Gaming Session: Demon’s Souls, 31 May 2012

Posted on May 27, 2012 by

So Atlus is keeping the servers open! Instead of mourning the end of the run of, and getting a fair measure of, a multi-player experience that critics often characterize as “ground-breaking,” we get to try to answer the interesting question “Was declaring that they would be shutting the servers down a gimmick?”

That’s of course because our “gaming sessions” don’t have to be all scholastic. So come along, and maybe “Was it a gimmick?” will become “What is a gimmick?” or “How do we describe what happens to a gamespace when the game’s designers shear it of affordances?”

We’ll be talking on Skype this week; if you don’t think I’ve got your Skype info, leave a comment and I’ll e-mail you.

We’re playing at the usual time: Thursday 5/31 at 9:30 EDT / 6:30 PDT, hope to see you there!

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The School of Athens (VGHVI) Podcast, recording 17 March 2012

Posted on May 24, 2012 by

thatgamecompany’s oeuvre. If for nothing else, this is a must-listen for the sound of us trying to pronounce that mot and finally settling on “works.”

So from my perspective, the “thing” in this one is me going off on Csiksentmihalyian (that one’s almost as good for pronunciation fun as oeuvre) “flow.” I want to continue to explore the relation between flow and gamespaces, and so we will–June’s symposium topic will be “What if flow isn’t what makes a gamespace engaging? or, Where flow was, there should ruleset be.”

On this episode: Roger Travis, David Carlton, Dan Cox, Patrick Holleman, Steve Gilham, and Eric Swain.

Edited by Dan Cox.

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We have an iTunes page now, too!

Posted in Playversation, podcast | 1 Comment

Gaming Session: Minecraft, May 24, 2012

Posted on May 19, 2012 by

 

Even though it’s not the last week of the month, we’re playing Minecraft this Thursday, so we’ll be able to play Demon’s Souls on May 31st as its servers shut down. The usual time and place: Thursday 5/24 at 9:30 pm EDT / 6:30 pm PDT, the server is minecraft.bactrian.org, and we’re using Skype for chat this time. (Please add ‘davidbcarlton’ if I’m not already on your contacts list.)

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Playversation, Thursday 17 May: thatgamecompany’s oeuvre

Posted on May 13, 2012 by

fl0w

The School of Athens goes floating, more or less. I don’t know about you, but I think this has everything to do with “What is a gamespace?” Play whichever of fl0w, Flower, or Journey strikes your fancy, or play nothing, but come prepared to have it out about whether Csiksentmihalyian flow and immersion are the same thing. To put it another way, what does difficulty have to do with a possibility-space?

I’ve promised David that I’m going to create an aphorisms page, which will at least include definitions of “game,” “play,” and “gamespace”; I’ll hope to have that done by the time of our playversation.

We’ll be on Mumble, to facilitate recording; comment if you need the info.

Posted in Events, Playversation | 4 Comments

The School of Athens (VGHVI) Podcast, recorded 3 May 2012

Posted on May 9, 2012 by

Gamespaces! What are they?

On this episode: Roger Travis, David Carlton, Dan Cox, Patrick Holleman, Steve Gilham, and Eric Swain.

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We have an iTunes page now, too!

Dan has some wonderful de facto show notes on his blog.

Posted in podcast, Symposium | 1 Comment

Gaming Session: Ascension, May 10, 2012

Posted on May 5, 2012 by

For this week’s gaming session, we’re going to play the iPad/iPhone adaptation of the deck-building card game Ascension. I’ll be happy to play either with or without the Revenge of the Fallen expansion; it’s possible that the second expansion (Storm of Souls) will be out by then, too. Just make sure you have all the updates applied to the game (even if you haven’t purchased the expansion), sometimes I’ve seen people unable to play together if one has updated recently and the other hasn’t.

I’m davidcarlton on Game Center, feel free to add me. (And leave your own Game Center IDs in the comments thread so other participants can add you, too – we may well split up into multiple games.) We’ll be talking on Mumble this week, leave a comment and I’ll e-mail you the connection info if you don’t have it.

(Administrative note: this month’s Minecraft session will be on 5/24 instead of 5/31.)

We’re playing at the usual time: Thursday 5/10 at 9:30 EDT / 6:30 PDT, hope to see you there!

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Symposium, 3 May: What is a gamespace?

Posted on April 30, 2012 by

It’s the first week of the month, which means that it’s time for another VGHVI Symposium! To my mind, we acquitted ourselves well when trying to define “play,” so it’s time to move on and try to define “gamespace.” (No, you’re not experiencing déjà vu: we tried last month, and it didn’t quite happen; I have higher hopes for this month!) It’s worth noting that Mattie and Steve G and I had a friendly Twitter dust-up about authorship and games, in which Mattie used the phrase “authored space.” That’s going to be my way in, with the questions still looming about Mass Effect 3 and such things as authored spaces and player performances.

We’ll be on Mattie’s Mumble server. Comment here with contact info for a missive from me with details, or find me on Google Plus, which should be easy enough.

EDIT: Because it’s always nice in these sessions to have a windmill at which to tilt, here’s my starting definition for “gamespace”: range of performance affordances created by a practomimetic ruleset, conceived as one or more of a variety of spatial metaphors readily afforded by human consciousness.

Posted in Events, Symposium | 2 Comments