Video Games and Human Values Initiative

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.

Various of us are busy over the next few Thursdays, so we’ve decided to take a month off. So no sessions the next four weeks; we’ll return on April 25th with a Minecraft session.

We intended to play Android: Netrunner last month, but Valentine’s Day intervened; we’ll try again this month. Repeating what I said then:

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!

It’s Minecraft time again! Thursday, February 28th at 9:30 EST / 6:30 PST, server is minecraft.bactrian.org, voice chat over mumble at mumble.vghvi.org port 6662, let me know if you need the mumble password.