Peter McDonald

Buster Keaton's What No Beer? Also seems like a potential reference. (around the 50 min mark)
dai.ly/x9a3xa0

Gallery goer: "How true, art is undefined"

Hide and Seek Piece Hide until everybody goes home. Hide until everybody forgets about you. Hide until everybody dies.

My favorite secret game (Yoko Ono):

Ono's game ultimately leads me to the history of anthropology, questions about how play communities are founded, and the demand to play certain games.

Within these short instructions (and a few other writings) Ono opens up a big can of worms about the nature of play!

The Edge of Surrealism: A Roger Caillois Reader

It also led me to an essay by Roger Caillois that I think more game scholars should read, called "The Myth of Secret Treasures in Childhood"in www.dukeupress.edu/the-edge-of-...

That essay helps put Caillois back into conversation with his friend George Bataille and useless expenditure.

In my chapter on Ono, I try to come to a better understanding of these three elements.

That process led me to beautiful phenomenological writing about hide-and-seek (ie. Barritt et al "The World Through Children's Eyes"); and to the view that these ontological risks are always part of the game.

In game studies, we often discuss Ono's all white chess set because it breaks down what a game can be.

HIDE-AND-SEEK PIECE does that in a different way. It seems horrid to play; it seems impossible to follow the rules literally; and it seems to violently recruit other people into its drama.

The Impossible Reversal Tracing the cultural history of play—from Fluxus to SimCityGames and gamified activities have become ubiquitous in many adults’ lives, and play is widely...

Another Fluxus game that I talk about in The Impossible Reversal (www.upress.umn.edu/978151791622...) is Yoko Ono's HIDE-AND-SEEK PIECE, which reads:

Hide until everybody goes home.
Hide until everybody forgets about you.
Hide until everybody dies.

The editorial board of Press Start invites book reviews for its upcoming regular issues!
- Word count: 1200-1500
- Deadline: 31 January 2026
More information in the thread, and please see the attached image for the list of available books for review:

Text reading "16. Construct a utopia given (x) to meet requirement (z)."

Looking across Patterson's work, he had a clear interest in systems and simulations, and A Game is a procedure for constructing the social out of capacities different than those assumed by Rawls.

In my archival digging I found some notes from the same era where Patterson summarizes this procedure:

I argue that Patterson is in critical dialogue with John Rawls's theory of justice. As the only Black member of Fluxus, Patterson writes about his frustration with the lack of political engagement from his friends. A Game is a satire of liberal utopias, and simultaneously a earnest proposal.

Cover image of Ark: Journal of the Royal College of Art, Summer 1962. Bright orange with images of a clown on the left and five mustache shapes on the right.

I got to look at three versions of the game at MoMA and the Getty, which differ primarily in the quoted text they pull from from an issue of the artist magazine Ark (1962) on mobs and crowd psychology.

Benjamin Patterson. A Game: Three Capacities and One Inhibition. c. 1963 | MoMA Benjamin Patterson. A Game: Three Capacities and One Inhibition. c. 1963. Envelope with typewriting and stamped ink additions, containing four cards with ink and stamped ink additions, one with collag...

One of the most complex is Benjamin Patterson's A Game: Three Capacities and One Inhibition (c. 1963), which consists of four note cards and an envelope. In my reading, the "capacities" involve the player in a kind of critical experiment in imagining new ethics.

www.moma.org/collection/w...

The Impossible Reversal Tracing the cultural history of play—from Fluxus to SimCityGames and gamified activities have become ubiquitous in many adults’ lives, and play is widely...

In my upcoming book, I look at experimental games by Fluxus artists. These have been touchstones for game studies scholars like Mary Flanagan and Ian Bogost, but usually only in a cursory way. I thought it might be fun to take a look at a couple of examples.

www.upress.umn.edu/978151791622...

Best signature

I've been editing the page proofs for my forthcoming game studies book, The Impossible Reversal (coming out in Feb with @uminnpress.bsky.social). I'm starting to get pretty excited! The table of contents turned out to be pretty enticing, no?

Hey Matt, always nice to see your posts!

I've been using this: tenbluelinks.org

GamerAnthro - Twitch PML Gee Awards Finalists!

Dr. Krista-Lee Malone is live streaming with some of the finalists for the GEE! Learning Game Awards on twitch. Tune in here: www.twitch.tv/gameranthro

A true horror; a choice to know, discover, and inspire less. A victory for the reaction. An assault on our youths and future.

The Impossible Reversal Tracing the cultural history of play—from Fluxus to SimCityGames and gamified activities have become ubiquitous in many adults’ lives, and play is widely...

The cover for my upcoming book, The Impossible Reversal, is up on UP Minnesota's website! Super thrilled by this design. (you can pre-order it there as well).

www.upress.umn.edu/978151791622...

I believe they call this "finding out" arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

You can read my testimonial on the KS page, but I *loved* BFF! The Golden Years and I'm so excited to see it in this finely aged version 💖

So Codenames (and thus CGE) has blocked me, a Trans developer and designer, because I had the nerves to send them the two replies you find below. Judge for yourself if these are worth a ban.

This is their way of dealing with empathy and care in this ongoing conversation.

Oooh. Bookmarked

Very helpful comparison. I feel like the opening of Clair Obscur takes it's lessons from Chrono Trigger

The Ceremony is at Hand by Anna Anthropy 10 solitaire role-playing games

Anna makes the best TTRPGs. In addition to this, I want to recommend The Ceremony is at Hand w.itch.io/the-ceremony...

Coldbloods by Anna Anthropy This party sucks!

hi nerds! i released a new #ttrpg today. COLDBLOODS is a 3-5 player game about mercurial vampires. drink the blood of humans to gain their knowledge, be physically changed by your monstrous actions, and maybe - if you're lucky - earn the respect of your ancient family.

I think my assumption is that life in the present is predominantly gameplay (in one way or another)

Yes, totally. Leap Year is what made me start thinking about microvanias.