Hybrid games may not yet be a household name like VR and AR, but they seem to be getting similar attention at least from developers and researchers. The hype around VR and AR is undeniable. Pictures of people with funny contraptions on their heads and expressions of rapture on their faces pop up on news feeds almost as often as articles expressing bewilderment about Pokémon Go. Both share with hybrid games the general lack knowledge and the accompanying large expectations that usually come with new technology, despite the fact that research on these topics goes back decades. Slowly, it is turning from apocalyptic promises of revolution (90’s virtual reality research is particularly adept at this) to practical approaches. ...

Note: This is not an explanation of what Halat hisar was. If you need to understand the context, you can read an explanation written by the organizers. Right as I am leaving home I read that there would be a “patriotic” day for children and families held in a park near where I live. I feel an unease that someone would do that in my town, right next to where I live. Indoctrinating children to fear foreign things seems terrible to me. More often than not, patriotism, flags and nationalism are symbols of xenophobia, racism and even violence. The nationalism I know and recognise is something that is used to quiet and control, an excuse to hate and fear. ...

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 next Deus Ex is a few months away, and there are already hints at what the next Mass Effect will be about. I think now is a good time to reflect on how the previous games in the series ended. Deus Ex: Human Revolution starts with a jolt, throwing the player as the protagonist in a change that evokes interesting questions of embodiment. It charges through a convoluted science-fiction conspiracy of cybernetics-based social change before running face-first into an ending. In the end, you are presented with a choice of four options that determines the future of the human race. ...

We recently finished a campaign of Night’s Black Agents, after playing it for 1.5-years and 29-sessions, making it one of the longest campaigns I’ve played. Night’s Black Agents is a role-playing game where – to put it like the designer does – Jason Bourne meets Dracula. Drawing from the paranoid world of spy fiction and the classic vampire tale, it reveals the terrible truth about the supernatural to a group of international spies and criminals, leaving them with just one choice: take out the vampire conspiracy before they take you out. Zalozhniy Quartet is a four-adventure campaign for Night’s Black Agents, which we dove into right after the introductory adventure in the main book. ...

I presented some preliminary observations on playful politics at the Sharing the Play -seminar. Here’s what I talked about. In 1938, Boston Curtis won a post of Republican committeeman for Milton. He had no election campaign, but neither did he have any opponents. The voters did not seem to be dissuaded by the fact that Boston was in fact a long-eared brown mule. Putting Boston up as a candidate was the idea of Milton’s mayor Simmons, who saw the prank as a playful critique of the primary system – he proved that people really did not know who they were voting for. But Boston is not alone in his victory over the humankind. ...