ANALOG GAME STUDIES

ANALOG GAME STUDIES

VOLUME II

EVAN TORNER, EMMA LEIGH WALDRON,

AARON TRAMMELL (EDS.)

Carnegie Mellon University: ETC Press

Pittsburgh
Copyright © by Evan Torner, Emma Leigh Waldron, Aaron Trammell, et al., and
ETC Press 2017
http://press.etc.cmu.edu/
Print ISBN: 978-1-365-64093-3
eBook ISBN: 978-1-365-64094-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017900113
TEXT: The text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NonDerivative 2.5 License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/)
IMAGES: All images appearing in this work are property of the respective
copyright owners, and are not released into the Creative Commons.
The respective owners reserve all rights.
 Contents

Foreword xi

Cards and Cardboard

Postcolonial Catan 3
Bruno Faidutti
The First Nations of Catan: Practices in Critical Modification 35
Greg Loring-Albright
The Eurogame as Heterotopia 43
Devin Wilson
Queering Girl Talk (The Board Game) 51
Amber Muller
Rule Explicitness Between Classic, Modern, and Computer 57
Games
Kelvin Autenrieth
Learning to Evaluate Analog Games for Education 61
Peter Wonica

Pen and Paper

Out of the Dungeons: Representations of Queer Sexuality in 71
RPG Source Books
Jaakko Stenros & Tanja Sihvonen
Reimagining Disability in Role-Playing Games 93
Elsa S. Henry
Role-Playing the Caper-Gone-Wrong Film in Fiasco 97
Felan Parker

vii
 Live Action
The Trouble with Gender in Larp 107
Maury Elizabeth Brown & Benjamin A. Morrow
A Look Back from the Future: Play and Performance in 119
Biosphere 2013
Moyra Turkington
Manipulating Environments in American Freeform 129
Jason Cox

Theater
Connecting Stage Acting, Role-Playing, and Improvisation 143
Sarah Lynne Bowman
Joy and Meaning in Theater Games 155
Lisa Quoresimo
Performativities in Play: Deception in J.L. Austin, Theater, and 161
Games
Jonathan Rey Lee

New Spaces
Cocktail Cabinets: A Critique of Digital and Ludic 175
Essentialism
Samuel Tobin
Foursquare: Bodily Transgression in Gamified Spaces 181
Maxwell Foxman
Towards a Taxonomy of Sexy Analog Play 187
Ashley M. L. Brown
Playing with Portals: Rethinking Urban Play with Ingress 195
Kyle Moore
The Pleasures of Adaptation in Ryan North’s To Be or Not to 207
Be
Emma Leigh Waldron

viii
 Interviews
Currency: An Interview with Chris Wille and Brian Patrick 217
Franklin
James A. Hodges
Inspiration and RPG Design: An Interview with Nathan D. 225
Paoletta
Evan Torner
Nørwegian Surreal: An Interview with Ole Peder Giæver 231
Evan Torner

Appendix 239
About the Authors 243
About the ETC Press 249

ix
 Foreword

As a caterpillar emerges from a cocoon as a butterfly, so do we still express

childlike wonder when our own creations take on a life of their own. And
although we Co-Editors of Analog Game Studies are not butterfly collectors,
it is safe to say that we have become fond of our collective creation. 2015
marks the year when Analog Game Studies transformed into its own entity, a
publication both expressive of our academic and para-academic interests, as well
as a platform for important discussions above and beyond ourselves to unfold
and develop.
Volume II contains numerous essays that we feel will resonate for years
to come. For one thing, thanks to the guest editorship of James Hodges,
we entered into conversation with digital games and participatory media.
Foursquare, Currency, and cocktail cabinets all sound like they would ordinarily
grace the pages of a scholarly journal on video games, but their inclusion here
is a statement regarding how the analog informs the digital without question.
If 2016’s wild digital breakout hit Pokémon Go was not conceivable without
Ingress, then Analog Game Studies demonstrated that Ingress was not
conceivable without co-created knowledge about non-digital urban space.
Moreover, the volume marks the beginning of an earnest engagement with
race and colonialism in board games, exemplified in Bruno Faidutti’s landmark
essay “Postcolonial Catan” included within these pages. In the midst of the
worldwide board-game renaissance, our authors remind us of the medium’s
remarkable naiveté with respect to geopolitics and interpersonal sensitivity.
Finally, our now-established engagement with role-playing games took us
to uncharted terrain, with serious examinations of queerness, gender politics,
theatricality, genre, and experiential possibilities through RPGs. The journal
prompted and shifted discussions on how we can interpret analog games within
larger frameworks of social meaning.
Our division of chapters proves more medium-specific this year. The
section “Card and Cardboard” covers various frames of reference for looking at
board and card games, from education to queer theory. It is followed by two
sections on role-playing games: “Pen and Paper” and “Live Action.” Thanks to
increasing interest on the relationship of analog games to performance, Volume
II has a whole section devoted to “Theater,” and then to the “New Spaces”
in which one finds analog play. The volume concludes with “Interviews,” our
chance to have a word with some erudite game designers on topics of interest.

xi
xii Analog Game Studies
Looking back, we see Volume II as a tipping point, both in terms of a rise
in general traffic on our site (analoggamestudies.org), as well as in terms of key
stakeholders in the broader games community choosing to locate discussions
with us. We only hope to see this publication continue to be a nexus of different
viewpoints in the field as the non-digital continues to pick up steam as a force
to be reckoned with alongside the digital.
–The Editors
Cards and Cardboard
 Postcolonial Catan
Bruno Faidutti

I would rather discover one truth than gain a kingdom in

Persia.
–Democritus
In Fact, the whole of Japan is a pure invention. –Oscar Wilde, The
Decay of Lying, 1899
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. –Leslie
Poles Hartley, The Go-Between, 1953
I t may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all
emigrated. –Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands, 1991

I am not a scholar, though I considered becoming one at some time and, twenty
years ago, wrote my PhD about the discussion on the reality and the image of
the unicorn from the late middle-ages to the XIXth century. Then I gave up
historical research to spend more time designing boardgames, of the kind now
called Eurogames. I incidentally read Edward Said’s Orientalism1 and Culture
and Imperialism2. in 2012 or 2013, long after they had been published, and was
immediately stricken by his description of orientalism, because it was a beast
I had already encountered twice. In the true and false travel stories from the
late middle-ages and the Renaissance—Ludovico Barthema saw two unicorns in
Mecca in 1503—I had seen the beginning of the modern fascination with the
Orient. Later, when designing boardgames such as Silk Road or Isla Dorada,
I had made heavy use of good old orientalist clichés. Orientalism felt like the
missing link between my two experiences.

Postcolonial Catan 1, 2, 3
The first version of what has become this essay was a largely improvised seminar
held in 2014, at Gen Con, the biggest US boardgame convention, which takes
place every summer in Indianapolis. I basically took the orientalist paradigm
from Said and transposed it, mutatis non necessarily mutandis, to modern
boardgames. It was fun and superficial, and more a big witty joke than serious
reflection. What made especially ironic this take on orientalism is that, while

1. Edward Said. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1978.

2. Edward Said. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books, 1993

3
4 Analog Game Studies
postcolonial novels are often extremely humorous and ironic – think Salman
Rushdie, Kiran Desai, Hanif Kureishi, Naguib Mahfouz—postcolonial theory
mostly ignores or even sometimes opposes irony.Fun is desperately lacking in
Edward Said’s books, which may be his biggest methodological difference with
his mentor Michel Foucault.
I had great fun improvising from a half page of notes and mocking my
fellow game-designers but, when flying back to Europe, I regretted this had
not been recorded. So I tried to write down most of what I said, removing
the most stupid jokes and adding a few reflections I had after the more serious
discussions ending the conference. This tended to make my point more clear,
more structured and more documented, but it remained a bit lampoonesque.
Anyway, I published this article on my website, and it caused huge
reactions in the small boardgaming world. I was accused both of wanting
to impose political-correctness to the whole boardgaming community, which
had never been my intent, and to cowardly stop short of condemning exotic
settings, which was a deliberate choice but not, I think, a coward one. Since
these days, this article, a shorter version of the one below, is still by far the
most visited on my website. The polemic started again one year later, when my
game Waka-Tanka was announced and I got some remarks about my double
language, condemning exoticism on one side and practicing it on the other.
This was also the time I was contacted by the editors of Analog Game Studies
who asked me if I would be interested in editing my blogpost into something a
bit more weighty. It sounded like a good occasion to read some books, to make
some points clearer and to develop a few ideas I had had since.
One of the reasons for these relatively strong reactions in a boardgaming
world usually calm and soft-spoken is probably that the boardgames milieu and
business is being globalized relatively late, and as much from Europe as from the
US. Twenty years ago, modern boardgames were still largely a German thing.
The cultural references in these games are still very European, while there are
more and more gamers all around the world. This is another kind of exoticism
for American gamers, who were the most reactive to my original article. This
might explain the romantic and somewhat nostalgic feel of boardgames for
many US gamers, and therefore their recent commercial success, but it also
explains why some topics and representations are not exactly the ones to which
Americans, and now people from the whole world, are used in other western
medias.

Settlers and natives

It all started twenty years ago, when I first played Settlers of Catan. One of the
 Postcolonial Catan 5
first remarks made by a fellow player when going through the rules was the
ironic “where are the natives?” This might have been more a striking issue for
French players than for German or English speaking ones because the French
language has only one word, Colon, where English has two with very different
meanings, Settler and Colonist (Siedler and Kolonist in German, the original
language of the game). So, the game is known in France as “Les Colons de
Catan,” which can mean both “Settlers of Catan” or “Colonists of Catan.”

Les Colons de Catane, recently renamed Catane, a more politically correct title. The abstract
looking wooden roads and settlement tokens have also been replaced with plastic ones which have
a deliberate European medieval style.
Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism was published in 1993, more or less at
the same time as Catan and Magic the Gathering, but I read it only twenty
years later. I was struck by the similarity between our initial reactions to Catan
and what Said says of XIXth century European novels, and specifically of
Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, where he thought slaves, though nowhere to be
seen, are always in the background. Of course, the stakes are lower, and Said’s
analysis of XIXth century novels cannot be simply pasted on contemporary
boardgames. Times have changed, agendas have changed, European countries
have no colonies any more – and by the way Germany, from where modern
boardgames originate, never had that many, and didn’t keep them long. But
this striking similarity must mean something.And, indeed, natives are nowhere
to be seen in Catan, except may be as the lone black robber bandit who is
not really resisting invasion, since he is hired on turn by the different players.
I remember my first idea for a Catan expansions was a new resource, magic
mushrooms used to cast spells – this was also the time when I was discovering
Magic the Gathering. The second one was to add a native resistance player. I
didn’t finalize either one.
6 Analog Game Studies
This goes farther than the naïve politically-correct euphemization of
historical issues that can be found in some games. The problem in Puerto
Rico is not that there are slave tokens, it is that they are called colonists. The
problem with Saint Petersburg is that one of the worst episode of forced labour
in modern European history is treated as a good spirited competition between
hardworking craftsmen. The same is true of fantasy worlds, which is why I was
less bothered by the slaves in Five Tribes than I am by their replacement with
fakirs – and anyway, one cannot complain both of the absence of natives in
Catan and of the presence of slaves in Five Tribes. But I’ll be back to this, since
we’re now doing a very similar move with my changing the cover for the US
edition of my upcoming card game Waka Tanka.

Starting from scratch

The Catan issue is different. The game action doesn’t take place in a specific
time or place, and the name Catan might even have been chosen specifically to
sound bland and not too exotic—Catania is in Sicily, meaning south, but not
too far south. The graphic implementation is very european, with no exotic
resource—sheep, no lamas, bisons or antelopes. Settlers of Catan is colonization
as we dream it, or as we would have liked it to be, colonization of a terra nullius,
a new world which looks just like the old one and is void of alien presence. We
all know it was very different and at least sparsely populated everywhere.

The new world looks insistently like the old one.

This can be explained without resorting to some western fantasy or complex,
only with simple game system necessities. In most development games, players
start from scratch – two settlements and roads in Catan, a spouse and a wooden
shack in Agricola – and slowly build their production engine, competing with
each other. The appeal of these games, and the original appeal of Settlers of
 Postcolonial Catan 7
Catan because it was something relatively new in 1993, is that they are not
about war but about peaceful competition in designing this engine.

