Dr Paris Buttfield-Addison's personal website. Paris is bestselling author, and co-founder of Secret Lab, Yarn Spinner, and West Coast Space Centre.| hey.paris
Soren Kastner entered the negotiation chamber on Valos Station and immediately identified the anomaly. Five chairs for six delegations. The Meritocracy of Eridani had sent no representative, only a message that their seat should remain vacant. The other delegates shifted uncomfortably as Soren examined the empty chair with measured interest. General Tarask of the Procyon Coalition leaned forward, voice pitched low. “Ambassador Kastner, this is unprecedented. Chairman Kivo was their lead neg...| hey.paris
Dr Paris Buttfield-Addison (he/him) is a creative technologist who works with everything from games and apps to narrative tools and educational resources. He is co-founder and creative director of long-running Tasmanian game development studio Secret Lab, where he has worked on games for QANTAS, CSIRO, TasNetworks, Marvel, the ABC, and more, including the BAFTA- and IGF-winning Night in the Woods. He is also co-founder of Yarn Spinner, a company spun out of the wildly successful game tool of ...| hey.paris
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⚠️ I’m happy to be invited to speak at events on a range of topics, including game development and design, artifical intelligence, the intersection and implications of technology and creativity, space, technology, and beyond. Email me at paris AT paris.id.au to chat. You can find a bio and headshots here. Upcoming Events 2025 Speaking: TasICT Tas Tech Fest 2025, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia Session: Hidden Secrets of the Video Game Industry Speaking: ACS EdCAT (Australian Computer Societ...| hey.paris
Books Unity Development Cookbook Second Edition English: Unity Development Cookbook Second Edition (O’Reilly Media, 2023) Practical Simulations for Machine Learning English: Practical Simulations for Machine Learning (O’Reilly Media, 2022) Chinese: 機器學習模擬應用｜將合成資料運用於AI (Gotop Information, 2022) Head First Swift English: Head First Swift (O’Reilly Media, 2021) Chinese: 深入淺出Swift程式設計 (Gotop Information, 2022) Unity Game Development Cookbook...| hey.paris
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We’re thrilled to announce that Jon, from the Secret Lab and Yarn Spinner team will be presenting a talk at the GDC this year in San Francisco: ‘DREDGE’ and Yarn Spinner: Building Narrative with Open Source. The talk will explore how the indie hit, DREDGE, uses our Yarn Spinner technology for narrative, and how you can do the same. Join us at GDC! Email me via paris AT yarnspinner.dev if you’d like to organise a meeting, too.| Posts on hey.paris
Today, I got back from the South Australian Game Exhibition 2025 (SAGE). It was an expo and mini-conference with a showcase, and an awards night, run by the South Australian Film Corporation and the South Australian Games Association, respecively. This was the first time at this fantastic weekend of events for me, and I have to say: I will definitely be back. The South Australian games industry is doing really well.| Posts on hey.paris
Update: This event is now passed, and it went great! I’m incredibly excited to be speaking at the upcoming TasICT event in Hobart, alongside the fabulous Procreate, Handbuilt Creative, and Screen Tasmania. I’ll be representing Secret Lab and Yarn Spinner, and no doubt Tas Game Makers, our Tasmanian Games Incubator, and other things will get a look in as well. If you’re in Hobart, get along to the event to show your suport for the connection between Tasmania’s technology industry and c...| Posts on hey.paris
We just had AGM for Tasmanian Game Makers, Inc. (TasGM), and for the third year in a row I was pleasantly surprised to be elected President. I’m really looking forward to working with the new committee to continue pushing the video game industry in Tasmania along, get the Tasmanian Games Incubator going as part of TasGM, and helping Screen Tasmania run Level Up. With thanks to our outgoing board member, and our fantastic community and financial members.| Posts on hey.paris
I’m thrilled to share that we’ll be part of Level Up Tasmania 2024, a fantastic celebration of our local game development industry. This event, running from September 27-29, 2024, showcases the creativity and innovation thriving right here in Tasmania. The main showcase will unfold at PW1 in Hobart on Friday and Saturday, featuring over 30 Tasmanian-made games. It’s a rare opportunity to see the breadth of talent we have in our state, all under one roof!| Posts on hey.paris
