We’ll meet on Thursday, May 23rd at 9:30pm EDT / 6:30pm PDT; I’m “malvasia bianca” on Xbox Live if you’re not already on my friends list. See you then!

This coming Thursday night, it might very well be the end of time and space as our heroes have known it. Having stumbled their way into a mysterious cave on an impossible planet circled by a ship thought lost to time, our motley band found themselves thrust into a simulation of the ancient past and then, having finally gotten away from the corrupt AI that had held a civilization frozen for millennia, came face to face with one of the Greek gods themselves: Poseidon!

However, things are far worse than they know. The reality matrix born of countless dreaming minds is coming to an end. Those who were once called Greek gods, beings whose will kept the stars in check and from which galaxies drew life, have been dying off one by one. Cracks in time have begun to appear and space has become twisted. The universe now stands on the brink of annihilation.

As parting words before fading away himself, Poseidon tasked our heroes with one final thing: saving the universe! Now, as they stand on a barren, impossible planet and as the memory of Poseidon ever existing slips from their minds, they face an unimaginable goal. In order save anyone they have, do, or will ever care about, they must perform that which even the Greek gods in space could not. They must save time and space itself!

Continuing from the decision made last episode, this will be the end of our campaign of Bhaloidam – Greek Gods in Space for the time being. We will meet at 9:30 PM EST (6:30 PM PST) on the Mumble server and discover together how it finally resolves.

We’ll meet on Xbox Live on Thursday, May 9th at 9:30pm EDT / 6:30pm PDT; send a friends request to “malvasia bianca” if you’re not already on my list. See you on Thursday!

(As always, if you would like to participate, let us know in the comments and we will pass along the necessary server information.)

Following the lead from the last symposium, I’ve gathered some links that cover part of the conversation around Proteus:

• “Opinion: It’s totally OK to not like ‘anti-games’”, “Is Proteus a game — and if not, who cares?”, and “What Are Games” (by Ed Key himself)
  
• Eric Swain’s “Proteus’ and the Simple Act of Being” and Rock Paper Shotgun’s review
• It’s placement within the notgame design challenge.
• (Self-promotion) My own recording of a playthrough of Proteus and the interview I did with Ed Key before the Steam version came out late last year.

Our spring break is over, so we’re going to resume our regular schedule of VGHVI Thursday events; and, happily, our first event after the break is a Minecraft session.

You know the drill by now: Thursday, April 25th at 9:30 EDT / 6:30 PDT, server is minecraft.bactrian.org, voice chat over mumble at mumble.vghvi.org port 6662, let me know if you need the mumble password.

We come back this Thursday night with playing through the next chapter in our on-going Bhaloidam campaign of “Greek Gods in Space!” We will be picking up right after our motley crew made their way into the unexpected cave on the unknown planet and met up with the mysterious figure within its depths.

Will their luck be just as bad again? Will Grrgg stop lifting things to get everyone’s attention? Will Victor ever stop drinking Space Vodka? Will the Calypso, the ship from the deep past orbiting the planet, ever be investigated? Show up, play, and find out!

We’ll be meeting at 9:30 PM EST (6:30 PM PST) on both the Mumble server and in a Google+ Hangout.  As always, leave a comment for details on how to be a part of a future episode.

This week, we’re going to experiment with something a little different, and try playing a physical card game: Android: Netrunner. It’s an asymmetric two-player deckbuilding card game that’s based on a 1990′s game called Netrunner – that game was designed by Richard Garfield, who also designed Magic: The Gathering, but Android: Netrunner has the key difference that the cards you purchase aren’t random, every copy of the core set comes with the same cards and every copy of a given expansion comes with the same cards. Thematically, it has a strong Neuromancer vibe; people who are interested in narrative aspects of games may also find its shared world nature (part of the largerAndroid universe) potentially interesting.

I have no idea how this will work as a gaming session, but both Roger and I will be there with decks available, and I’ll be happy to teach. It’s unfortunately only a two-player game, but we should have time for multiple games if more than two people are interested in playing. Or if people just want to stop by to chat and see what the game is like, that’s great as well.

I think probably the best way to handle this is through a Google+ hangout; leave a note in the comments below if you want to be included. And if you’re interested in playing, get a copy of the game (core set only is fine) and figure out how to angle your camera so that it can take a picture of your playing field. Or maybe it will work best if we snap pictures periodically with our phones; we’ll experiment.

We’ll meet on Thursday, March 14th at 9:30 pm EDT / 6:30 pm PDT; see you then!

We’ll be meeting a little later than normal: we’ll start the discussion at 11pm EST / 8pm PST. We’ll meet on Thursday, March 7th; discussion will be over Mumble, leave a note in the comments if you need the Mumble contact info.

I’d like to experiment with providing some links in advance that could inform the discussion; this is probably too many, but, well, I keep on not getting around to writing a Critical Compilation for the game, so I have to put these links somewhere! (What do people think? Is this volume of links too much, or is it actually useful/interesting?)

• Kris Ligman wrote several articles about Catherine in Pop Matters’s Moving Pixels blog: “Constructing Community in ‘Catherine’”, “‘Catherine’: A Screwfly Box Puzzle Solution”, and her review of the game saying that “‘Catherine’ Is Fun to Play and That’s About It”.
• The Experience Points duo wrote quite a bit about the game as well: Scott Juster wrote in Moving Pixels on “Hitting Close to Home: Relating to Catherine’s “Family Values” and in Experience Points on “Being Annoyed by Catherine“, Jorge Albor wrote in Moving Pixels about “Sheep Men: Choice and Individuality in ‘Catherine’”, and the two of them did an Experience Points podcast on the game.
• Not to be outdone by his Moving Pixels colleagues, G. Christopher Williams wrote “The Taming of the Dude: ‘Catherine’ and the Sex Comedy” and “On the Clock: Narrative and Gameplay Tension in ‘Catherine’”, both from 2011, and returned to the game this year to ask “Is Catherine the Last of the Manic Pixie Dream Girls?”
• Kris Ligman, G. Christopher Williams, and Skyler Moss discussed the game in a Moving Pixels podcast: “Misogyny, Misandry, and ‘Catherine’”.
• I wrote two posts in my blog Malvasia Bianca on Catherine, one on “rearranging mental blocks” and one more general article
• Leigh Alexander said in Kotaku that “Catherine Poses Questions About Mature Relationships Most Games are Afraid to Ask”, and wrote in The Escapist about “Catherine’s Complex View of Commitment”.
• Lana Polansky’s review of the game for Kill Screen was one of the more thoughtful reviews out there.
• Gunthera1 wrote in The Border House asking “Catherine: Is this mature rated game about more than just sex?”
• Matthew Burns wrote in his blog Magical Wasteland about “His Vexing Inability To Put Down Roots”.
• Michael Abbott wrote in his Brainy Gamer blog about “The Catherine masquerade”.
• Patricia Hernandez wrote in Nightmare mode about “Playing Catherine as a cheater”.