With Archipelago, Christophe Boelinger tried to design a colonization and development game in
which the natives were present and had to be dealt with, not necessarily through force. The players,
however, still represent the rival European powers, and the game is very complex.
The colonial setting can nevertheless be an issue, especially when it’s plain and
obvious. I remember a gamer friend recently telling me that he felt a bit uneasy
playing Endeavor (but he never had any problem playing a war game, which is
not surprising but raises some interesting questions). That’s why Catan’s name
doesn’t sound exotic, and that’s why other “start from scratch” games have
less problematic settings, such as prehistoric times or deep space colonization
expansion. Nevertheless, in space development games, players are usually alien
rivals in a mostly empty space. In Ad Astra, a game partly inspired by Catan
which I designed with Serge Laget, there are alien artifacts but they have been
left by long forgotten civilizations.
8 Analog Game Studies
Exploring Space.
This can be explained without resorting to some western fantasy or complex,
only with simple game system necessities. In most development games, players
start from scratch – two settlements and roads in Catan, a spouse and a wooden
shack in Agricola – and slowly build their production engine, competing with.
Anyway, the game designer wanting to avoid problems can always settle Mars,
even when it needs a little terraformation before any efficient colonization.

And colonizing Mars.

As an interesting aside, there are also lots of game about industrial revolution. A
designer like Martin Wallace has published dozens with rails or industry barons.
Industry and railroad development games are all about riches getting richer, and
there are not much more workers or navigators in them than natives in colonial
development games. The Steampunk genre, which is an industrial revolution
fantasy, is also becoming very popular with boardgames – more about it later.
Once more, it’s possible to find sound practical reasons explaining why game
designers are so often using XIXth century economic growth, and its two main
engines, industrialization and colonization, as a setting for games that are all
about developing effective production engines. I should nevertheless set Said
aside and reread Eric Hobsbawm’s Industry and Empire.

Good old games

There might be technical reasons, but I think there’s also something if not
reactionary, at least romantic or backward looking in board games themes –
much more than in video games themes.
The novel form has now been assimilated and transformed in the formerly
colonized world, by postcolonial authors such as Salman Rushdie – but we’re
 Postcolonial Catan 9
still waiting for a postcolonial board or card game designer. Boardgame and
card game design is not necessarily adverse to critics and subversion. The
authors of cards against humanity might be the William Burroughs of game
design—but there’s no Salman Rushdie, and boardgames are probably still one
of the most typically western cultural forms—more about how Japanese card
games fit into this later.
There is something old-fashioned, charming and romantic, not only in
the themes and settings of boardgames, but also in their graphic style. See
the covers of Ticket to Ride and Settlers of Catan, probably the two most
influential typical board game designs of these last twenty years. Playing games
has become a powerful anxiolytic in a western society which probably feels
less secure than it did a few decades ago, and probably more in Europe in the
USA. This might explain why board game sales are countercyclical, why game
designers are mostly old white males (I’m one), why game themes and looks
sound so old-fashioned.

Notice that European countries such as Switzerland, Netherlands and even the United Kingdom
10 Analog Game Studies
can receive an “exotic” treatment. There’s no Ticket to Ride Scotland, Spain, Russia or Italy, but
these are also often treated as exotic settings.
Most of my examples come from “eurogames,” a style of games which
originated in Europe and became really popular in the rest of the world more
recently. Games designed in the US have more often fantasy settings, which
also have some ambiguities – elves, dwarves and orcs can also be seen as way to
simultaneously essentialize and defuse racial stereotypes – but this would need
another article.
Let’s go back to Steampunk, a new romantic, retro exotic and relatively
harmless setting. Steampunk is interesting because it’s mostly a gaming (and
sartorial) universe. There’s almost no steampunk music, there are few
steampunk movies, there’s little steampunk literature (even though everyone
should read Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day), but there are lots of
steampunk boardgames (and rpgs, and larps). Steampunk is not only victorian
esthetic with shiny bronze and iron, it’s also a reassuring world, in which
good old european powers are still vying for control of the solar system – and
natives on Mars, if any, can be ignored as Bruno Cathala and I did in Mission
Red Planet. Well, I just added a “Native Resistance” discovery card, but it’s an
afterthought I had while writing this article.

Onward to Venus and Mission : Red Planet, steampunk colonial games.

Minimalism
So what happens when “orientals” start designing card and boardgames?
A few months ago, I wrote an article about the many Japanese card games
 Postcolonial Catan 11
designed and published in Japan these last years, the best known probably being
Seiji Kanai’s Love Letter.

Two Japanese games.

My article was titled “Japanese Minimalism.” I suggested that some Japanese
cultural atavism might be responsible for the specificities of these designs,
mostly their simple rules and few components. I made some comparisons with
literature – Soseki and Kawabata – then added unwisely references to Japanese
food and zen gardens, stuff I don’t really know much about. I stopped just short
of haikus and bonsais.
My Japanese readers were if not shocked, at least amused. I was answered
that Japanese Minimalism doesn’t really exist, or at least is not an indigenous
characteristic of Japanese culture but a western invention aimed at objectifying
it—exactly what Said calls orientalism in his eponymous book, even when he
never tells anything about Japan (for interesting reasons, which might be the
same reasons why his books are immensely popular in Japan, but that’s another
story). Of course, this critic was spot on, as a quick experiment can show:
type “Japanese Minimalism” in Google, and you get mostly links to Californian
architect studios and furniture stores.
Anyway, I was told the reasons for the minimalistic components of
Japanese games were more trivial, due mostly to high printing costs and small
markets, or may be even purely contingent, due to the personality of the
first popular Japanese game designers. These designers claim to have the same
references as mine – Settlers of Catan (again), Magic the Gathering, etc – and
not to make anything specifically Japanese. Actually, Seiji Kanai once told me
that my Dragon’s Gold was one of the games that lured him into game design,
and I’m quite proud of this. On the back of the box of the most minimalistic of
12 Analog Game Studies
these games, Jun’Ichi Sato’s Eat me if you Can, is even clearly written that it’s a
“Eurogame.”
So much for the Japanese minimalist school of board game design. Of
course, the fact all these designers don’t intend to design specifically Japanese
card games, but just small card games doesn’t subtract anything from their
talent.
The question of “Japanese Minimalism”, however, is at least debated. The
main reason why I didn’t come across it when typing “Japanese minimalism”
is that academic circles prefer to call it “Japanese reductionism”. The reference
book of those who claim that such a thing really exists and is really Japanese is
Compact Culture, by O-Young Lee (a Korean), just to make this a bit more
intricate. This book doesn’t really come from the western world and, though
it’s slightly too old to enter the discussion of postcolonialism as it was started
by Said, it is in part concerned with similar issues. Interestingly, O-Young-
Lee doesn’t reproach Japan as a colonizer with objectivizing Korean culture but
with plainly ignoring it—and conveying this ignorance to the West. Indeed,
Europeans have a very orientalist image of China and Japan, but don’t have any
image at all of Korea, which is also largely ignored in boardgame settings

Koryo, a card game from a Korean designer and a French publisher, with a very vaguely Korean-
steampunk setting. And, just to make things more intricate, The King’s Pouch, a Korean game
which is probably not really “occidentalist”, but just trying very hard and quite successfully to look
like a German game.

Oriental Dream
In Orientalism, Edward Said showed how the orientalist discourse, which he
studied mostly in XIXth century novels but can be found in other cultural
 Postcolonial Catan 13
domains, created its own object, how a fantasy Orient became a part of the real
Orient, and how this was embedded in the colonization ideology and process.
As I said earlier, world literature has largely become postcolonial, and the
same could probably be said of music (rap is something like postcolonial rock)
and movies. There’s nothing like this in games, and the image they show of
the Orient is plain orientalist exoticism, of a kind that has disappeared from
literature, movies and even comics – though it’s still present in a few other very
specific domains such as cooking or music.

Istanbul and Five Tribes, two recent “1001 nights” games. Notice the fonts.
14 Analog Game Studies
This one has a good accumulation of clichés, with a half veiled and sexy girl, dice players who
seem to be bartering, probably a slave on the front right, and even a leopard – I doubt there were
many in medieval Spain, where the action is supposed to take place.

Charles Chevalier presents his game Sultaniya at the French game festival Paris Est Ludique. He
looks exactly like the guy on the Istanbul cover.
Have a look at the boxes of the hundreds of “oriental themed” games published
every year. They usually look directly out either of a Guéricault painting, either
of a popular geographic encyclopedia from the fifties. The Arab world has
camels, sand dunes, silk or spice merchants, sometimes a djinn. Timeless India
just has elephants instead of camels and the occasional tiger.

Racing camels in Egypt, racing elephants in India…

The most striking is probably Egypt, a really popular setting but with basically
only two narratives, building pyramids and exploring pyramids (by the way,
 Postcolonial Catan 15
Kheops, by Serge Laget and me, has just been republished). As for modern
Egypt, or even modern Orient for what matters, it is totally absent from games.
Of course, one of the reasons might be that contemporary orient is extremely
complex, when boardgame settings have to be clear and simple – but isn’t the
“Complex Orient” another orientalist cliché ?

Two new games about building the Egyptian pyramids. There are already hundred or more.
The far east can be very vaguely historicized, with seven or three kingdoms
in China, with Daimyos and Samurais in Japan. Since most players – meaning
western players, which are still the large majority – have no idea what this really
means and cannot place the game’s setting in a clear historical timeline, this is
akin for them to fantasy worlds
16 Analog Game Studies

Antoine Bauza and Bruno Cathala’s games look

more Japanese than Seiji Kanai’s ones. The three
publishers and illustrators are also French.

And Japanese games can even be “re-orientalized” for the western market, as in this US edition of
Love Letter in a popular Japanese-style fantasy setting.
In the twenties, the young André Malraux was arrested while smuggling
antique bas reliefs stolen from a lost Khmer temple, and imprisoned. He later
got involved in the anticolonialist movement in Vietnam, then in the Spanish
war, then in the French Resistance during WWII, and ended as the unsackable
minister of culture of Charles de Gaulle. I would have liked my friend Pierô
to represent the young Malraux fleeing from Angkor with some Khmer statue
hidden under his gabardine, but unfortunately, that’s what he had already made
for Antoine Bauza’s game Bakong. While orientalism was not an issue, it was
impossible to represent Malraux with his unmovable cigarette, and this not only
the US market but also now in France and most of Europe.
 Postcolonial Catan 17

Exploring pyramids, discovering a lost

temple, these are orientalist clichés allowing
for a representation of the westerner, as
adventurer or archaeologist. It’s a trick also
much used in movies.

The exotic doesn’t need to be very far away – for German game designers, the
nearby Italy is almost Africa, and the most exotic about Italy is its cooking, and
especially pizzas. Spain also sometimes receives a similar treatment
18 Analog Game Studies

The game derives from carom, so it must have an Indian

setting. It is, however, themed about cooking, so it should
also have an Italian sounding name. The result is
confusing…

An interesting aside here is the impressive number of games about Venice,

either the historical one or a fantasy one like Cadwallon or Tempest. There are
probably more games about Venice than about all other Italian cities together.
Once more, there may be some trivial and technical reasons, mostly that the
canals allow for a simple and clear division in districts, for nice rules about
bridges, for different movement rules on land and water, carnival masks make
for mysteries and secret identities, etc. But there’s something more – the fantasy
Serenissima, if not the real one, has long been half oriental, the place where
ships left for Constantinople, the city of Shylock and Othello, and the venetian
dream is, in the literary tradition, an euphemized version of the oriental dream.
 Postcolonial Catan 19

Fantasy and even more fantasy Venice.

There’s also something like Septentrionalism, but it’s less prevalent and systematic.

Abstract exoticism
Even abstract games often have a setting, which is little more than a nice name
and a graphic style, and these settings are usually exotic. It’s not a new thing.
When, in XIXth century Germany, someone had the great idea to adapt the
Halma game to a star shaped board, he called it Chinese Checkers. It is still
known by that name, even now in China…
20 Analog Game Studies

Abstract Asia is full of dragons, but it’s not always easy to decide if they’re Chinese or Japanese.

Now, we’re clearly in China, and these games, though not totally abstract, could have had many
other settings.
China and Japan are still the most frequent exotic theme for western abstract
strategy games. There also a few Vikings—runes have a nice abstract look –
and sometimes American Indians, especially in games from the seventies and
eighties.

