Mssv
mssv.net · Personal blog · on HN since 2008
Adrian Hon, a game designer, writes about games, technology and politics, including alternate reality games, larps, and escape rooms.
What HN saysHN commenters cite his post on alternate reality games and QAnon when discussing how ARG-style storytelling shaped political movements.
16HN people shared it
7linked it in comments
70stories submitted
963story points
3 months agolast shared
2008people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1What Alternate Reality Games Can Teach Us About QAnon3 people · 66 points · first shared 2020 · 34 comments on HN
- 2Digital Sight Management, and the Mystery of the Missing Amazon Receipts3 people · 32 points · first shared 2020 · 6 comments on HN
- 3Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser3 people · 12 points · first shared 2024 · 5 comments on HN
- 4Epos Daimon, the Magic School Where Teens Play Fascists2 people · 5 points · first shared 2026 · 1 comments on HN
- 5I'm Making Strandfall, a Solarpunk Orienteering Larp2 people · 4 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 6The Ladder: A Hilariously Surprisingly Replayable Escape Room2 people · 4 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 7What's behind the rise of teens spying for Russia?2 people · 3 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 8The Future History of the World in 7 On-Screen Objects2 people · 3 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 9Meet Nikolai Evreinov, the 19th century Nathan Fielder2 people · 2 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 10The Collective Ambition Behind Odysseus, a Game-Changing Sci-Fi Larp2 people · 1 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 11Givewell2 people · first shared 2009
- 12Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece1 people · 189 points · first shared 2025 · 115 comments on HN
- 13The Sphere1 people · 171 points · first shared 2024 · 69 comments on HN
- 14The Collective Ambition Behind Odysseus, a Game-Changing Sci-Fi Larp1 people · 115 points · first shared 2025 · 28 comments on HN
- 15Playing First Contact in Eclipse, a 3-Day Sci-Fi Larp1 people · 72 points · first shared 2025 · 6 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
adrianhon · 2023-07-04
https://mssv.net
Writing about games and technology, with the occasional sci-fi short story and politics thrown in.
https://adrianhon.substack.com
I play a newish game every week and talk about its mechanics, game design, and what makes it interesting.
blasdel · 2009-09-08
Fuck that noise -- if you'd have even bothered to google their name, you'd have found that Givewell are total scumbags:
http://metatalk.metafilter.com/15547/GiveWell-or-Give-em-Hell
Summaries: http://mssv.net/wiki/index.php/Givewell
They got caught out because they were blatantly astroturfing for themselves and slagging 'competing' charities all over the web. Then it turns out that even by their own generous accounting, more than half of their funds goes directly to their own overhead. On top of that, their 'research' is at best based on getting charities to rigorously assess themselves.
Their rubberstamp board publicly (in the NYT) pretended to fire one of the founders, but less than a year later he was quietly back at his old position.
Marshferm · 2025-11-03
ARGs which are a hack of storytelling, rendering the format either mute or too diffuse to cohere, became the backbone format of Russian news, Brexit, QAnon, and MAGA.
Addl citation
https://mssv.net/2020/08/02/what-args-can-teach-us-about-qanon/
pjc50 · 2021-09-08
Treading carefully because a sibling comment has already been banned, but I'm reminded of the QAnon-as-ARG view:
https://mssv.net/2020/08/02/what-args-can-teach-us-about-qanon/
https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qan…
It contains many of the familiar "satanic panic" elements such as wild allegations of child abuse.
wallflower · 2018-04-24
> TYLIP is...a book that is powered by a computer so advanced it’s almost magical, and it teaches children everything. It does this through a fully interactive story. It teaches you how to read, how to do maths, it teaches you morals, ethics, even self-defence.
http://mssv.net/2006/05/01/the-young-ladys-illustrated-primer/
johnpowell · 2013-01-17
I'm still a little upset with Givewell after what they did over at Metafilter.
http://mssv.net/wiki/index.php/Givewell
bd · 2009-01-15
MetaFilter also works this way. Self-policing is a big part of the community [1][2].
There is a even a whole section of the site devoted to discussing internal stuff (called appropriately MetaTalk [3]).
Sometimes I miss something like this on HN - a separate space for meta stuff.
BTW MetaFilter is the only other online community I'm aware of that has quality on the level of HN (despite being even larger - over 56,000 registered people).
[1] http://mssv.net/wiki.cgi?SelfPolicing
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaFilter#Moderation
[3] http://metatalk.metafilter.com