Symposium, November 7th: Slay the Spire and Magic: The Gathering

Posted on November 5, 2019 by

recycle

As we’ve made our way through various roguelikes in symposiums past, we’ve often discussed how discovery of their mechanics is one of the genre’s most satisfying rewards. Deckbuilders and collectible card games operate within a similar design space, but they offer a totally different lens to it, as players have immediate access to the game’s mechanics and are asked to not only discover their interactions, but optimize them to have a chance at victory.

Slay the Spire and Magic: The Gathering offer two different variations on this exploration of player-driven procedurality – are both of them successful? If they both succeed, do they do so in different ways?

We’ll discuss all of this and more on Discord this Thursday at 8:30pm EDT / 5:30pm PDT.

Supplemental Material:

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Gaming Session: Minecraft, October 31, 2019

Posted on October 26, 2019 by

Minecraft this Thursday! 8:30pm EDT / 5:30pm PDT.

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Symposium: Erica, October 3, 2019

Posted on September 30, 2019 by
Screenshot 2019-09-30 22.56.50

Screenshot from Erica (2019)

Update: Rescheduled for October 10, 2019.

The full motion video (FMV) genre seemingly died out in the late-1990s as increases in rendering technology helped games move into a more “realistic” turn. Yet, in recent years, Until Dawn (2015) and Her Story (2015) have returned to the genre through bringing back increasing usage of a stronger film language to tell a more “visual” story in the medium of video games. Presented as a series of moments where a choice can be made before the video then takes over the action on screen, the recent Erica (2019) is a full motion video game. Yet, at the same time, it is also a much more well-shot movie-like experience than the more cheesy nature of the original genre and exemplar games like Dragon’s Lair (1983) and Night Trap (1992).

This month, let’s consider that line between movie and game. Where is the ludic threshold? Where does agency start in video games? Can an experience be a game without agency? When was Erica (2019) the most effective in telling its story: when it gave a sense of control, or when it took it away from the player?

Voice chat over Discord, 8:30pm EDT / 5:30pm PDT.

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Gaming Session: Minecraft, September 26, 2019

Posted on September 21, 2019 by

Minecraft this week! Thursday at 8:30pm EDT / 5:30pm PDT, voice chat over discord.

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Symposium: Persona 5, September 5, 2019

Posted on September 1, 2019 by

We’re talking about Persona 5 this month!  I’m pretty sure we’ll want to talk about Ann’s depiction in the game: ways in which we find that depiction flawed, ways in which we find that depiction in contradiction with itself.  And I’d also like to talk about how the mechanics of the series has evolved from Persona 3 /4 to Persona 5, about what aspects of that evolution we saw in Tokyo Mirage Sessions, and what changes in Tokyo Mirage Sessions weren’t retained in Persona 5.

Voice chat over Discord, 8:30pm EDT / 5:30pm PDT.

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Gaming Session: Minecraft, August 22, 2019

Posted on August 19, 2019 by

We’re doing Minecraft a week early this month: Thursday, August 22, 8:30pm EDT / 5:30pm PDT.

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Symposium: Sunless Sea, August 1, 2019

Posted on July 27, 2019 by

This month’s Symposium will be on the game Sunless Sea, with Pat leading the discussion.  Quoting Pat:

Sunless Sea attempts to tell the story of a supernatural place through roguelike mechanics including frequent deaths and procedural placement of locations (and stories).  The question I’d like to address is, in what ways do these roguelike/roguelite mechanics help the narrative project of the game, and in what ways do they hinder it?

We’re meeting at 8:30pm EDT / 5:30pm PDT, voice chat over Discord.

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Gaming Session: Minecraft, July 25, 2019

Posted on July 20, 2019 by

Minecraft this Thursday! 8:30pm EDT / 5:30pm PDT, voice chat over Discord.

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Symposium and Playversation: Torment: Tides of Numenera, 11 July 2019

Posted on July 8, 2019 by

torment

With any luck, we’ll get into the combat tutorial this time around!

Come join me as I play through the beginning of Torment: Tides of Numenera on https://www.twitch.tv/8mph1 and let’s discuss the game itself and my performance of it on Discord.

When last we left the game, if I recall correctly, we were greatly intrigued, though largely unconvinced by the game’s various ways of framing choices as “mattering.” One area of focus on which we hoped to keep an eye lay in the construction of binary gender as a game-choice, and the various modalities of “mattering” that might invoke and inform.

Questions I’m hoping to continue considering:

  • This is a game designed above all to make the player feel their choices matter. How is that reflected in the moment of performance?
  • How does that “mattering” affect how a player does perform?
  • How do various familiar RPG mechanics, like dialogue-trees and combat, reflect or not reflect “mattering,” and how do they thus relate to the immersion or perhaps the “disimmersion” of the game?
    • In particular, how does the operation of binary gender, at any level, play in or not play into “mattering”?
  • How do we feel about a more-or-less traditional RPG after our travels through rogue-likes and rogue-lites and Yakuza? How is this like Flip-Flop Solitaire, or not?

We’ll meet this Thursday at 8:30pm EST / 5:30pm PST.

Posted in Playversation, Symposium

Gaming Session: Minecraft, June 27, 2019

Posted on June 22, 2019 by

Minecraft this Thursday; 8:30pm EDT / 5:30pm PDT.

Posted in Events | 2 Comments