Organic and ironic orientalism

You may have noticed that I’ve discussed Japan twice. So where exactly is
orientalism? What are the true orientalist clichés, Samurais and geishas, or
minimalism, robots, cosplay and giant lizards? There is a big difference, which
I think has been often missed by Said, between old orientalist clichés which
have become an organic part of western culture and are often referred as such,
sometimes even ironically, and more recent ones which are more likely to be
taken at face value. When using the word orientalism, we usually refer to the
 Postcolonial Catan 21
former ones, when the most problematic is probably the latter. Samurais and
geishas, like pharaohs or maharajas, like indians and cowboys, have become
a kind of organic orientalism, always more or less ironically self-referential.
When using these images, the reference is not really to the other, but to the
cliché itself. The mockery, if there’s one, is more of exoticism itself than of the
supposed exotic. Things are much more ambiguous when using more recent
clichés, like robots, giant lizards and high school girls in skirts, or supposedly
“timeless” features, like minimalism. Clichés, like other ideas, must never be
considered ex abstracto, out of historical and cultural context. The same graphic
style doesn’t have the same meaning on contemporary boardgame boxes and
in popular encyclopedias from the fifties. It can also have different meanings in
Europe and in the US, as we will see with American Indians.

The Japanese themselves can use orientalist clichés, like Seiji Kanai does in Mai Star. It’s certainly
ironic here, but there is also an ambiguous trend towards “self-orientalism” in contemporary
Japanese culture, and not only for export. Of the Japanese and US edition of Mai Star, I don’t
know which one looks the most orientalist.
22 Analog Game Studies
Kota Nakayama’s Hanamikoji is even more complex –the designer is Japanese, but the publisher
and illustrator are Taiwanese. As for Lost Legacy – Hundred years wars, it’s pure Occidentalism.
It has a yellow haired medieval knight next to a hobbit like character and the statue of a siren.

Anyway, when dealing with Japan, this is the true orientalism…. And it can even be exported
into Japan!
Interestingly, the German game publisher which makes the most systematical
use of oriental settings and orientalist graphics, with lots of ochers, yellows and
oranges, the publisher of Shogun, Maharani, Sultan, Alhambra, Thebes, Kairo
and many other is Queen Games, whose head, Rajiv Gupta, is not exactly your
typical German.
Though it didn’t sell that well, Isla Dorada is one of my favorite designs.
It has all the orientalist clichés, and more. My original prototype had a rather
bland theme, with mediaeval merchants traveling through a vast country,
buying here and selling there. The publisher found this a bit bland, and we
decided for something more exciting – an orientalist mishmash with deliberate
exotic clichés in a Tarzan comics style. The published game is Victorian
steampunk, and the action takes place on a remote island where we can see the
ruins of no less than four old civilizations – so we have Egyptian pyramids, and
places with names ending in is, a mix of Polynesian villages and Pascuan statues,
with names such as Wahi-Waha and Vanu-Tabu, Mayan pyramids with Aztec
sounding names. The only reason why the last civilization sounds vaguely
Indonesian is that it made for more funny names ending in ing or ang, but
the monuments look more like Khmer. For gameplay reasons, the names of the
places had to suggest immediately to what cultural area they belong. No China
or Black Africa, but we made for it through event cards, with killer pandas
and black savage tribes roaming the island, and we a Baron Samedi for the
Caribbean Voodoo. However, I remember that we considered a long lost cut
 Postcolonial Catan 23
limb of the Roman Empire for the fourth culture, and that at least one prototype
version of the game had places with funny names in us and um instead of ing
and ang. This was not very different.

Isla Dorada, and another kind of irony – Hamlet and the crystal skull.
Orientalism as described by Said is an ideological discourse which gets his
strength from the fact that it’s supposed describe the reality, the truth, of the
Orient it invents. Boardgames, like French comics such as Asterix, or Iznogoud
if you want something “orientalist”, are not scholarly works. They don’t have
the slightest aim or pretense at “truth”. Klaus Teuber, the designer of Catan,
didn’t want to tell us that the New World was empty when Europeans arrived
there, and no gamer ever thought it was so. I know quite well that there are not
daily elephant races in Indian cities – well, may-be there are some here or there,
I didn’t even check because I tried to be true to the cliché, not to the reality. In
a way, exoticism in boardgames, like in comics, is always more or less ironical
– though may-be we should sometimes make this more obvious.

Colonizing the past

There’s indeed an obvious and apparently valid point against most of what I’ve
said so far – there are many games about the timeless Orient, but there are even
more about some specific periods of western history, like ancient Rome or the
Middle Ages.
The fantasy idea we have of some historical periods is not very different
from the fantasy idea we have, or had, of other parts of the world. Far away
times are like far away places – naive, simple, vaguely perverse and, of course,
backwards. Orientalism and history, or at least history as it was invented in the
XIXth century, were very similar fields of study, inspired by romanticism, and
24 Analog Game Studies
characterized both by a fascination for the alien and a necessity to objectivize it
in order to construct it as a field of study, and to assert western, or modern,
superiority. In France, as in many European countries, history and geography
are still taught together in school, by the same teachers, as if past and foreign
were interchangeable. The XIXth century painters singled out by Said for
their orientalism, such as Gérôme and Géricault, were also much fond of
mythological and historical settings. In 1904, Victor Segalen started his
reflections on exoticism by noting that there is a parallel between far away in
space, exoticism, and far away in time, which he called historicism. Since this
word now has a different meaning, let’s talk of “historical exoticism.”

Pompei, Carcassonne, Florence – the place tells the

time.

While plain orientalism as described by Said is probably receding, or at least is

dissected and discussed in universities, historical exoticism is still strong, mostly
because there can be no “post-medievalist” or “post-antiquist” backlash like
there was a postcolonial one. Ancient Greeks and Romans were objectified,
simplified, caricatured and analyzed, all for our amusement and comfort, but
 Postcolonial Catan 25
they haven’t been actually colonized, and cannot strike back at our present. I
sometimes wish they could, it could be fun – like in Gore Vidal’s great novel
Live from Golgotha.

It works almost as well with American history.

As a historian, I’m always wary of the easy explanation for everything past and
strange—“in these times, people didn’t think like we do.” Maybe “in these times”
sounds a bit too much like “East of Suez” in Rudyard Kipling’s famous formula
– “East of Suez, best is worst and worst is best.”
So the real issue is not orientalism, but exoticism as a whole, in geography
and history, and why it is so prevalent in boardgames, much more than in
books or movies, much more than in video games, and so insistently unsubtle.
The setting of a novel is a complex world that has to be built or, more often,
studied by the author. It can be false, it can be a caricature, but it needs some
depth. For the game designer, India or China, Middle Ages or Antiquity, are
not geographical places or historical times, they are just topoi, sets of standard
references, which must not be more sophisticated than those mastered by
the player. The game designer, like the painter, cannot enliven his work by
complex and subtle storytelling, and must do it only by winks and nods –
a camel here, a helmet there. As a result, he makes heavy use of orientalist,
“medievalist” or “antiquist” clichés.
26 Analog Game Studies

Cliché or exoticism?
This can be conscious, even deliberate, as it was for me when I designed Valley
of the Mammoths, or Mystery of the Abbey. Valley of the Mammoths is just a
collection of bad clichés about prehistoric times. It’s assumed, it’s second degree,
but what is interesting is that I probably could not have designed a “serious”
game about prehistory. I didn’t have the necessary historical knowledge, and
if I had this knowledge, the game would have had much more complex rules,
would have been less fun to play, and removing the irony might have made it in
the end more racist against Neanderthalians. Anyway, racial prejudice against
Neanderthalians is not a pressing political issue, except in Jasper Fforde’s novels.

The cover of the first edition of Valley of the Mammoths was plain exoticism
And then there are Pirates. Pirates have everything. They have adventure, deep
blue seas, palm trees and teams mostly made of white bearded males, with the
occasional black look-out or sexy adventuress. Pirates of the Caribbean – not
those of the Channel, of course – are like a part of the fantasy history of
Europe that happens to take place in a sunny and exotic – if not oriental –
setting. No wonder Pirates have been from the very beginning of modern
boardgames, the most overexploited setting.
 Postcolonial Catan 27

Pirates and the Exotic.

Simplifying and objectifying the past has obviously fewer social and historical
consequences than simplifying, objectifying and even colonizing the rest of
the world, but it’s part of the same frame of mind. Orientalism and historical
exoticism belong to the same intellectual discourse, and I find the prevalence of
this discourse in games – even when it’s more and more often in a distanced and
more or less ironic way – impressive, and a bit unsettling.
If I were someday to write the scenario for a TV series, it would probably
be about inventing time-travel and colonizing the past, about sending British
governors, German hippies and American missionaries in Ancient Egypt or in
prehistoric times. Well, I don’t know any one in the TV series business, but may
be I can make a game about it. Of course, a game full of clichés about British,
German and Americans, because that’s what make games fun.

Indians in Gaul and Germany

Americans visiting Europe are often surprised by the importance of American
Indians, and specifically Plain Indians, in our collective imagination. This is
especially true in France and Germany, which happens to be also the countries
were most European boardgames are designed and published. I have designed
two games with a Plains Indians theme, Tomahawk and Waka Tanka, the latter
being due to publication in the coming months, and there are also cute bright
red Indian meeples in Pony Express, and a sexy squaw in Boomtown – though
her long legs are hidden in the US version of the game.
The image we have of Plain Indians is definitely exotic, but what makes it
different from the US one is that it has more to do with historical exoticism than
with orientalism, and this especially if, as Said wrote, orientalism emphasizes on
otherness. Our imaginary Indians were designed as similar to us, not as other.
28 Analog Game Studies

Native Americans and the Exotic.

Most Europeans don’t really know, or forget easily, that there are still Native
American people and living native American cultures – for us, American
Indians are historical figures, not contemporary ones. Also, in France and in
Germany, Plain Indians as described in the late XVIIIth and XIXth century
were used as the metaphoric basis when inventing a fantasized history of our
origins, before the Roman conquest. The mythical Gallic village of old history
books, and of comics like Asterix as well, with its chief and its druid, is directly
copied from the almost as mythical Indian village, with its chief and sorcerer.
Dolmens are totems, wild boars are bisons. When playing Indians and Cow-
boys, something they still do, French or German kids always identified more
easily with Indians than with Cow-Boys. This means that gently mocking
this image is also, in a way, a bit like mocking our own ancestors, something
everybody does, but never in a really bad way. This might be different in
Britain, where Agricola is as much the English hero as Boudicca.

Laziness and efficiency

This whole article is still half a joke. I took Edward Said’s orientalism paradigm,
originally applied to XIXth century novels and paintings about the Near and
Middle-East, and copy-pasted it on contemporary boardgames about other
parts of the world – but it’s not that different from what Said himself was
starting to do in Culture and Imperialism. Then I brought it to Mars and Venus,
following a hint given by Victor Segalen in 1908, in his Essay on exoticism.
Last, I brought it to the past, which won’t be colonized until we design a time-
travel machine. It can’t be surprising that things don’t always fit perfectly, as we
have seen in some details with two examples, Japan and American Indians – I
still have to design a Japanese themed game.
 Postcolonial Catan 29
Nevertheless, the recurrence of exotic settings in board and card games can
be unsettling. Understanding why we use such settings, and why they can be
unsettling, is necessary, but I don’t intend to condemn it and I don’t think we,
game designers, should stop making boardgames that caricature the Orient or
Ancient Greece, no more than we should stop making games that caricature
barnyard or jungle. I know for sure I will keep on doing it because it’s easy, it’s
simple, it’s fun and, most of all, it probably makes better games. When it comes
to game design, being lazy is usually being efficient.
It makes better games because the setting of a game doesn’t have the same
function as the setting and theme of a novel or movie. When reading a novel or
an essay, or watching a movie or theater piece, one does spend most intellectual
energy in understanding what is told in the book or movie, and tries to get all
the subtleties of it. When playing a game, most of the player’s energy is spent in
trying to use the rules, the game systems, in order to win. The thematic setting
of the game must not detract from “the game itself”, meaning from aiming at
victory. It might even be, like in a math water tap problem, just a tool used to
make the rules clearer.
The setting must therefore be extremely simple, and must be known by the
players before the game even starts. In good novels and movies, the storyline
is used to explain the meaning of a complex theme. In good games, the light
theme is here to help the players create the story. A game’s setting must be
very simple, very light, and works best when it uses connections already known
by the players, not when it tries to reveal hidden ones. Pop culture settings,
such as science fiction or heroic fantasy, are great for this, but are not mastered
by everyone. Plain exotic settings, be they historical or geographical, are even
better, because they are understood by more people. Furthermore, boardgames
are often played by adults and children together, and therefore require “childish”
settings and imagery, and of a kind that is known by two or even three
generations. That’s why simplistic exotic settings, be they exotic, historical or
fantasy come naturally to me, and that’s why I’ll keep on using them, though I’ll
probably be more careful now to use more or less systematically irony to defuse
the issues that I highlighted in this article. And yes, I know, irony can be missed,
but it’s so fun when it isn’t that it’s worth taking some risks.
30 Analog Game Studies

The caveat historical introduction to the rules of Mombasa is certainly clumsy. The first sentences
are heavily didactical and the last one sounds like “no animals were harmed in the making of this
movie”, but that’s probably the way to go.
The video and boardgame industries are in many ways very similar, and many
boardgame designers also work on video games. Surprisingly, orientalism, at
least like I’ve described it here, is far less present in video games, Prince of
Persia being the only example that jumps to mind (though the FPS games
in Middle-East settings are another kind, probably far more problematic, of
Orientalism). Historical exoticism also seems to be less prevalent. The depth
and complexity required by massive multiplayer games and persistent worlds
makes it impossible to use simplistic universes, and is much easier to deal with
in fantasy. These complex games are also more and more devised by large teams
involving designers in Europe and in the USA, but also in Japan and, more
and more, in Korea, China or India. But this is also true of lighter games, may
be because the video game industry is bigger and more globalized, both with
gamers and designers. Of course, this makes for less problematic settings, but
also for blander and, at first sight, less thought provoking ones. One can easily
get bored of space travel, dragons, zombies and colored candies. But except may
be for colored candies, fantasy settings are also a kind of exoticism, and in the
end raise similar issues.The issue might be different if I were writing RPGs,
which require a deeper and more subtle setting and are more akin to literature,
but it’s not even sure, or if I were working in the video games industry. I
remember playing some really good and fun larps full of bad clichés, often about
about Victorian England. These were, however, clearly ironic, and there are
also very good larps and rpg dealing with historical topics in a more serious way
– I’m just not very excited in playing them.

