July invites me to taste its riches and behold its glory, but I can’t resist risking the Orphic glance back at June with all its ups and downs. My game design class graduated and we celebrated accordingly (local multiplayer party). My oldest kid turned 8 and we celebrated accordingly (local multiplayer party). Late in the month, I started at a summer gig facilitating games activities for young people in Malmö at Spelens Hus. It involves a lot of plugging in of controllers, and troubleshooting, and locking and unlocking doors, and being patient and friendly but not always playful, I’m afraid. Somewhere in between all this, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite launched. My calendar says there were 30 days of no holds barred June but they must have forgotten the nights or something because it feels like more right now.
Welcome to March 2019, let’s talk about February 2019!
I didn’t go to Knudepunkt, but I got to play a bunch of interesting things anyway. For example, February saw the resurrection of the fabled Play Club! I also went for a proper drift for the first time since December 2017. A bit unexpectedly, two of the major entries here are chiefly concerned with performance art / participatory theater. Bear with me as I try to figure out what actually counts as “play”. I’m sure it’ll only take a lifetime.
I’ve apparently suffered some sort of serious brain injury and decided to stumble my way back to this blog. Seriously. It’s been four long years. Where were you? Was I you? Were you me? Anyway, welcome back to the play journal. This is where I write some thoughts on the playful stuff I’ve been up to recently. It tends to be too exhaustive so feel free to skim and skip and skidaddle.
As before, I write this mostly for myself while still trying to make sure it’s not altogether dull. My old play journal entries have been useful in more cases than I’d anticipated. Most of the time it’s because someone asks about some larp from a few years ago, but I’ve also rediscovered games I’d forgotten about. Writing about playful experiences is a way for me of putting the cart before the horse. The thing about doing that is that it’s incredibly useful if you’re looking to change directions. Or, to admit something of an indebtedness to Pascal, it’s at least a way for me to first kneel and pray as to make myself or someone else believe again. Here goes.
I’m retiring the Play Journal. At least in the form I’ve been keeping it up until now. The amount of stuff I have to write to keep up with my play experiences is overwhelming and doesn’t serve to make me a better writer. I keep repeating myself when writing about games I’ve played before or have only made some progress in. and that’s not very interesting. The Play Journal is, nonetheless, useful in documenting play, making writing a habit, and spreading the word about stuff I think others should try.
Going forward, entries in the Play Journal is going to take one of two forms: a short list of things I’ve played recently or a post on a specific subject related to games I’ve played recently. The former, I plan to make weekly. The latter may be conceptually separated from the journal later as it may or may not be useful to think of it as journaling play. Examples I’m considering are posts on playing with drunk people (written after my experiences at Roskilde a couple of weeks ago) and the strange desires at work in reality-sceptic fiction and play (inspired by reality gaming and a tabletop role-play session in the Matrix setting).
I’m also opening up discussions on this blog again after having had them closed down for a while. I still imagine that what little discussion does follow will be taking place elsewhere, but this way, at least, you get a chance to ask me to say more about games even if you don’t know me anywhere else online. Neat, isn’t it?
So, in keeping with my new approach to documenting my play experiences, here’s a list of stuff I’ve played recently (you can probably tell that it’s been a while since my last Play Journal entry):
Roskilde Johann Sebastian Joust – PS Move game Get on Top – Trampoline-controlled/PS Move game Zumbie – Wii game Donkey Kong – arcade game Pac-Man – arcade game Giant Starfish Kraken Rodeo – street game Cards Against Humanity – card game
Malmö Play Club Deluxe sessions PEZ-throwing contest – physical game Korven – physical game Pirate’s Treasure – physical game (Capture the Flag variant) Ninja – physical game Turtle Wushu – physical game Bureau and Agent, reality game Danish Clapping – physical game Rock, Paper, Scissors tag – physical game Go-Tag – physical game Vampire – physical game
Container Call of Cthulhu – Tabletop RPG (actually, The Fall Without End) Letters from Whitechapel – Boardgame (played Jack and won) Shadow Hunters – Board Game (good, but played against the sorest winner ever) Johann Sebastian Joust – PS Move game Quick Draw – PS Move game The Matrix – Tabletop RPG (Using Fate rules)
Mobile Zombies!!! – digitalized boardgame Impossible Road – racing game(ish) (New personal best: 151) Dots – puzzle game
Other Apocalypse World – Tabletop RPG Vesper.5 – exploration game Surgeon Simulator – a surgeon simulator Left 4 Dead 2 – Co-op zombie killing Monaco – Co-op heist game Super Pole Riders – local multiplayer sportsfriends game Fallout: New Vegas – I blame the Steam sale The Witcher – I blame the Steam sale even more I Have Read and Agree to the Terms and Conditions – humoristic bureaucracy game Rotational – Super Hexagon homage in 3D
A team in Rock, Paper, Scissors tag deciding what sign to throw.
