I originally thought I wanted to talk about immersion in relation to The Unfinished Swan, but I’ve had several conversations over the last few months about how overtly prevalent parent/child thematics have recently become in games that pretend to profundity. On one level, this is faintly ridiculous, since as a literary scholar I’m equipped to tell you exactly how every text elaborates a thematic of parent/child negotiation. The overtness, though, of such themes in The Walking Dead, The Last of Us, Papo & Yo, and The Unfinished Swan is perhaps worth talking about. 

Plus, given that in my Play the Past series I’ve been feeling my way towards connecting immersion to things psychological, like parent/child thematics, you can trust me to try to bring it back around.

Here’s some stuff to read about that: Q and A with Ian Dallas, the game’s designer; article by an Alex C that’s worth jumping off from; short, high-quality run-down on Lacan’s version of the Oedipus complex, which may improve my odds of making myself understood.

We’ll meet on Thursday, August 1st at 9:30pm EDT / 6:30pm PDT. Voice chat over Mumble, the server is mumble.vghvi.org port 6662, let me know if you need the password.