Events

Counterplay was an odd experience for somebody like me, who mostly goes to academic conferences. Some of the program was very much like you would experience in an academic conference, with proper citations and all. But most of it wasn’t. The range of presentations and workshops was huge, with everything from folk games to using playful tools in business. The general mood of the conference was easily grasped: play is empowering, can tear down walls, and inspire. There were many examples of this, from clowning to comfort refugees to building camaderie in a library through an IRC bot. ...

The second day of Adult Play seminar discussed sexual play, parents and mature players and understanding some basic features of games through psychophysiology and Goffmanian analysis. The day kicked off with a keynote from Ashley Brown, where she discussed the connections between play, playfulness and sex, arguing for example that good sex is playful. Keynote by Ashley Brown: play and sex are often interchangeable. Seems to check out for Huizinga #adultplay2015 ...

The first day of Adult Play seminar was an interesting combination of all kinds of different approaches to play and playfulness, and how they relate to toys, games and other playful things. The sessions from the first day touched upon DayZ, ARGs, political larp, play in the workplace, design games, talking chairs, adult toys, miniatures – and of course, the Goatse of Grief Play. The first session started with a dose of DayZ. Two different papers were presented about the zombie apocalypse game, first one by Lawrence May and focusing on how players document the game through pictures, evoking history and intertextuality while doing so, drawing upon, for example, war photography. ...

I participated at the Critical Evaluation of Game Studies conference at Tampere this week. As the name implies, the theme was very meta, with commentary about the state of the discipline. ...

This is the second post about PanoptiCorp. The first was about personal experiences, so it actually makes more sense to read this first to get some context for the first one. PanoptiCorp was a larp about a dystopian marketing company with all the worst parts of capitalism. Everything and everyone was on the line of not being good enough, everyone’s performance was constantly evaluated and the company ran under a spirit of constant competition. Deadlines were usually very soon and the office worked more or less around the clock. ...

Warning: this is long, rambly, and has no context. I will write a part 2 with more context, when I’ve had some time to process what I experienced. My flight left Denmark before I had time for a proper debrief, so this is also me pouring out my thoughts on my character. I noticed afterwards how much I could’ve used the debrief: the game was very present in my mind afterwards. Note on the person used in this text: I deliberately create a difference between myself and my character by referring to him in third person, as per debrief-instructions given after the game. ...