Serious Play
By Serious Play
Part of 'Serious Play: Exploring Role-Playing Games as Practice-Led Research', a project by Oliver Thurley, Asa Roast, Liz Stainforth, and Dominic O’Key. Supported by the LAHRI Sadler series, University of Leeds, 2021-22.
Serious PlayAug 21, 2022
Episode 5: C. Thi Nguyen
In this episode, we speak to C. Thi Nguyen, philosophy professor at University of Utah and author of Games: Agency As Art (OUP, 2020). We discuss point systems; agency in play; rules and constraints; and the problems of gamification.
Games mentioned in this episode:
- The Mind - https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/244992/mind
- Sign: A Game about Being Understood - https://thornygames.com/pages/sign
- Apocalypse World - http://apocalypse-world.com/
- Monster of the Week - https://evilhat.com/product/monster-of-the-week/
- Night Witches - https://bullypulpitgames.com/games/night-witches/
- The Quiet Year - https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/the-quiet-year
- Microscope - https://www.lamemage.com/microscope/
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Produced by Dominic O’Key, Asa Roast, Liz Stainforth, and Oliver Thurley.
Music by Dominic O’Key.
Episode 4: Gabriele de Seta
In this episode, we speak to sociologist Gabriele de Seta about his ethnography of Magic: The Gathering players in Taiwan, and a Nordic LARP as part of an ERC-funded research project on Machine Vision.
Games mentioned in this episode
- Dungeons & Dragons (Wizards of the Coast)
- Magic: The Gathering (Wizards of the Coast)
- The Quiet Year (Buried Without Ceremony)
- Dialect: A Game About Language and How It Dies (Thorny Games)
- Inhuman Conditions (Tommy Maranges; Cory O'Brien; Mackenzie Schubert)
- Delve: A Solo Map Drawing Game (Anna Blackwell)
- Brave Sparrow (Buried Without Ceremony)
- Thousand Year Old Vampire (Tim Hutchings)
- Pax Pamir (Cole Wehrle)
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Produced by Dominic O’Key, Asa Roast, Liz Stainforth, and Oliver Thurley.
Music by Dominic O’Key.
Episode 3: Natalia Stroika
In this episode, we speak to Natalia Stroika, existential game maker/destroyer and founder of Ludic Liberation.
- http://www.ludicliberation.com/
- The Lab Report - https://ludicliberation.substack.com/
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Games mentioned in this episode
- Nomic (Peter Suber, 1982) - http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/nomic.htm
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Produced by Dominic O’Key, Asa Roast, Liz Stainforth, and Oliver Thurley.
Music by Dominic O’Key.
Episode 2: Jo Lindsay Walton
In this episode, we talk to Jo Lindsay Walton (@jowalton) about the Applied Hope games jam and Utopia on the Tabletop project.
- Applied Hope: The Solarpunk & Utopias Jam - https://itch.io/jam/applied-hope
- Sad Press Games - https://sadpress.itch.io/
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Games mentioned in this episode:
- "Powered by the Apocalypse" games - http://apocalypse-world.com/
- Roots & Flowers - https://thegiftofdice.itch.io/roots-and-flowers
- Lasers & Feelings - https://johnharper.itch.io/lasers-feelings
- The Transition Year - https://affinity-games.itch.io/the-transition-year
- Monster of the Week - https://www.evilhat.com/home/monster-of-the-week/
- How to Ooze Charm in the Future - https://paulczege.itch.io/how-to-ooze-charm-in-the-future
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Produced by Dominic O’Key, Asa Roast, Liz Stainforth, and Oliver Thurley.
Music by Dominic O’Key.
Episode 1: Introduction
In this first episode, we lay out the project at hand: how might tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) inform the practice of doing academic research.
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Games mentioned in this episode:
- Dungeons & Dragons - https://dnd.wizards.com/
- MOTHERSHIP - https://www.mothershiprpg.com/
- The Quiet Year - https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/the-quiet-year
- The Veil - https://samjokopublishing.com/products/the-veil-cyberpunk-ttrpg
***
Produced by Oliver Thurley, Asa Roast, Liz Stainforth, and Dominic O’Key.
Music by Dominic O’Key.