Racism and game imagery in the US and in Europe

Two times, with Isla Dorada and now with Waka Tanka, there has been
 Postcolonial Catan 31
problems with the graphics in my games, which had to be changed by fear
that they would be considered racist in the US. My friends at Days of Wonder
also experienced unexpected attacks about the presence of slaves in their 1001
nights boardgame Five Tribes. I think there is something interesting in why
some pictures or themes can be seen as racist in the US and not in Europe.
When such an issue occurs, and it happens very often in various industries,
the usual reaction in Europe is to mock American oversensibility and political-
correctness, while the US point is to consider Europeans insensitive – which
they are not – or provocative – which they might be. Another problem is that
Americans are used to see attacks on political-correctness come mostly from
the right, meaning from people who want the freedom to express problematic
ideas, and don’t realize that most European attacks are coming from the left,
from people who think euphemizing language or representation is mostly an
excuse not to deal with “real” social issues, and even to hide them. As a result,
political correctness often harms the very cause it is supposed to defend.

The Fakir (right) has one thing for him – the art is better.
Anyway, may be because I am a European, I still don’t really understand what
exactly was the problem with the presence of slaves in Five Tribes and, as
I wrote earlier, I find their absence in Puerto Rico much more unsettling.
Five Tribes has a fantasy and extremely orientalist setting, Puerto Rico has
a more historical one, but both settings include slaves, and replacing them
with so-called “colonists” or with fakirs, when there are hundreds of slaves but
not a single fakir in the whole text of the 10001 nights, looks like a way to
simply ignore, to erase, the problematic parts of our history. It’s not getting
32 Analog Game Studies
rid of orientalism or racism, it’s not even helping to make sense of it, it’s just
euphemizing them in a very superficial, and some would say hypocritical way.
What happened to me, or at least to my illustrators and publishers, with the
graphics of two different games is more interesting.
Isla Dorada is a compendium of orientalist clichés from several different –
and often lightly mixed – cultures. Everything in its theme and its graphics is
caricature. When Fantasy Flight Games decided to publish it in the US, they
frowned at one of the pictures, a black savage of the Ovetos tribe, and asked the
French publisher to change it because it bordered on racism. Actually, the only
black boardgame designer I know, Eric Lang, who was working with Fantasy
Flight Games at that time, didn’t have any issue with picture, but he’s also a
Canadian, which means half a European.
The French publisher, and the artist, reacted in the usual way “OK, it’s
not racist, but Americans are a bit paranoid when it comes to these issues, let’s
change it.” In fact, the problem for the US publisher was whether the cliché
was politically acceptable, while the problem for the French artist was to be
esthetically true to the cliché, which is the real theme of the game.
Where it becomes really fun, is that we first mistook what Americans
thought racist in the picture – it was the fat lips of the character, when the
artist first thought it was the bone through his nose. This shows that an exotic
caricature is not racist per se – no one raised an eyelash when the game was
published in the US with a thin lipped black tribesman sporting a bone through
his nose – but that the codes defining what is racist and what isn’t are not the
same in Europe and in the US. For us, and for me, the bone was borderline, the
lips were no more problem than fuzzy hair – well, the Ovetos is actually bald,
but you see what I mean.
 Postcolonial Catan 33

Three versions of the Isla Dorada Ovetos card:

Naiiiade’s original, a first reworking with white skin,
and the final version with black skin and thin lips.
The thin lips make him look more cruel.

A very similar story happened with the cover art for Waka Tanka. As I said
before, we don’t much care for stereotypes in the representations of American
Indians in Europe. The main reason is not the obvious one, that we didn’t kill
them. It is that the exotic image we have of them is universally positive, and
based as much on sameness than on otherness. Anyway, a Brazilian publisher
decided to bring the game to the US, and was as surprised as me, the illustrator,
and the French publisher when told the cover picture of the game was overtly
racist. Of course, we first mocked the idea that it was impossible to draw an
American Indian who looks like an American Indian, but after some discussions
on game forums, it appeared that the issue was, once more, extremely specific.
The problem was not the exotic and unrealistic setting, which is common in
Eurogames and didn’t create any problem so far, but the figure of the old chief
in the foreground, which reminded every American of “Cigar stores Indian” –
an image I didn’t even know about.
For both games, the first steps in the discussion between European (and
Brazilians) and Americans were trying to prove that the picture was, or wasn’t,
racist. Of course, this was vain, since the answer is that the same picture can
be racist in the US and not in Europe, or the reverse, depending on what part
of the representation of the other has become the accepted sign of racism, and
whether the very act of caricature is considered insulting or not.
It is to emphasize this that, even when it means some added costs, the
French publisher of Waka-Tanka has decided to keep the original cover in
Europe, while the artist, David Cochard, was commissioned a new one that will
be used only in the US. David even wrote a fun and clever, but also a bit angry,
reaction on Facebook in which he explained that he was a caricaturist, and that
not being racist meant caricaturing everyone in the same way, while refusing
to caricature some groups would have been both racist and patronizing.
34 Analog Game Studies

The French and US covers for Waka Tanka.

We also considered relocating the action in Polynesia, and replacing the totem
with a tiki. This could have been fun in order, after the game had been
published and raised no eyelash anywhere, to point at the irony that while there
are far more Polynesians than American Indians, the latter were an issue and
not the former. But changing all the graphics would have been expensive, and
the animal spirit storyline would not have fitted as well in the new setting. And
anyway, I have another game with tikis in the pipe, we’ll see what happens…..
But, indeed, such issues will cause more and more problems in a world where
products and images are globalized much faster than ideas.
 The First Nations of Catan: Practices in Critical
Modification
Greg Loring-Albright

Settlers of Catan is a German board game by Klaus Teuber, first published in

1995. The game pits players against one another in an economic civilization-
building race as they build structures and gather resources on the hexagonal
tiles that compose the game’s board. The game has achieved critical acclaim
(winning the Spiel des Jahres in the year of its release) and popular success,
especially in the U.S.: a 2010 Washington Post piece called it “the game of our
time.”1 Board Game Geek, a popular international board-game hobbyist website,
ranks Settlers of Catan 168th out of 79,923 games (as of 8 October, 2015) on its
“hotlist.” This paper situates Settlers of Catan in its context as a popular game in
the U.S., and proposes a subversive gameplay modification that addresses that
context.
It was during a game of Settlers of Catan that I began to wonder why,
or even if, Catan was uninhabited.2 I played on, though not without pushing
down even more pointed questions about the narrative that I, as a settler of
Catan, was enacting. Whose wheat was I harvesting when I rolled a six? Whose
land was I altering when I built my roads and settlements? And with what entity
was I trading when I shipped two wood in exchange for one resource of my
choice at the port?
It became clear, at least to me, a white person playing this game in the U.S.
in the early 2010s, that every game of Settlers of Catan re-tells the American
myth of White European settlers stumbling upon a fertile land that was theirs by
right, encountering no meaningful resistance, and acting on behalf of God and
Country to develop economies, settlements, and cities in this “New World.” My
first thought was to never play Settlers of Catan again. But this response seemed

1. Blake Eskin. “Like Monopoly in the Depression, Settlers of Catan is the board game of our time.”
The Washington Post, November 21, 2010. washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/24/
AR2010112404140.html.
2. We had just decided not to play Andreas Seyfarth’s Puerto Rico (2002), having discussed the
problematic aspects of that game, in which players manipulate small brown “colonist” tokens to
effectively produce goods from various plantations. The player who most efficiently exploits their
workers and lands, and sends the most valuable goods back to the home country, wins the game.

35
36 Analog Game Studies
inadequate: while it might solve the problem for me, it would not equip anyone
else to wrestle with these troubling issues, and would put me in some awkward
positions whenever Settlers of Catan came up as a possible game to play. So I
decided to come up with a new game, based on Settlers of Catan, but one that
would bring to light the things that had so troubled me about the game.
Settlers of Catan, both by its title and its thematic elements, situates itself
as a game about settling new land. While the game does not root itself in
any historical reality, playing it in the U.S. creates a link to the real historical
settlement and concurrent genocide of indigenous peoples. Consider the
“frontier myth,” a phrase that describes the work of Frederick Turner Jackson,
whose 1893 essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”
attributes the rapid development of the U.S. in the late 19th century, and
the specificity of the U.S. American character, to mystical forces contained in
the “empty” and thus edenic American West.3 Settlers of Catan, by allowing
its settlers to find the island of Catan in a similarly edenic state, reifies this
myth, which helped to render American Indians invisible. Thus, Settlers of
Catan, when played in the U.S., is complicit in continuing to make indigenous
communities invisible. Primarily in order to counter this troubling aspect of
Settlers of Catan, and to create a game that I feel comfortable playing, I have
designed a variant of Settlers of Catan titled First Nations of Catan.

First Nations of Catan: Introduction and Summary

In First Nations of Catan,4 one player (of the possible four that a standard Settlers
of Catan set allows) plays as the First Nations, the indigenous inhabitants of
Catan. These semi-nomadic people have the same goals as the Settlers (earn 10
victory points by building settlements, cities, and buying development cards),
though they accomplish them in different ways.
Rather than playing on the edges and corner of the game’s hexagonal tiles,
as the Settlers do, the First Nations inhabit the center of each tile, signaling their
centrality to and initial presence on the island. This creates visual contrast with
the Settlers, who cannot penetrate the interior of any hex tile, but instead are
limited to building their roads along the edges of the tiles and their settlements

3. Frederick Turner Jackson. The Significance of the Frontier in American History. London: Penguin,
[1893] 2008.
4. The rules for this game are included in the appendix to this piece, and allow for a fully playable
experience using a standard Settlers of Catan game set. I strongly encourage you to play First Nations of
Catan (see Appendix) before reading on. However, I will summarize gameplay and some of its
implications here.
 The First Nations of Catan: Practices in Critical Modification 37
at intersections of roads. The island of Catan is open to its indigenous people
occupying its hinterlands, but forces the invading Settlers into the liminal
spaces. This parallels the historical realities of the (white) settlement of North
America in relation to indigenous North Americans: European settlers moved
inward from the coasts, and later, along major rivers, while indigenous peoples
as a whole occupied the interior in addition to the coastal lands.
While this rule creates an attractive metaphor, it limits the First Nations
player’s opportunities: In Settlers of Catan, players may gather a resource from
any one of the three hexes that their settlement abuts. By forcing the First
Nations player into the center, First Nations of Catan significantly reduces their
resource-gathering capabilities. This metaphor runs contrary to the realities
of North American settlement: indigenous peoples were successfully planting,
harvesting, and hunting on the land while European settlers were struggling to
adapt to unfamiliar plants, soils, and weather conditions. Nonetheless, I wanted
to create a game where the visual representation of the First Nations differed
from that of the Settlers on the playing space, and having the First Nations play
in the center of the tiles accomplishes this.
To restore balance of resource opportunities to the game, I have given
the First Nations player another playing piece: The Tribe. This marker can
move across the board, gathering resources as it goes. The Settler players
have no such game piece at their disposal. The Tribe piece also allows the
First Nations player to take military action against the Settler players, who
may only defend themselves, and may not initiate military action. This is the
most radical change that I have made to Settlers of Catan. In “Orientalism and
Abstraction in Eurogames,” William Robinson suggests that, by focusing on
economic development, Eurogames abstract and erase military conflict from the
histories they represent, particularly military conflict against non-Europeans.5
By bringing military conflict from the realm of the abstract back into the realm
of the explicit, First Nations of Catan undoes the disappearing act that Settlers of
Catan performed on Catan’s indigenous peoples.
I realize that introducing a combat mechanic is troubling in its own right;
games too often revert to simulated violent conflict as a thematic element. In
my experience, many players enjoy Settlers of Catan precisely because it does
not have a combat mechanic. However, this reading of Settlers of Catan ignores
the presence and function of Knights and the Largest Army tile.6 Just because

5. Will Robinson. “Orientalism and Abstraction in Eurogames.” Analog Game Studies 1.5 (2014).
analoggamestudies.org/2014/12/orientalism-and-abstraction-in-eurogames/.
6. In Settlers of Catan, players can play Knight cards to remove the Robber token from their tiles.
38 Analog Game Studies
the violence on Catan is not simulated by die rolling does not mean that it
is not present in the game’s thematic materials. The empty, edenic state of
the “frontier myth” is complicated and, to a certain extent, undone, as soon
as violence occurs on the frontier. By creating a chance for more-explicit
simulated violence to occur, I hope to have created a Catan that cannot be
perceived as either empty or edenic.

