No, in fact, dead October 1, 2009
Posted by Ian in About blog.add a comment
Well, folks, I think it may be safe to say that this little blog is a done deal. I just haven’t had the urge to talk about gaming online in a good long while. One of these here days, I might get around to just taking the whole thing down for the pleasure of finality, but at least for a while I’ll leave it as is.
I’ve enjoyed it, but my head is not really in the game. It’s full of other things these days.
Have fun everybody.
House cleaning February 8, 2009
Posted by Ian in About blog, Game Design, Personal Reflection.add a comment
Okay, I have officially gotten a bee into my bonnett about giving this blog a little tlc. Just to make a point of drawing attention to some of those changes:
I’ve changed the theme to one that accommodates additional pages more attractively. That has entailed some layout changes, as well as a change in header image. I kind of miss the old header, but I like the new one, so I’m going to let it be for a while, see how I like it.
I have some non-blog content which should see some growth in the coming months. There is an about page now (‘blog of shadows’) as well as some dedicated space to start thinking about design and trying to sketch out some mechanical elements in that direction (‘sketching a dream‘).
Maybe something will come of all this.
Communities with Something in Common November 20, 2006
Posted by Ian in About blog, Actual Play, Applied, Community, Jargon, Manifesto, Methodological, Theory.3 comments
This does not entail a rejection of the communities of gamers that are already out there, that subsume individual groups. Online forums and in-person conventions all have their place in the big picture. That place, however, is not the regulation of play styles but as trading zones for them.
The forum serves as a point through which different cloisters can appreciate each other, share their successes and failures. The appreciation should always come with a sense of distance. There needs to be less investment in the hobby or industry as a whole, as an individual thing whose well-being we need to care about. That focus makes it too easy to get invested in pronouncements that we feel must hold true for all cloisters. Instead, we need an ethic of appreciation, a willingness to just listen, read, and absorb the stories from other cloisters. Think of it as travelers from all over the world meeting in an airport. They come to the place with very different experiences, very different lives, and we can learn more by just sharing and interacting than by trying to offer advice about how to ‘fix’ what we perceive as their problems.
Conventions provide precious opportunities in which we get to encounter different playstyles. Rather than assuming that the playtyle with which we come to the table is the ideal one, we ought to come to the table ready to negotiate with different playstyles. The convention game is an actual play trading zone where we can experiment with new arrangements and share our styles. It is to accept that mediocre play may happen, but that mediocre play may be the first step toward a different and powerful play experience. Sometimes, too, it is just a lesson of how badly certain play styles go together, of how certai relationships need not be pursued. In short, it’s not unlike dating.
This ethic of appreciation is, again, not about some airy romantic love of the other. It’s an acknowledgment that a person’s play style is not simply a set of actions that they perform here and now, but a set of lessons which they have acquired from a great number of actual play experiences. Those lessons reflect layers of active social learning which cannot be easily summed up, learning which has to a great extent gone on outside of a strictly verbal framework.
Cloisters of Gamers November 20, 2006
Posted by Ian in About blog, Applied, Community, Jargon, Manifesto, Methodological, Theory.2 comments
So, what does the community of these actual players look like? What we have is not a central agency that helps standardize play, but a number of productive, small centers each fostering their own mode of play. Given some broad similarities in temperament and opportunity, there will probably be a great deal of overlap in the sort of play that these groups create. I like to think of these small groups as ‘cloisters’—small locally-minded groups with connections to a broader movement curious to explore the diversity of play.
Such cloisters are not isolated, but nor are they entirely exposed. We might term this a ‘peninsular’ model, in which they are connected to the main body of gamers by common texts but not determined on all sides by the community of gamer’s activity. They focus upon their own members and their own play more than on the major currents in gaming. There is a certain sense of distance and choice from the large currents, a feeling that they could embrace them or not as they prefer.
This will likely lead to a certain peculiarity in the way each cloister uses and develops terms to describe its play. Those peculiarities are not kinks to be straightened. They are like the stretching of your favorite jeans—not a sign that the jeans are ruined, but that they now fit your body’s actual shape. The peculiarity is a virtue, the outward expression of the group’s efforts to come to terms with each other, to compromise and bolster each other.
The cloister should be proud of its cloister speech, its inside jokes, and ingroup language. It should also appreciate that other cloisters have struggled to produce their own pidgin and creoles. When they go out from their cloister or seek entrance into a new cloister, they should understand that there will be no common language with which to begin. They will have to approach the new cloister with a mixture of reverence and commitment. Reverence for what the group has achieved, reverence for the fact that it will take time to pick up on that group’s peculiarities. Commitment to furthering that group, not just accepting what they have done and accommodating to it, but bringing to bear their own personality, their own virtues which can contribute to the cloister’s development.