It feels like I’m still recovering from my one (!) day at w00t, but I better get this journal entry out of the way before I forget all of the wonderful play I got the chance to be a part of. My last entry focused on the children’s games I played at w00t and in this one I turn to ALL OF THE OTHER STUFF. Sorry, but this is going to be a teal deer, folks. And that’s after I’ve, yet again, split this w00t recap up into more posts. Here are the games I played during the day. The next post will go through my nighttime play experiences.
The Soil is Poisoned! – Remember this game from when you were a kid? You’re not allowed to touch the ground because it’s super toxic or lava or just plain dangerous for whatever reason (as if you need one). When we played this as kids, we did it indoors and used furniture to move around. It was great, but this time it was even better. We (and I will say that there were quite a few of us) played it outdoors and used waste from some sort of construction site to step or climb on: pieces of metal, planks (complete with rusty nails and all), pallets etc.
There are so many wonderful parts of this sort of free, but goal-oriented, play activities that I can’t nerd out all over every single one of them here, so I’ll just mention two.
First: the social aspect. The group quickly starts working together as if getting across (and building) the obstacle course is the most important thing in the world. We don’t want to stop playing for less than a very good reason, so we come up with all sorts of new rules to keep everyone in the game. This also gives the players the opportunity to opt out of the game rather than being kicked out for breaking a rule. Bonus lives were passed around in a liberal fashion and though we only carried three or four with us we must have used them eight to ten times.
Second — and I’ve already touched on this — the slow pace of the activity provides the opportunity for players to form roles and take on special tasks as well as switch roles and responsibilities during the course of the game. Some people were more interested in being scouts; others were supporters, hauling planks with them so as to pass them forward when we ran out of materials; at times, some people just kept our spirits up by being generally cheerful.
One of my fellow adventurers, totally not letting go of his beer even though he’s climbing a steep hill.
Turtle Wushu – This is a physical game similar to Johann Sebastian Joust and Ninja. Everyone balances a small plastic turtle on the back of one of their hands while trying to knock the other people’s turtles off of their hands. Turtle Wushu creates that same peculiar movement between pacing around while looking for a good time to strike and attacking people head-on. It also provides opportunity for my favorite part of JS Joust: the sneak attack. Oh, Joust sneak attack, I love you. Only played one game, but I hope my summer vacation (which is actually quite long) will give me the opportunity to play this sort of stuff with all kinds of people.
Pudding Lane – Weird dice distribution. 2d6 on a 1-9 board.
Scanners – As far as play goes, I guess Scanners at least made me question the role of agency in play. Participants are invited to put on an EEG brainwave scanner and watch some video in a nice little tent (here’s a good description of the scanner and some other stuff that the people at Albino Mosquito have done using it). This happens in two parts with a couple of hours separating the two. The first part measures your concentration (see the description linked above for what this actually means) and scores you based on your performance. The second video, or rather collection of videos, has you influencing the action on screen — mainly through blinking. I did try hard to concentrate and up my brain activity (or whatevs) by for instance biting my tongue and focusing on the pain, so in some sense I was getting into it. The overall sense I have, however, is that it was a bit too hard to tell what sort of input I had and whether or not this actually made any (and in that case, what sort of) difference in the videos displayed.
Final note: I guess obscuring the direct connection between user input and system output was, at least to some extent, deliberate. But then again maybe not. Or was it? AAAARHHGH.
Next!
BeatBlocks – A part of the RoboMusic project at the Center for PlayWare, BeatBlocks lets you instantly transform into a DJ of some competence. Check out this video to get a cool demo.
I often play around on the myPhone with apps like Figure or iKaossilator to see what I come up with. I usually do not save any of the music I create because I want to make it only for me at that specific moment. BeatBlocks gave me a similar feeling of just messing around with a couple of loops to see what happens. My co-DJ asked me if I was an actual DJ, but I guess it was just me getting into it that much. My only wish (as far as the BeatBlocks go, mind you) is that I would have learned the proper technique for cutting off the infrared signal connecting the blocks quicker. See, if you just pull them straight away from each other, they still maintain a connection for just a bit too long. If you, however, just slide them apart, side to side, you can control the sound on beat. I’ll make sure to do that next time.
Instagib 