Designer’s Diary
In this section, I will describe my process of designing First Nations of Catan.
By leaving a trail, I hope that other designers will be encouraged to craft similar
subversive games, and that new games will arise to fill the gaps that First Nations
of Catan has left open.
The act of re-purposing a game’s pieces to create a new narrative counter
to the original game’s narrative is not a new one. In “Strategies for Publishing
Transformative Board Games,”7 William Emigh suggests and catalogues
numerous instances of this practice. The ability of the player to usurp the role of
the game-maker was, for me, perhaps the most exciting aspect of making First
Nations of Catan, and the one that points to other ways for players of Eurogames
to address some of these games’ failings. Having finished (as much as any game
is every finished) First Nations of Catan, I can say that the game seeks to address
the invisibility of indigenous peoples in the original Settlers of Catan, and to
bring more explicit conflict to the economic-conflict-only ethos of Eurogames
in general and Settlers of Catan in particular.
Earlier drafts of this game addressed these issues in certain ways, but either
did not address them fully enough, or raised too many other issues in the
process. Additionally, I was looking to create a game that used the same pieces
contained in a standard Settlers of Catan set, allowing anyone who can play that
game to also play this new, revised version.
The game’s initial form did away with Settlers altogether, allowing players
to play as various indigenous Catan-ians attempting to cooperate or compete
with each other to develop society on Catan. While this solved the invisibility
issue by foregrounding the existence of indigenous peoples on Catan, it quickly
became apparent that this game was merely Settlers of Catan by another name,

While it is not explicitly stated, the title of this card implies that the player is dispatching the Robber by a
show or act of military force. The more times the player performs this action, the more likely they are to
receive the Largest Army token, worth a full one-fifth of the required number of points to end the game.
7. William Emigh. “Strategies for Publishing Transformative Board Games.” Analog Game Studies 1.2
(2014). analoggamestudies.org/2014/09/strategies-for-publishing-transformative-board-games/.
 The First Nations of Catan: Practices in Critical Modification 39
as the 2-4 factions looked and played almost identically to the Settlers in the
original game.
The necessity to make explicit the abstract nature of military conflict
in Eurogames was the solution I settled upon for the next iteration of the
game. The historical narrative of the (European) settlers creating economic
prosperity for their own competing factions by, as a group, disenfranchising the
indigenous (American Indian) people needed to become more explicit in the
gameplay. Needing both First Nations players and Settlers on the board quickly
led me to the idea of asymmetrical gameplay: all the players are playing the
same game, but may have different victory conditions, or have different ways of
achieving the same victory condition. In short, the First Nations player needed
different rules from the other players.
This iteration of First Nations of Catan centered on conflict. The First
Nations would attempt to drive off the settlers while the Settlers attempted to
eradicate the First Nations. As soon as I began this iteration, it became clear
that it was more troubling than Settlers of Catan. Every player was aggressively
enacting violence on another racial group, and had no other viable way to win.
I hesitated here. Troubling games have their place, and can be very effective in
reminding privileged White U.S. Americans (men in particular) of their own
complicity in historical horrors. Consider Brenda Romero’s 2009 game Train,
in which players must load a train with passengers.8 Only later do they learn
that this train is headed to a Nazi concentration camp. Making such a game
out of Settlers of Catan would, no doubt, be useful in a U.S. context, reminding
those of us descended from European settlers that our wealth is derived from ill-
gotten plunder and genocide. My project, however, was to create a Catan game
that I would feel comfortable playing, and this troubling variant was not it.
I had, however, landed on a useful mechanic, and one that helped
differentiate my nascent game from Settlers of Catan: hidden movement.
Hidden movement games allow a player or players to indicate their position(s)
not on the board itself, but in another way that keeps the position(s) of their
pieces a secret, often by using pen and paper and a location-based notation
system. In this too-conflict-driven version of First Nations of Catan, the First
Nations player controlled the nomadic First Nations group as it roamed across
Catan. The location of this group was noted by creating a map of the playing
area on a piece of paper and marking the location of the group as a turn-based
number inside the hex where it was currently (unbeknownst to the Settlers)
located.

8. Brenda Romero. “Train.” 2009. bbrathwaite.wordpress.com/train/.

40 Analog Game Studies
This hidden movement idea moved the game into its third iteration. The
First Nations still had a secretly-moving group associated with them, but now
their goal was not militaristic. Instead, all players were competing for points
via the standard economic competition model of Settlers of Catan. The First
Nations gained the ability to build settlements and cities, and gather resources
as they developed their society alongside the encroaching settlers. A military
option was available (the hidden piece could strike at Settlers, removing their
constructions from the board) though it was not the only path to victory. This
version of the game came close enough to accomplishing my goals, and was
balanced enough when played, that I published it on my blog, along with a
short rumination that became the core of this piece.9
This version, however, had two flaws—one practical, one ideological: By
requiring players to use a pen and paper, and to draw a new map of Catan for
every game, I had made the game harder to use, and thus less likely to be played.
Additionally, if the invisibility of indigenous peoples was the concern I was
hoping to address, using hidden movement seemed antithetical to my purpose,
as it erases pieces from the play area.
By removing the hidden movement mechanic from the game (the Tribe
piece replaces it) and retaining the other elements from the game’s third
iteration, I had a game that worked both practically and ideologically. It
required only one extra piece to be added to the basic Settlers of Catan game,
and it played well. This is the game I settled on, and whose rules are included
here.

First Nations of Catan: A Success?

Designing this game required balancing three directives: Create a game that
was fun to play, that did not erase indigenous people from its narrative, and that
did not deviate from the pieces contained in the basic Settlers of Catan game.
The first element is perhaps the easiest to confirm, as it was my primary
concern when beginning this design. First Nations of Catan creates a narrative
for Catan wherein indigenous peoples exist, interact with settlers, and have a
fair chance of surviving the encounter by winning the game.
Based on limited playtesting, I believe I have accomplished the second goal
as well. First Nations of Catan is a balanced, asymmetrical strategy game, in
which classic Eurogame elements (economic competition, long-term planning)
mesh with so-called “Ameritrash” combat simulation mechanics (dice-based

9. See gregisonthego.wordpress.com/2014/07/02/first-nations-of-catan-a-revisionist-history-game/.
 The First Nations of Catan: Practices in Critical Modification 41
combat, strategic positioning of military units).10 Each player has a fair chance
at winning the game.
The final element was not, in fact, successfully met, but it was a
compromise I was willing to make. By requiring an extra playing piece, I
have added a small barrier to entry. I was hoping that players of First Nations
of Catan would be able to simply download and print the rules, open their
Settlers of Catan box, and play the game. But the Tribe piece requires one
extra step: finding a piece from outside of the original game that will fit
on the game board and be recognizable to all players. However, this is only
a small hurdle, particularly for players who own any other board games, as
almost any piece will suffice. Additionally, requiring the First Nations player to
bring something onto the game board undoes, in a small way, the erasure of
indigenous narratives that Settlers of Catan enacts.
First Nations of Catan accomplishes the goals I set for it, but there are
many other possibilities for the island of Catan. Perhaps the troublingly violent
variant that I had landed on could be expanded upon to create an uncomfortable
reminder of European genocide of American Indians. Perhaps a cooperative
game could be created to allow for a utopian Catan where Settlers and First
Nations learn to co-exist peacefully.
In making this game, I set out to deal with my own discomfort at seeing
problematic and inaccurate history recreated in a fictional realm. This type
of rewriting is commonplace in reaction to non-game fictional texts. Fanfic
and fan movies, for example, are well-established genres as reactions to movies,
novels, television, and even video games. First Nations of Catan made me realize
the possibility of game remixing as a sort of analog-game-based fan fiction. By
using (mostly) the materials provided by the original text and remixing them,
First Nations of Catan allowed me, as a player of Settlers of Catan, to address that
which I find problematic about the original game without rejecting its system
outright.
I am hopeful that players of Settlers of Catan will play First Nations of
Catan and think about the differences between the games’ narratives, especially
European-descended people playing in the U.S. However, the possibilities of
game remixing more generally are most exciting to me, and I hope that by

10. Eurogames and Ameritrash are mutually exclusive categories, often positioned as two extremes of
tabletop gaming. Ameritrash (the “trash” is often tongue-in-cheek) games revolve around military
strategy, incorporate die rolling, strategic movement, and plastic miniatures. Risk, Axis and Allies, and
Twilight Imperium are popular examples. For more, see Board Game Geek’s wiki: boardgamegeek.com/
wiki/page/Ameritrash.
42 Analog Game Studies
contributing to this stream, First Nations of Catan inspires other game-players to
become game-makers and re-makers.
 The Eurogame as Heterotopia
Devin Wilson

In a 1967 lecture, Michel Foucault stated:

In the mirror, I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal, virtual space
that opens up behind the surface…

He then offered this counterpoint:

Starting from this gaze that is, as it were, directed toward me, from the
ground of this virtual space that is on the other side of the glass, I come
back toward myself; I begin again to direct my eyes toward myself and to
reconstitute myself there where I am.1

For Foucault, this synthesis of the real (“where I am”) and the utopian unreal
(“where I am not”) constitutes a “heterotopia”. And in this essay I will argue
that German-style boardgames (or “eurogames”) offer heterotopias similar to
the mirror Foucault uses as an example; they are a sites of constituting ourselves
by way of what we see (or do not see) in their virtual spaces. In so doing,
I will present cases of enthusiasts seeing and not seeing thematic content in
eurogames, scholars seeing and not seeing this, as well as my own way of seeing
the game The Castles of Burgundy through an animal rights lens.

The Mirror Test

Existing commentary on eurogames is most often written by enthusiasts and
rarely by scholars, though academic interest seems to be on the rise. What we
will see is that, though all can agree that thematic abstraction is a hallmark of
eurogames, there is dissent among both enthusiasts and scholars about what to
do in the face of that abstraction.
In the only extant monograph on the genre so far, Stewart Woods provides
a history of eurogames that concludes that their thematic abstraction—while
distinctive—is not of great interest.2 This postulation of eurogames’ effective
lack of theme is demonstrably aligned with the widespread enthusiast

1. Michel Foucault. "Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias." Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité 5 (1984):
pp. 46-49.

