From Pat Holleman, who will be leading our discussion:

XCOM has a reputation for a particular kind of frustration. Between the permanent death of key characters (at essentially any time) and the constant barrage of irreversible choices that have sweeping consequences and no right answers, this game can overwhelm even experienced gamers. We’ll be starting our discussion with some thoughts on how the stakes of XCOM are extraordinarily high by videogame standards, and how this abets or impedes the player’s experience of the rest of the game (apart from the consequences). We’ll also look at how the critical praise and public frustration this game has garnered can coexist–or, indeed, how those two things depend on one another.

We’ll meet on Thursday, September 5th 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.