The West Coast Space Show was a fantastic success! We had a great time presenting our space-themed show and activities for kids and adults alike, all around Tasmania’s West and Central Coast. We’re so grateful for the support we received from the Australian Government via National Science Week. We ran the show all over the West Coast and Central Coast of Tasmania, including amazing places like Strahan, Zeehan, Queenstown, and Ulverstone.| Posts on hey.paris
We’re so excited to announce that we’ll be presenting at the amazing GCAP conference in Melbourne, Australia, this year! We’ll be showing off what we’ve been working on, and talking about how you can use Yarn Spinner to make your own games. We’ll also be around for the whole conference, so if you’re there, come and say hi!| Posts on hey.paris
I’m absolutely thrilled to announce that, together with my wife Mars, I’ll be heading to the West and North West coasts of Tasmania to present a series of space-themed events and workshops for kids and adults alike. We’ve called these events the West Coast Space Show. This National Science Week project is supported by the Australian Government. This is an early step in our efforts to establish the West Coast Space Centre.| Posts on hey.paris
Phew, it’s been a week. Last week, I travelled all the way to Rochester, New York, to attend the NarraScope 2024 conference at The Strong National Museum of Play. I $ for three days of inspiration, connection, and storytelling innovation… and it was awesome! The conference kicked off with a captivating keynote from Nat Clayton, fresh from their work on Inkle’s “A Highland Song.” Their talk on spatial storytelling and level design perfectly set the tone for a conference exploring the...| Posts on hey.paris
You already know that Yarn Spinner is one of the most powerful, flexible and innovative tools for writing interactive stories. Yarn Spinner makes it easy to write stories that run in any engine, on any platform. However, there’s one platform that we’ve neglected: The printed page. That’s why we’re thrilled to announce Yarn Spinner for Books. Yarn Spinner for Books allows writers to write their stories in the Yarn syntax that they know and love, and produce beautifully-typeset PDFs wit...| Posts on hey.paris
Yarn Spinner is now available for purchase! We’ve been working hard to make it easier for you to get started with Yarn Spinner, and we’re excited to announce that you can now buy Yarn Spinner on the Unity Asset Store, and the Itch Store. Yarn Spinner will always be free and open source, but we’re excited to offer a way for you to support the project and get some extra features and support in return.| Posts on hey.paris
We’re thrilled to announce that our next game, I Feel Fine, is coming out this year! I Feel Fine is developed by studio, Secret Lab, written by Eisner Award-winning writer Ryan North, powered by Yarn Spinner, and funded by Screen Tasmania: Great news! You’ll be dead in three days. Here’s the situation. You’re a tourism information robot aboard a space station orbiting Jupiter. An asteroid will hit the station in three days, destroying it and everything on it.| Posts on hey.paris
Another new book! Our latest book, written together with my wife Mars, plus friends Tim and Jon, is out! It covers everything you need to know to do simulations using Unity ML-Agents, and how to use them to train machine learning models. You can buy it from all sorts of book shops, as well as read it on O’Reilly’s Online Learning platform. You can learn about all the other books I’ve written over the (many) years here.| Posts on hey.paris
It’s finally done! My latest book, written together with my Jon, is out! It’s a fantastic, visual beginners guide to Swift programming, with an emphasis on using Swift Playgrounds. I’m really proud of it. You can buy it from all sorts of book shops, as well as read it on O’Reilly’s Online Learning platform.| Posts on hey.paris
We’re thrilled to announce that Night in the Woods, a game we’ve been working on for some time, is now also out for iOS. You can grab it today on the iOS App Store. Go do crimes.| Posts on hey.paris
“Are you going to add AI writing to Yarn Spinner?” It’s a question I hear almost weekly these days. Whether at game development conferences, online, or during meetings, there’s an assumption that every tool is racing to implement some form of generative AI. I understand the curiosity—we’re living through an unprecedented wave of AI hype, and there’s genuine confusion about where these technologies might fit into creative processes. So I thought I’d share some thoughts on why w...| hey.paris