43
44 Analog Game Studies
perspective that theme is often a negligible quality of games (even outside of
wholly abstract games like Blokus). For example, popular board game reviewer
Tom Vasel said of the eurogame Vasco da Gama, “Don’t come into this looking
for any kind of theme.”3 But—far more so than with many eurogames—Vasco da
Gama is very plainly about something real: its namesake is a particular historical
figure and the gameplay embodies this person’s biography in non-trivial ways.
Yet Vasel forbids us from looking for theme in this game, insisting that there is
nothing there.
Conversely, Will Robinson describes Vasco da Gama in far more situated
terms, noting that the game’s abstraction erases the violence of the game’s
thematic referent. Robinson looks at the virtuality of the game and subsequently
directs his attention to the reality of the history depicted. He writes:

Taking violent histories and turning them into resource management/

worker-placement games for family audiences creates an ideological fairy
tale. Vasco da Gama reinforces a clean and unproblematic interpretation of
the Portuguese empire with each play.4

Indeed, the question of “what is being abstracted out” is vital, particularly when
the theme is so specifically historical and that history’s violence undermines the
supposedly non-violent interactions that characterize the genre. Ultimately, in
Robinson’s critique of Vasco da Gama, it’s tempting to liken it to a Foucauldian
mirror test at which Vasel fails by not seeing the reality of Vasco da Gama’s real
actions via Vasco da Gama’s unreality.
But eurogames are often not specifically grounded in history, and their
aesthetic potential cannot be exhausted by treating their abstraction with either
dismissal (Woods, Vasel) or suspicion (Robinson). Yes, for many players a
game’s theme will be secondary to its mechanics (however artificial this
distinction may be), and Robinson’s specific suspicion of Vasco da Gama is
indisputably warranted. But what Robinson is performing is not just a
postcolonial reading of the game, but a demonstration that the general
ambiguity of eurogames’ meaning allows players of these games to adopt
diverse perspectives on how to view these games’ themes. We’ve already seen

2. Stewart Woods. Eurogames: The Design, Culture, and Play of Modern European Boardgames.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012.
3. Tom Vasel. "Vasco Da Gama Review." YouTube. The Dice Tower, 5 Apr. 2010. Web.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFLYxGIPu0Y.
4. Will Robinson. “Orientalism and Abstraction in Eurogames.” Analog Game Studies 1.5 (December
2014). analoggamestudies.org/2014/12/orientalism-and-abstraction-in-eurogames.
 The Eurogame as Heterotopia 45
some range of views between Vasel and Robinson, but we can see it even more
by looking to other games.

The Unsettled Meaning of Catan

The Settlers of Catan, arguably the best-known eurogame, offers additional
support to this idea. In the past few years, Settlers of Catan has proven to be such
a groundbreaking phenomenon that mainstream news outlets could not ignore
its popularity or—to a culture raised on Monopoly—its unfamiliar design.
To an even greater extent than what we saw with Vasco da Gama between
the views of Robinson and Vasel, we can see the diversity of perspectives on
Settlers of Catan’s thematic qualities in various publications’ accounts of the
game’s explosive rise to fame. On one hand, an article in The Atlantic has one
fan arguing for “its mass-culture appeal stemming from the game’s ‘lack of
strong setting or theme’”5 and the aforementioned Vasel makes no mention of
theme in his own review of Settlers of Catan either.6 However, a Wired article
reports that an economics professor uses the game “to teach his four children
how free markets work”7 and the Wall Street Journal reported on how Silicon
Valley entrepreneurs are drawn to the game because playing it is “like running
a start-up.”8 Clearly this game—despite its “lack of strong setting or theme”—is
encountered as meaning something, something specifically relevant to the players’
real lives in a thematic way.
But the theme does not emerge solely from the game itself. It is the reality
of the economics professor’s perspective that allows for his ascription of the free
market model to the game. Perhaps more strikingly, Catan is quite obviously
not explicitly about “running a start-up”, but because of its unreal abstraction
and the real predispositions of the aforementioned executives, it is entirely
reasonable for them to read it as being “like running a start-up”.
While Robinson accurately indicts Vasco da Gama as promoting “an
ideological fairy tale” in the context of real history, we can see that in titles

5. Scott Keyes. "Settlers of Catan: How a German Board Game Went Mainstream." The Atlantic.
Atlantic Media Company, 07 June 2011. theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/06/settlers-of-
catan-how-a-german-board-game-went-mainstream/239919.
6. Tom Vasel. "Settlers of Catan." YouTube. The Dice Tower, 20 Apr. 2009. youtube.com/
watch?v=lTV03kCoDIw.
7. Andrew Curry. "Monopoly Killer: Perfect German Board Game Redefines Genre." Wired. Conde
Nast Digital, 23 Mar. 2009. wired.com/2009/03/mf-settlers/.
8. Pui-Wing Tam. "An Old-School Board Game Goes Viral Among Silicon Valley's Techie Crowd."
Wall Street Journal, updated 17 Dec. 2009. wsj.com/articles/SB126092289275692825.
46 Analog Game Studies
like Settlers of Catan, that are less strictly grounded in real events, there exist
fewer egregiously incomplete abstractions. This in turn enables us to see our
own personal histories and ideologies—say, business experience or
macroeconomic theory—filling in the gaps left by the abstraction of the genre.

Farm Sanctuaries of Burgundy

For games to achieve what we’ve come to expect from art, they need to
have specific, personal resonance in the details of how we experience them.
To further illustrate how eurogames, in their abstraction, may allow for this
resonance, I offer an example of how I have personally come to appreciate
The Castles of Burgundy (another eurogame). Here I show how eurogames can
act as a heterotopic space, reflecting back the identities, ambitions, and dreams
of their players through their polysemic components and mechanics.
First, I’ve selected some quotes from reviews of the game that were posted
to the Board Game Geek website, a popular destination for boardgaming
enthusiasts. These selections illustrate how the game’s theme is often (but not
always) assessed:

…a Euro game with pasted theme. Nothing special here, it’s just you are
bla bla bla, controlling bla bla bla, competing with other player in bla bla
bla, to get the highest points by the end of the game to win it.9

And, reminiscent of Vasel’s injunction regarding Vasco da Gama:

If someone is looking for a thematic experience, do not look to The Castles

of Burgundy.10

Yet a large part of the pleasure I derive from Castles of Burgundy is precisely an
aesthetic pleasure tied to my thematic experience with the game. The abstracted
representational aspects of the game (including the game’s rules) appeal to me
in a particular way, and the only explanation for my severe dissention with the
above reviewers and many others is personal difference. Indeed, I do look for
a thematic experience with Castles of Burgundy and I find a satisfying one. It is
this experience which I will now relate.

9. “[Review] Castles of Feld." Board Game Geek. boardgamegeek.com/thread/1144258/review-castles-

feld.
10. "The Gamer Nerd Review: The Castles of Burgundy." Board Game Geek. boardgamegeek.com/
thread/1045641/gamer-nerd-review-castles-burgundy.
 The Eurogame as Heterotopia 47
First, a description of the game: in Castles of Burgundy, players develop
various features of their 15th-century French estates by placing tiles on personal
game boards, while also managing a number of resources such as money and
goods. While this premise offers some quasi-historical grounding, any specific
historicity is arguably lost in the abstraction of its gameplay, unlike in the
precisely (though selectively) grounded Vasco da Gama. It is more like Settlers of
Catan in this way.
Abstractions abound in Castles of Burgundy: the goods are simply
represented by nondescript crates and bags, and “workers” available to players
are simply used to affect the result of a die roll by one pip. The tiles that
players may place in their estates are as follows: special “knowledge” tiles which
change rules slightly for the player, castle tiles (each identical), ship tiles (each
identical), mines (each identical), various buildings, and—of particular interest
in this essay—various types of livestock.
The functions of these different tiles tend to be quite abstract, but the
livestock tiles are of particular interest to me as an ethical vegan, someone who
eschews the use of all animal products and byproducts because I do not consider
animals to be ours to exploit. Given this perspective, I would predictably be
invested in the details of how animals are represented and how I interact with
them as a player.
The livestock tiles come in four species: cattle, pigs, sheep, and chickens.
Each tile has only one species of animal on it, but the tiles vary in how many
individual animals are shown. In the interest of providing an exhaustive account
of how the game stipulates the function of these livestock tiles, I now provide
the entire section from the rulebook (omitting only an example and a reference
to said example):

Whenever a player adds an animal tile to his estate (which can occur up
to 6 times), then he immediately receives victory points (and moves his
playing piece on the victory point track forward). Each tile has between 2
and 4 animals on it and the player receives the corresponding number of
victory points for them. Should the player already have animals of the same
type in the pasture (= a region of connected light green spaces) that the new
tile is being added to, then he scores all times with the same animal type
again in addition to the newly-placed tile…
Important: The animal tiles must be part of the same pasture but do
not need to be immediately adjacent to the newly-placed animal tile. Tile
with the same animal on them on other pastures are not scored.
48 Analog Game Studies
There is no explicit reason stated as to why these animals are on one’s estate.
Given the game’s loosely historical setting and/or today’s dominant attitudes
towards these species, one could conceivably conclude that they are being raised
to be milked, shorn, and slaughtered.
But those specific agricultural game mechanics are not present in this
abstract game. When I play Castles of Burgundy, I stipulate that these animals are
being rescued and protected from the very agricultural practices that dominate
the relationships humans have with these nonhuman animals in reality.
Furthermore, the bonus points awarded when you unite animals with
members of their own species is the only game mechanic related to these
animals other than their initial scoring (which can itself be read as a reward
for rescuing them from the market in which they are treated as resources to be
consumed). The reason for this bonus is never stated, but one can interpret it as
a recognition that these nonhuman animals are social beings, just as they are in
reality. Due to this scoring scheme, the value of these animals literally exceeds
the sum of their parts, which could actually provide evidence against a reading
of Castles of Burgundy that considers these animals as valuable only for their body
parts.
Given Castles of Burgundy’s abstraction (which is typical of the eurogame
genre), these animals can be interpreted as companions, wards, ornaments, or
consumable resources. Given my perspective, I see them as more like wards or
perhaps companions. The game—like much great art, and like Settlers of Catan
as described earlier—can function as a mirror: it shows me who I am in reality
through the materiality of its unreality. In my case, I can clearly (and somewhat
unexpectedly) see my real vegan convictions in the unreality of the game and
its abstract and polysemic components.
My view of Castles of Burgundy, like Robinson’s view of Vasco da Gama,
is grounded in social critique. But the situation I find myself in when facing
the abstraction of Castles of Burgundy allows me to fill in gaps and virtually
“re-theme” the game—without any physical modifications or concrete house
rules—according to my politics. Robinson’s analysis of Vasco da Gama is similar
in that it seeks to revise assumptions surrounding the game’s theme, but it does
not seem to be the case that Vasco da Gama would allow for a virtual revision of
its theme. This does not mean that his or my perspective is better or worse, but
rather that we each arrive at favorable or unfavorable judgments of a eurogame’s
use of abstraction, depending on how we relate to the particular abstraction at
hand.11

11. Converse to my reading of the game, Tom Vasel, in his review of the game, says (while joking
 The Eurogame as Heterotopia 49
Conclusion: Seeing Ourselves Where We Are
In Foucauldian terms, the heterotopic space of a eurogame—like the
mirror—has us “reconstitute [ourselves] there where [we are]”, whether we
study Portuguese history, teach macroeconomics, run tech companies, or live
a vegan lifestyle. The eurogame’s specular abstraction can allow the player to
look at themselves if they are willing to do so. With eurogames, if we can
pass this Foucauldian mirror test, we can open up a realm of personal meaning
previously ascribed primarily to more traditional art forms and more explicitly
expressive digital games.
The aesthetic future of games cannot be limited to digital games, and
eurogames offer some compelling clues as to how we might experience
satisfying semantic play along with traditionally satisfying gameplay. I hope
that this essay encourages players and designers of tabletop games to pay closer
attention the thematic details they might discern in the games they play (or,
rather, in themselves) and the diverse aesthetic potentials therein.
Rules for First Nations of Catan are included in the appendix of this
volume.

about the game’s title) that the game “has nothing to do with burgers”, and he concludes that “the theme
should be put through a meat grinder with extreme prejudice”. He goes on to repeatedly call the theme
“idiotic”, never really grappling with it beyond the superficial fact of its setting. His verdict of the game,
while positive, reflects the reality of his near-exclusive orientation towards mechanics with far less
interest in thematic details. Tom Vasel. "Castles of Burgandy Review." YouTube. The Dice Tower, 27
Oct. 2011. youtube.com/watch?v=cQkAxU9I0wM.
 Queering Girl Talk (The Board Game)
Amber Muller

The year is 1994: Bikini Kill is wailing “Rebel girl / When she walks, the
revolution’s coming” while business women in shoulder-padded power suits
purr about “having it all.”1 In a basement in rural Canada, an intense argument
unfolds:

“You have to put another zit sticker on! You didn’t call a boy and tell him
something gross!”
“Cuz the phone is cut off! And we’re running out of zit stickers!”
“Still counts! Draw one on!”

