About

What is this?

Pixel Poppers is my website for talking about games.

At my best, I look deeply and read closely. I connect dots and apply information from fields including art theory, psychology, and economics. I break down game mechanics and design decisions at least as much as I analyze story beats and character motives (though I write less about the latter because of spoilers). I figure out what makes games tick and explain it in ways that make sense.

At other times, I whine about kids these days and complain that games are too hard. It’s a mix.

Here’s a sampler of the kinds of things you can find here:

  • Articles are the most polished content on the site. These are researched pieces aimed for a wide audience. Starting in May 2018, they also include extra content for a behind-the-scenes look.
  • Thoughts are faster, smaller, and often more niche content. Sometimes they are brief looks at the same sort of concepts that might later be expanded into a full article; other times they are reactions to specific news items or just something silly that came to mind.
  • Reviews take a look at the games I play, aiming to quickly encapsulate the game’s essence and quirks. Most games have an audience; my goal is for the review to make it clear to you whether you are part of a game’s audience (whether or not I am).
  • Games - I’ve only made one so far but hope to make more. There’s a corresponding dev blog looking at the process of making these games and what I learned from doing it.
  • Shared links highlight articles or videos made by other fine folks that I found interesting. I also maintain a blogroll of recommended websites where you can find a lot of quality game-related content.

How can I be notified when new content is posted?

Multiple ways!

Articles also get cross-posted to Medium, while games and dev blog posts are cross-posted to Itch.io. Any video content that gets posted can also be found on Youtube.

What’s up with this “Doctor Professor” person?

Doctor Professor (docprof for short) is my pseudonym. It was supposed to be ironic - I’m a college dropout, not a doctor or a professor, and I have no real credentials for talking about games. The site’s original banner had the subtitle, “Pixel Poppers is the internet home of Doctor Professor, the internet’s leading authority on what Doctor Professor thinks about video games.”

In hindsight, this was a dumb idea. I have no idea how I expected readers to understand that the name was ironic, and since I’m the site’s only author there was no need for a pseudonym anyway. These days I mostly just operate under the “Pixel Poppers” identity, but you’ll occasionally see references to “Doctor Professor” or “docprof”. That’s just me.

The one exception where Doctor Professor exists as a separate entity is as one of the characters in And in the game?, a rarely-updated review comic created in collaboration with Senpai-chan.

If you want to reach me, you can email me at docprof@pixelpoppers.com. I’m always happy to hear from readers.

Some notes on security and stuff

In the interests of security, privacy, robustness, fast page loads, and bandwidth conservation, this site is mostly static, has no trackers, and avoids using resources from other domains. Here are the exceptions:

  • The Search page includes lunr.js and its dependency jQuery to power site search and some custom JavaScript to integrate it properly into the page. This is all hosted locally and shouldn’t make any requests to other domains.
  • Reader comments are powered by HashOver and any page that includes them also includes locally-hosted JavaScript and CSS and images from gravatar.com.
  • Some games are embedded directly in their own page; these make use of locally-hosted JavaScript.
  • Embedded videos, embedded tweets, and shared links make external requests to their source websites. I do not control these domains but I don’t link to any I wouldn’t visit myself.