Author Archives: Steve Gillham

A Skype outage sabotaged our attempt to have this discussion last week, so let’s take another swing at it on Thursday. Here are the notes for the original discussion: https://vghvi.org/2016/10/02/symposium-october-6th-super-mario-maker-and-the-beginners-guide/

In our last symposium, our examination of play through virtual reality interrogated a viewpoint that is so player-centered that we had to come up with a new aphorism (metaphoric presence) to attempt to describe the player’s role as a disruptive … Continue reading →

In “Effective, but Defective,” music critic Robert Christgau wrote about a perceived critical leniency that was afforded to Tom Waits, whose fractured folk-singing has carved out a memorable — and distinctly anti-pop — niche. Christgau confesses that “yes, [Waits’s] gifts are … Continue reading →

When King of Dragon Pass was originally released for the PC in 1999, its event-driven storytelling engine was accomplishing a goal that its players had not yet realized they wanted to achieve: a fluid, procedural narrative that emphasized the dynamics of tribal … Continue reading →