My brother and I, similarly clad in his shabby hand-me-downs, are playing

Girl Talk while our single-mother works the graveyard shift at a local truck
stop. Girl Talk, first published by Golden in 1988 and then later by Hasbro
in 1995, is one of many board games made and marketed at teenage girls in
the 80s and 90s. Similar to truth or dare, the game encourages conversations
about sleepovers, boys, shopping, and female bonding. When played by two
poor, rural, prepubescent kids, however, it queers the game’s focus on urban,
emphasized femininity and requisite conspicuous consumption that
accompanies it. This paper argues that although Girl Talk is characteristic of a
neoliberal shift in social consciousness that took a new interest in the formation
of female subjectivities and the propagation of a exclusive, ideal version of
girlhood, it can also be used to subvert these tropes through the queering act of
radical play.
First, how do games cultivate and inculcate gender difference? For a board
game to cultivate gender difference between its players, it must differentiate
and typify the characteristics of masculinity and femininity as opposite yet
complementary. These practices focus on natural differences between men and
women, “weaving a structure of symbol and interpretation around them, and
often vastly exaggerating or distorting them.”2 The emphasis in this symbolic

1. Anne-Marie Slaughter. “The 'Having it All' Debate Convinced Me to Stop Saying 'Having it
All.'”The Atlantic. 02 July 2012.
2. R.W. Connell. “The Social Organization of Masculinity.” Masculinities. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1995. pp. 67-86.

51
52 Analog Game Studies
structure on femininity relies on the subordination of women to men and their
compliance to patriarchal standards of beauty and domesticity. Heterosexuality
is paramount to the maintenance of these practices.
In Girl Talk, heterosexuality underscores the entire game. Possible truth/
dare challenges include “name a boy you’d like to date,” “describe the perfect
boy,” and “if a boy you didn’t like asked you out, what would you do?”
The explicit addressee of these challenges is female as the game’s instructions
show: “Let the girl with the longest hair start first. Or, the most beautiful, the
smartest, the youngest.”3 The importance of physical appearance is constantly
reinforced throughout the game. In fact, as the anecdotal introduction revealed,
the penalty for failure to complete one of the challenges is to wear a zit sticker
for the duration of the game. The accompanying materials read “Put that on my
face?! Yuck!” What could be worse than this visible imperfection?
While the game depends on heterosexual motivation, it also involves deep
homosocial bonding. Players are challenged to braid each other’s hair, reveal
best and worst characteristics of their friends, and tickle each other. While some
of these tasks blur the line between the homosocial and the homoerotic, the
normalization of this contact as natural feminine behavior continually offsets
the threat of homosexual attraction. The discourse of emphasized femininity
renders queerness impossible for young females.
Player values are also adjusted to the typical values of patriarchal,
heteronormative sociality. By completing the truth-or-dare challenges, for
example, players receive points. When a player reaches 15 points, she is allowed
to choose a Fortune Card from one of four categories: Marriage, Children,
Career, and Special Moments. These cards are intended to be a fun reward for
the winning player. Whoever manages to first collect four cards, one from each
category, is allowed to read her future in the cards. In fact, the winning girl is
encouraged to add to this fantasy by filling in blanks that are left in the Fortune
Cards. For example, one card reveals “a pushover for athletes, you fall for (school
jock) who will propose 10 years from now.” There is not a single Fortune Card
from the “Marriage” category that does not reveal that the winner will marry
a man. Similarly, every single card in the “Children” category predicts that
the winner will become a mother. While some cards speculate at the number
of children the lucky winner will be responsible for, other cards specifically
discuss physical traits and gender “after three sons you eventually succeed in
having a girl you will name (girl’s name).” Given the limited categories of the
cards and narrow range of possibilities within each category, it is clear that

3. Girl Talk. Western Publishing Company, Inc.: Racine, 1988.

 Queering Girl Talk (The Board Game) 53
the ideal future is constituted be a few key aspects, namely the establishment
of a nuclear family and maintenance of hetero-patriarchy. This alleged choice
between marriage, children, career, and special moments reflects the rhetoric of
neoliberal empowerment, which invariably conflates identity with the ability to
choose between products, people, and corporations.
Girl Talk is the socio-political product of a discourse around female
empowerment that characterized the mid-1980s. Following the perceived
relative success of feminism’s second wave, women entered the workforce in
record numbers. The resulting challenge of reconciling career with familial
obligations became a pressing and topical issue. Girl Talk reconciled this
problematic by promising a natural balance between hetero-domesticity and
the workplace through its “career” cards. In fact, a career is ostensibly a good
place to find a husband. One card reads, “after three weeks on your first job as
a (profession), you’ll meet the man that you will eventually marry.” Yet family
does not necessitate the abandonment of career aspirations. One card reassures
the winner “you will have children early in life followed by a successful career in
(state).” In Girl Talk, girls are reassured that they will have simultaneous access
to both the workplace and the domestic space. The career paths available in the
game reflect the importance of physical beauty. Over half of the “Career” cards
involve acting, modeling, or both. Careers for the players of Girl Talk are simply
an extension of their prized feminine attributes: beauty, a malleable personality,
and cheerful subservience.
The “Special Moments” cards are skewed to privilege heterosexual
romance and the class advantages of conspicuous consumption. In truth, many
of these “Special Moments” are so remarkably inane that they only serve as
markers of future wealth and the accompanying privilege to indulge in trivial
pursuits. Examples include: “You will decorate your future home using your
school colors.” and “You will build your dream house in (city).” The casual way
in which these grand dreams are offered up as potential futures assumes players
of this game are already on this economic track of upward mobility. In Girl
Talk, it is only a matter of time before you are picking out drapes and debating
a pastel or earth-tone color palette. At first this socio-economic coding seems
benign enough, given that this lifestyle is being branded within the context of
a light-hearted, children’s game. But some of the game’s implications appear
far more sinister when considered in a critical context. One “Special Moments”
card promises that “A tall, dark, and handsome policeman will stop you for
speeding and give you a ticket, but will make up for it by asking you for a
date.” For those in poor, black, and otherwise marginalized communities with
an ongoing history of police violence and disproportionate incarceration rates,
54 Analog Game Studies
the prospect that an agent of the state ever offering compensation (especially
in the form of consensual romance) is beyond the auspices of fantasy. But Girl
Talk is not meant for these girls. This is neither the reality that the game reflects,
nor the reality it is selling. Instead, Girl Talk is meant for the unmarked, socially
secure bastion of white, middle-class girlhood.
The emergence of Girl Talk in the midst of the feminist ebb of the 80s
is symptomatic of the loss of a sense of unity within the feminist movement.
Acknowledging the complexity and difference of the female experience meant
the reevaluation of the universalizing efforts towards solidarity (key to the
moments of the 60s and 70s). Despite the efforts of feminists of color (such as
Audre Lorde and Gloria Anzaldúa) who offered alternative theoretical visions
for the moment, the loss of momentum brought about by Reagan era
neoliberalism resulted in political stagnation and a return to the status quo of
gender inequality. Invisible structures of hetero-patriarachy went unchallenged
as commodity capitalism was equated by politicians and business leaders to
social progress. Susan Douglas describes this phenomenon as the dual working
of embedded feminism and enlightened sexism. Embedded feminism is the
mistaken understanding that we are now post-feminist because all the goals
of the movement have been met. “Because women are now ‘equal’ and the
battle is over and won, we are now free to embrace things we used to see as
sexist, including hyper-girliness.”4 In addition, enlightened sexism “is meant to
make patriarchy pleasurable for women.”5 This modicum of pleasure is achieved
through consumptive practices that replace fulfillment with accumulation. Girl
Talk typifies both of these ideas. It brands girlhood as both fluffy, pink-hued
fun, and also as the launching point for a life of heterosexual submission. By
offering players choices between hetero-normative avenues of consumption,
the game trains young girls to enjoy this narrow path of possibilities. “The
fantasies laid before us, in their various forms, school us in how to forge a perfect
and allegedly empowering compromise between feminism and femininity.”6
If, then, this game can be seen as a not-so-subtle attempt to instill hetero-
patriachal values and reproduce emphasized femininity in a generation of
upper-middle class girls, what value remains in critically reflecting on it? The
answer is found in experience. While Girl Talk is a product that is branded
as a having a very narrow applicable market, its very nature as a game relies
on play and meaning-making that exists within the ephemeral confines of the

4. Susan J. Douglas. The Rise of Enlightened Sexism. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2010, p. 12.
5. Douglas, p. 12.
6. Douglas, p. 16.
 Queering Girl Talk (The Board Game) 55
interactive experience. Girl Talk is performed in the moment of its playing
and the game is equally constituted by the game’s mechanics/structure and the
players. In investigating the subject of this interplay in role-playing games,
Arne Schröder stresses that “it is important to take both the narrative and
ludological aspects of games into account.”7 Any understanding of games must
approach them as “both cultural products and systems of rules.” People are
powerful variables within any system. This perceptive is at the heart of
#INeedDiverseGames, an online community of gamers dedicated to promoting
games that reflect the diverse demographics and interests of players in lieu
of rehashing tired narratives of white, male heroics. Although the hashtag
was only created in 2014, the incongruity between player identities and the
limited availability of game instituted roles is not a new phenomenon. Queer
adaptations are as multiplicitous as the diverse array of people who play games.
The context of play matters. In the case of Girl Talk, the trappings of
emphasized femininity were queered when innocently appropriated and re-
imagined by a 10 year-old, heterosexual boy. While Girl Talk appears to exclude
and limit the range of acceptable girlhood, in practice, the game format gives
permission to play with gendered practice and symbolically “try on” otherwise
prohibited behaviours. The intended subject of a game geared towards inspiring
in young girls an inclination to define themselves through consumption does
not account for all discontinuities that other player positionalities may provide.
In parallel research, it has been revealed that although some games have sought
to produce the hegemonically masculine subject, they have failed to account
for difference. In their analysis of militaristic video games as technology for
preparing civilians for war, Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter remark that “Media
audiences are comprised of subjectivities that are multiplicitous, assembled in
manifold and contradictory social formations. Positions inscribed in
games…are not necessarily replicated by players.”8 Interpretation is dependent
on context and the mischievous and otherwise ideologically truant players can
alter the message.
As children, my brother and I did not play this game ironically, nor
were we intending to make a subversive statement about the indoctrination of
gender in children. We were not protesting against the economic exclusivity of
the narratives of success, nor the normalization of the nuclear family. Despite

7. Arne Schröder. “”We don't want it changed, do we?”- Gender and Sexuality in Role-Playing
Games. Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture. 2.2 (2008), pp. 241-256.
8. Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter. “Armed Vision and the Banalization of War: Full
Spectrum Warrior.” Fluid Screens, Expanded Cinema. Eds. Janine Marchessault and Susan Lord.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008, pp. 316-326.
56 Analog Game Studies
this, we did shape the game to fit our resources and desires. We did re-word
dares, expand the rules, and blur the limits of gendered behaviour. He braided
my hair and I called female friends to confess crushes. In the context of a game,
all things became permissible and possible. While a normative and exclusive
version of femininity is packaged within Girl Talk, the free play offered by
its platform as a game allowed players to queer the bounds of gender and
sexuality that form the unspoken basis of the game. While other radical gamers
(like those affiliated with #INeedDiverseGames) are now improvising with the
parameters of classic games and creating new games which challenge the limits
of normativity, I believe that the manner in which my playing experience
anecdotally queers the neoliberal project of Girl Talk is relevant because it
challenges the notion that radical play is a newly emergent concept. In fact,
the very nature of a board game’s materiality begs for players to bend, break,
and blur the rules. Although the game’s packaging states that this is “a game
designed just for you”, for two wayward, country kids, Girl Talk was a game
re-designed just by us.
 Rule Explicitness Between Classic, Modern, and
Computer Games
Kelvin Autenrieth

What do we mean when we say “the explicitness of rules?”1 Here, I do not so

much mean that specific rules only exist when they are unambiguous, but rather
that all players have the complete knowledge of the rules at their disposal. This
makes so-called “classic games” different from computer games. In computer
games, the rules can be opaque, as they are – as program code – not visible to
the player. In those games, the rules are gradually made available to the player.
When a player playing a racing game presses the up arrow key and her car
begins to accelerate, then she presumes the existence of a rule: the pressing of
the up arrow key lets the car accelerate. Through repeated successful attempts,
she reinforces this knowledge. Indeed, it might now just so happen that the
motor suddenly explodes, and then – in this case – that rule simply no longer
applies. It is at this moment that the player refines the definition of the rule
to herself: pushing on the up arrow key lets the car accelerate, except when
the motor has exploded. Furthermore, she might imagine further exceptional
cases: a flat tire, or an oil slick. Within a process virtually paradigmatic for all
video games, a player gradually figures out the rules system as she plays. Ulrich
Schädler describes such games as inductive:

“Here the issue isn’t executing specific game moves based on known moves,
but rather learning to find one’s way in the game based on the consequences
of one’s own choices.”2

Schädler’s differentiation between inductive and deductive games corresponds

with Jesper Juul’s differentiation between games of emergence and games of
progression.3 Classic games are purely emergent, meaning that the requirements

1. This post is excerpted in translation from: Kelvin Autenrieth. Spiele und ihre Regeln: Eine Analyse
klassischer Spiele. Masterarbeit. Leipzig: Universität Leipzig, 2011.
2. Ulrich Schädler. "Induktion statt Deduktion. Neues Denken für neue Spiele." Spielen: Zwischen
Rausch und Regel. Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, et al., eds. Dresden: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2005, pp.
94–108, here 102.
3. Jesper Juul. Half-real: Video games between real rules and fictional worlds. Cambridge, MA: MIT
University Press, 2005, pp. 67-83.

