Socially, twists of fate give me clear ways of engaging with other players. The structure and goals of the game make it clear what emotions are warranted.
So, I always find table talk over die rolls so much easier than conventional small talk.
I suppose this is plausible, but it doesn't feel right to me.
I can find structural comfort in a game like Magical Athlete or Camel Up because the rules clearly structure my play even if certain events are random.
Thanks, Paul!
This interview is mostly about the series vision, but I also have three design diaries for Unsettling Catan that dig into that specific project.
I love talking #boardgames with smart folks!
So, I interviewed the editors of the Tabletop Games book series about how game studies can be written by and for the gaming community.
@pbooth81.bsky.social @aarontram.bsky.social @uofmpress.bsky.social @analoggamestudies.bsky.social
Excellent reporting and commentary by NPI here! I learned a ton.
I've written about capitalism in #boardgames before, but this gave me a deeper understanding of how capitalist forces shape the larger industry.
And that's never a wholly separate issue from thinking about games as culture.
Just like Cole questions whether game designers can truly own their designs, variation reminds me to question my interpretations as a writer.
Rather than asserting ownership over a single 'correct' interpretation, I am actually authoring just one more variation.
This is why I wrote a chapter on "Variants" instead of a conclusion in Unsettling Catan.
Unlike sequels, expansions literally rewrite existing texts. They don't merely "expand" anything.
This reveals how games were always inherently variable and could never have a single fixed meaning.
Worth reading the long version!
I love how Cole moves from expansions to iteration to collective authorship.
The implication is that a game that can evolve can't truly be owned.
#boardgames
🧵
For those who missed it, I also reference the psychological concept of *flow* I discussed in last month's post on Return to Dark Tower:
lookingglance.com/2026/02/27/f...
"In the zone, time stops not because it flows so smoothly; it stops because I’m killing it."
I posted some thoughts on Beat Your Score, Roll & Writes, and that feeling of being "in the zone."
Featuring It's a Wonderful World, Next Station: London, Railroad Ink, Slay the Spire
#boardgames #games
Interesting idea, but I wonder whether Rules divided by (Rules + General) would be less noisy.
Total posts has a lot of variables that skew the results, like huge numbers of Session reports.
I'm just happy I cracked 40.
How can I describe that indescribable feeling when #boardgames just *flow?*
Find out in this post on psychology, play, and Return to Dark Tower.
@restorationgames.bsky.social @tburrellsaward.bsky.social @cephalofair.bsky.social @npcdesign.bsky.social @robdaviau.bsky.social @425suzanne.bsky.social
Way too real! 😬
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.
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.