haven't played it yet:

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

4 years

Games as art - not the treacly, “tasteful”, middlebrow bath water we’ve been primed to expect but a dirtbag avant-garde that knows how to pass cert and process a credit card

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

come on guys, you know you've designed these badges to appear together, just use the same shape

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

5 years

The undisputed queen of the interactive essay is Nicky Case. The work she's been doing in this area, to explore its potential and share her knowledge and enthusiasm about it, are legendary.

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

6 years

wakes up, thinks about Kanye’s advice not to get on your phone when you wake up wonders if he’s got any more good advice reaches for phone...

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

6 years

too much emphasis is put on originality. Feel free to take ideas and update them at your will all great artist take and update.

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

I love how a new Michael Brough game is like a bat signal for the same 8 dozen folks to light up and go crazy. I love all of you and I love Michael Brough and I love games.

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

6 years

Tolkien, 8

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

6 years

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

4 years

the main problem with videogames is that they’re not black enough

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

I'm not ready for this

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

@sintecta Now you know what it's like to be whole-heartedly and enthusiastically in the thrall of an arbitrary value function!

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

Thought of another one

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

4 years

forbidden love

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

5 years

I love the new youtube genre of hyper-literate, highly technical, historically-situated, reference-stuffed close readings like this, and the fact that it can rack up a half a million views proves there's an appetite for smart, difficult things in the world

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

7 years

Universal Paperclips patch 1 notes

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

4 years

Not to take anything away from Jimmy's victory, but the emotions that @mulaney goes through at the end of this clip, when Jimmy finally gets "screw", really capture, for me, the essence of what it's like to play Hey Robot

The Tonight Show

@FallonTonight

4 years

Jimmy & @mulaney face-off in a popular new game called Hey Robot! #FallonTonight

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

5 years

never forget

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

5 years

👋🤖

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

4 years

Mercury Prime is coming! It's a game that folds the evolving creation of the game world into the play of the game itself, like a Mobius strip.

Mercury Prime on Steam

Mercury Prime is a winner generated roguelike. Each day, players compete to earn the right to expand the game - inventing new creatures, items, and powers to add to their worlds. Each week, worlds...

store.steampowered.com

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Frank Lantz

@flantz

6 years

@stratydotcom

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