J. Rey Lee

One odd feature of putting the ending behind two hyperlinks is I can see how many folks wanted to avoid 7th Continent spoilers.

Over half the folks who read the post initially clicked the first spoiler link at the end, but 41% bailed after that spoiler alert. More than I expected, tbh.

#boardgames

On the flip side, I've sometimes gotten past a confusing teach by just assuming a game worked like other games in that genre. It's a real advantage of experience.

I do think these problems can be overcome if everyone is patient and invested though.

Yeah, I can see what you mean.

But I do think there's a certain kind of teaching problem that doesn't affect veterans and greenhorns equally.

Lots of gamers teach by analogy to pre-existing games or concepts instead of actually explaining what's going on.

We need to recognize how our own fluency blinds us to possible points of confusion.

Like I've seen gamers try to teach relatively simple deck-building or drafting games by trying to explain the whole history of the mechanism.

I'm not sure there's much disagreement here.

A good teacher and an enthusiastic learner can usually make things work, but recognizing what makes hobby games unintuitive should change how we teach them.

I can also say that some folks (reader response theory) say something similar about literature: that readers create the meaning of a text in each instance of reading.

And there's a growing movement of doing auto-ethnography in game studies to account for how players shape games.

That's a really interesting question that I can't definitively answer.

For me, I try to balance textual analysis of art and mechanisms with personal accounts of play experiences.

Rather than define the text as one thing, I try to explore all those dimensions and how they relate to each other.

I think this is fair, but there are also weird institutional reasons why game studies doesn't usually get done in literature programs.

It's less that people who want to write on games decide to go more sciency. It's more that people in more sciency fields are more incentivized to write on games.

I do believe that once more of us show that it can be done, we'll see more humanities style game analyses in the future.

That being said, one of the reasons it's easier to study games in the social sciences is that you don't have to adapt your methods as much as a lit person does.

This is absolutely true, but it's not that lit folk read games as literature. It's more that having strong training in textual analysis creates a good mindset for analyzing other forms of media.

@aarontram.bsky.social (Repairing Play, The Privilege of Play) also had a background in complit and might have more recs since he knows everybody.

@criticalplay.bsky.social (Playing Oppression) has a background in film studies I believe.

Unsettling Catan Read Online Buy Paperback* Buy Audiobook Description Coverage *30% off with code UMWEB30 Audiobook Preview Description Most revolutions don’t start with nineteen cardboard hexagons, but Klaus Teube…

You're right that game studies is biased towards the social sciences, but we're out there.

I have a background in Comparative Literature and wrote Unsettling Catan in a humanities way.

I really enjoyed that Emberheart game!

Anne Helen Petersen with an unsurprisingly perceptive take on using AI to automate learning.

As a teacher, writer, and boardgamer, I believe the product *is* the process.

Taking away the process is just another form of AI theft.

Kabuto Sumo

I don't usually like kingmaking but at least it can be part of a game's vision (as @colewehrle.bsky.social has argued).

Some rules errors can completely derail the whole experience.

I don't know about worse, but we missed a key rule in our first game of ⚡🚂. My engine never took off and I barely did anything all game.

I don't mind the loss, but now I don't know whether I like the game or even how it's supposed to feel. I don't even get a good story out of it.

Haven't watched Columbo in decades but I'm glad it still holds up! I guess human-centered storytelling is just timeless.

Often people are just trying to be edgy or provocative and haven't put in enough thought to be able to answer any of those questions.

Rather than a rebuttal, it might work to ask a question that makes them explain a flawed position.

Like "what definition of games do you use that excludes party games?" and "what's your rationale for insisting on this definition over common usage?"

Let them do the work.

Even if you ignore the whole silence is a statement part, I remember them making political/religious statements before.

There's definitely a "opposing perspectives are political, mine are common sense" vibe at times.

It really is too bad. They helped me get into the hobby.

Brown offers similar insights into the question of politics in games. ‘Players have all kinds of preferences when it comes to games: dice or no dice, three-hour epics or speedy thirty-minute sessions, solitaire or plays-up-to-eight. And people generally don’t say, “Keep dice out of games” or “Stick to making party games,” do they? Certain players seem to confuse their natural right to express preference with a more authoritarian might to police certain content. Because it’s not “politics” but a certain kind of politics that elicits this reaction from a small group. I think the few but loud people who say “Keep politics out of games” are demanding that we all shrink ourselves down to their very narrow, sad view of the world and of power, and doing that would make games way less fun and interesting for the rest of us.’

I shared my thoughts about "Keep (your) politics out of (my) boardgames" with @danthurot.bsky.social for @wyrdscience.bsky.social

Unsettling Catan Read Online Buy Paperback* Buy Audiobook Description Coverage *30% off with code UMWEB30 Audiobook Preview Description Most revolutions don’t start with nineteen cardboard hexagons, but Klaus Teube…

For sure! Ruel was very nice and interesting to talk to.

OrcaCon should have video eventually and when it's up I'll link it here with all the other stuff for the book:

I, Keelan (ft. The 7th Continent) I like to think I’m not a quitter, but it turns out that everyone has their limit.   I once rage-quit a corn maze by forcing my way through a temptingly thin segment of the wall (not my f…

A return journey to a mysterious continent, seven years in the making . . .

Exploration, botany, history, and maybe an ancient curse . . .

Do you have what it takes to make it to the end . . . and beyond? 🤔

(tl;dr here's a post on The 7th Continent)

#boardgames

Thanks, Liz ❤️ I know it's easy to second guess whether you should do more, but we appreciate all you already do! Being kind and thoughtful and joyful is resistance too.

YouTube video by Beyond Solitaire Thoughts from a Minnesota Gamer

I don't like being this vulnerable in public but I also felt like I had to say something. youtu.be/1qlEn8ob2ns

This poem by an NBA chaplain eloquently conveys something I've been trying to say about why #boardgames can't always promote peaceful vibes:

Peace*keeping* is all about protecting a status quo; it keeps the peace by silencing dissent.

Peace*making* disturbs that peace to build a more loving world.

I also like resistbot a lot. Can send emails to multiple reps at the same time through text message.

Happy MLK Day!

​“When machines and computers, profit motives, and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” -Martin Luther King Jr., Riverside Speech 1967

inthesetimes.com/article/mart...