A book by Chris Kempt
The Hunting Party
Why uncertainty is making Hunters important again
The future may belong neither to the lone genius nor the giant organisation, but to small groups of very different people who know how to hunt together.
01 / The observation
Three rooms. Same crowd. Different behaviour.
The book begins with three establishments within a few dozen metres of one another. They share the same street, the same weather and broadly the same customers. Yet each room seems to produce a different version of the people inside it.
Chris has spent decades building games, companies and teams, then watching the systems around them shape what people could safely notice, question or do. The Hunting Party follows that habit of observation into uncertainty, human difference, power, scarcity and AI.
The book is not a finished framework placed above real life. It is one part of a continuing investigation. The writing archive carries the questions further as new situations make the pattern easier, or harder, to see.
02 / Recurring ideas
A map, not a model.
Six routes into the book and the wider body of writing.
Hunters & Farmers
Exploration and cultivation are different strategies. Healthy groups need both.
Human behaviour
Environments do not merely constrain people. They select which parts of us appear.
Uncertainty
When the environment moves, the traits that looked inconvenient can become useful again.
Creativity
Stories are not decoration. They are one of the ways people hold reality together.
AI as a thinking partner
Not an oracle and not a substitute for judgement. Something responsive to think with.
Systems & organisations
Every system carries assumptions about what people are for. Those assumptions produce behaviour.
03 / Downloads
Start anywhere.
Short routes into The Hunting Party, built around the people, questions and odd examples that helped the argument take shape.
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The Celebrity Conspiracy
Stephen Fry, Vladislav Surkov, white-hat hackers and the organisation that may not technically exist. A companion essay to The Hunting Party.
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The Flying Spaghetti Monster — Following the rule too well
The Flying Spaghetti Monster, absurd rules and what systems reveal when somebody obeys them precisely. A free extract from The Hunting Party.
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ADHD — Deficit compared with what?
ADHD, hyperattention and the environments against which attention is judged. Free extracts from The Hunting Party.
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Adam Curtis — Reality as the medium
Adam Curtis, Vladislav Surkov, hypernormalisation and the architecture of belief. A free extract from The Hunting Party.
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Sebastian Bach — The Hunter
Sebastian Bach, danger and the recognition that arrives before explanation. A free extract from The Hunting Party.
04 / Recent writing
The investigation continues.
The book gives the ideas a shape. The essays test them against new situations, contradictions and things Chris has noticed since.
05 / About Chris
Thirty years inside the machinery.
Chris Kempt is a games-industry founder, studio head, cancer survivor and systems thinker. He has spent most of his adult life building things with very different people, then trying to understand why some groups become more than the sum of their parts while others quietly defeat themselves.
The book is experience-led because the experience came first: early web and games, studios and exits, success and failure, illness, organisations, relationships and a persistent habit of asking why people are doing this.