57
58 Analog Game Studies
and the appeal of the game do not so much consist in deciphering the system
(in terms of its functions), but rather having knowledge about the system from
the outset and then using this knowledge in a clever way. Games of progression
obviously require the continuous deciphering of new functions within the
game.
Whereas computer games tend to give an impression of contingency – in the
sense of arbitrariness – one encounters mere probabilities in classic games. What
is the difference? Events of probability and events of contingency are different
from each other in terms of the possible occurring events each permits, as well
as the expectancy values they yield. The possible results of a six-sided die throw,
for example, are the results: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6. Their expectancy values each
amount to 1/6. With a contingent event, on the other hand, the possible results
as well as their probabilities of occurrence are simply less clear.
Let’s imagine a digital six-sided die. When you press a button, a number
appears on the display. Now you don’t technically know in advance which
results are possible, and with which expectancy values. When you see a “3” five
times in a row, you might conclude that in 100% of all cases, the result of “3”
would come up. But when the display showed the words “blue” or “no,” what
would be the possible space for events? And what are the expectancy values?
As a consequence, there is a strong subjective component when appraising
whether a game really implies contingency or mere probability. This is obvious
in more recently designed games, in which players draw action cards from a
hidden card deck.
If someone plays her first game of Monopoly (1936; 2014) the Chance and
Community Chest cards will possibly surprise her, because she did not account
for – and/or could have possibly accounted for – the occurrence of these kinds
of special events in the game. Whether or not a game result is calculable or
predictable is greatly dependent on the player’s knowledge. After a few games
of Monopoly, the player will be able to recognize most of the cards and gets
a sense of the kind of possible events; advancing spaces, going back spaces,
getting cash, losing cash. Even when she does not concretely know all possible
cards, unfamiliar new cards are no longer a surprise for her, because she has
already learned the realm of possibility for events in the game. This preserves the
balance of the game. When a player draws card that says “You have just lost the
game,” the game surprises this player with a deus ex machina. Because despite all
the unpredictability that one can account for, the preservation of game balance
appears in the form of a certain common sense. A game event like “Take 100
dollars from another player or take 1000 dollars from another player” is so
nonsensical, that it is already certain beyond a doubt what – given “rational”
 Rule Explicitness Between Classic, Modern, and Computer Games 59
play of the game – the player will choose to do. A game event like “Suddenly,
all of the other players lose their houses and hotels due to an earthquake” would
surprise players because it is an extremely powerful game event that also can
ad hoc determine the game outcome. If there were to be a water main break
which put three adjacent buildings out of action for a round, this would hardly
surprise anyone, because this game event correlates in some abstract form to the
player’s prior knowledge of games. It is also important to differentiate between
the formal and the representative levels of a game event. After all, the event
description might seem profoundly strange. Instead of a water main break, let’s
say that the houses were instead occupied by Huey, Dewey and Louie, who
have uncharacteristically threatened to shoot some hostages. The SWAT team
needs a round, to eliminate the three terrorists. Almost no player would be able
to account for a Monopoly game event with this description, despite the fact that
the hostage situation mirrors the water main break on the formal level.
Classic games distinguish themselves through the fact that the players
already have knowledge about the possible game events as well as their
expectancy values. They know which possible consequences are implied by
their actions.
Many modern games, however, might be characterized as edge cases in this
schema, especially if they have many different action and event cards that do
not necessarily presuppose prior knowledge of their existence. The collectible
card game (CCG) Magic: The Gathering (1993) consists of over 10,000 different
playing cards, each of which feature numerous different attributes. In order to
successfully play the game, a great degree of combined knowledge is required.
Only through the completion of the game of progression, that is the acquisition
of system-level knowledge, is the game of emergence even possible. Even if one
knows all the cards as well as the general trends in the game’s rules, that still
does not mean that one can play Magic well. Yet this is the prerequisite for
developing any strategies whatsoever.
Furthermore, most – but not all – computer-based games are not classic
games, because it is fundamentally unclear if internal rule systems are at play.
Nevertheless, only with a glance at the real rule system – likely the program
code itself – is it clear what kind of game it actually is. Instead of building a
traditional differentiation, such as parlor games vs. computer games, it seems
more productive to fall back on the difference between progressive and emergent
games, such that the concept of emergence at play here corresponds with the
explicitness of the rules themselves.
*Translated from the German by Evan Torner
 Learning to Evaluate Analog Games for
Education
Peter Wonica

We have recently seen a resurgence of board games designed to educate or help

elucidate complex real life problems and systems. Board games offer unique
attributes, such as portability, cost effectiveness, and accessibility that make
them ideal for different informal learning settings. Scholars and developers
are both working together to find settings where analog educational games
can better serve populations than digital games. Games for a New Climate,
a project led by Parsons School of Design and the Red Cross uses analog
games to educate communities in developing countries about climate disaster
preparedness and decision making.1 Mohini Dutta and Ben Norskov of
Antidote Games develop board games to teach people about complex topics,
such as Broken Cities (2011),2 a game about pollution, and Bitten! (2012),3 a
game about malaria. An example of a game in more traditional learning settings,
KEEP COOL,4 is a board game designed to teach about issues related to climate
change in college environments. The growth of these educational board games
creates new opportunities for learning experiences, but also new avenues for
research on how games provide transformative experiences. This paper offers
strategies for evaluating the educational efficacy of analog games so that they
can be better implemented into classroom environments.
While there are scholars and developers creating educational works, there
are also educators, with a background outside of game design, developing titles
often based on the mechanics of popular games. Games such as My Gift of
Grace (2014),5 covering end of life issues, Talk the Talk (2014),6 a game about
adolescent sexual health, and Before the Storm (2009),7 a game about disaster

1. PETLab, Red Cross Climate Center. Games for Disaster Preparedness. http://petlab.parsons.edu/
redCrossSite/index.html
2. Mohini Dutta, Ben Norskov. Broken Cities. Nordic Climate Festival, 2011.
3. Mohini Dutta, Ben Norskov. Bitten!. United Nations Federation for Climate Change, 2012.
4. Klaus Eisenack. “A Climate Change Board Game for Interdisciplinary Communication and
Education”. Simulation and Gaming. Volume 44 2.3, pp. 328-348.
5. The Action Mill. My Gift of Grace. 2014. http://mygiftofgrace.com
6. Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health. Talk the Talk. 2014. http://icah.org/resource/talk-the-talk/
7. Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health. Talk the Talk. 2014. http://icah.org/resource/talk-the-talk/

61
62 Analog Game Studies
preparedness, are recent examples of educational card games that are heavily
influenced by the popular party game, Apples to Apples (1999).8 With a simple
gameplay model that can be easily adapted to different themes and situations,
Apples to Apples has proved popular with educators as a means to produce
playful learning environments. Yet, for all of the design opportunities afforded
by analog games, it is important to ensure that educators and facilitators, when
developing games for the classroom, are using a framework that has been
evaluated for its educational potentials.
Apples to Apples serves as a starting framework for creating educational
card games through its accessible, modifiable nature and its ability to provoke
engaging conversations. Thus, this paper will demonstrate that while Apples
to Apples can be an accessible framework for educators developing their first
games, there are faults in the original gameplay that reduce its educational
impact according to current theories of learning and motivation. In order to
address these concerns, the addition of simple board game mechanics, such as
resource management and negotiation, can improve the social and pedagogic
potentials of this framework. Before the Storm, a collaboration between PETLab
and the Red Cross Climate Center, is a case study in how a game can improve
upon the Apples to Apples framework just by adding a few simple rules.

Party Games: An Educator’s Best Friend

Apples to Apples is a popular card-based party game in which individuals must
play cards in response to a prompt. For example, if a prompt card says “Risky,”
players must choose a series of nouns that best fit that word or phrase. The
interaction is heavily socially mediated, as a judge decides which one of the
cards is best based on their own personal, and potentially arbitrary, criteria. This
gameplay model, while simple, is an excellent way to create conversation, and
is often a great icebreaker as well. The simplicity of the game has thus inspired
many educators to develop their own versions of it, as theming the game is
often a simple replacement of text on cards. Games such as Talk the Talk, My Gift
of Grace, The Metagame, and other examples show how different themes such
as adolescent sexuality, end of life scenarios, and culture, can be grafted onto
this framework. But while this analog framework is nothing if not flexible, it’s
important for educators to ensure that it reflects a mature stage of development,
rather than early experimentation, especially since many of these games are
involved in potentially sensitive situations with clients and patients.

8. Matthew Kirby, Mark Osterhaus. Apples to Apples. Mattel, 1999.

 Learning to Evaluate Analog Games for Education 63
Trying to fit the Apples to Apples gameplay into a current model of
educational games is difficult due to the digital bias in many of these
frameworks. Educators and developers must find a common ground to
collaborate upon and the digital infrastructure of many educational games
stands as yet another hurdle to be overcome in the process. As game scientist
Sylvester Arnab notes, “game designers and educational experts do not usually
share a common vocabulary.”9 While the field of educational games is growing,
it remains fragmented without a consistent and definitive model that is
accessible to non-game designers.
Many models for understanding serious games often presume high levels
of digital interaction, such as the Game Achievement Model,10 or the Sandbox
Serious Games model (both of which heavily emphasize virtual environments
and multimodal storytelling).11 When considering these models, narrative
focused adventure games such as Grim Fandango (1998)12 serve as examples of
the Game Achievement Model. Additionally, open world games are examples of
the Sandbox Serious Games Model, such as The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion (2006),
or the First Person Cultural Trainer (Zielke et al).13 While there are frameworks
established for understanding how digital games can be provocative,
educational, and transformative, there is a lack of established models for
understanding the educational potentials of analog games in the same way.
The normative practice for developing educational analog games is to
inject educational aspects into commercial games. Educators often simply add
educational attributes to current board games in a way that “introduces tasks
that are irrelevant to game mechanics.”14 For example, while having to solve
addition problems in order to move a Checkers piece tests rote memorization
and recall, it has nothing to do with the game of Checkers. By attaching an
“exogenous fantas[y]”, games like these impose an “educational sugar coating”
on top of an already present design.15 By providing educators with a stronger

9. Sylvester Arnab, Theodore Lim et al. “Mapping learning and game mechanics for serious games
analysis." British Journal of Educational Technology 46.2, pp. 391-411.
10. Alan Amory, Robert Seagram. "Educational game models: conceptualization and evaluation: the
practice of higher education." South African Journal of Higher Education 17.2 (2003), pp. 206-217.
11. Francesco Bellotti, Riccardo Berta, et al. "A task annotation model for sandbox serious games."
Computational Intelligence and Games (2009), pp. 233-240.
12. Tim Schafer, Bret Mogilefsky. Grim Fandango. LucasArts, 1998.
13. First Person Cultural Trainer is a serious game designed to teach cultural sensitivity for the
military.
14. Rachael Helps. “How to Make Checkers Boring”. The Ludi Bin, 2014. http://www.ludibin.com/
2014/07/how-to-make-checkers-boring.html
64 Analog Game Studies
set of evaluative criteria, the games they devise can have a greater impact on
learners, by situating them in immersive, thematic, and evocative experiences.
Apples to Apples can be a framework that helps educators understand best
practices for the development of educational games. Instead of memorizing
content, players use social games like Apples to Apples as a means to experiment
with real life boundaries and situations. It provokes what is commonly referred
to as socially negotiated play, which is “the idea that players determine the
rules and the pace” of gameplay.16 In other words, players modify their own
gameplay experiences to suit their own needs and culture. This sense of latitude
allows games to become performances where “social dilemmas and challenges
… provide opportunities for behavior rehearsal, collaboration, and self
reflection.”17 The goal of these games is not the rote memorization of facts and
information, instead socially negotiated play allows for people to explore ideas
and topics within a safe environment mediated by play.

Putting Apples to Apples to the Test

In order to evaluate the efficacy of socially negotiated play in Apples to Apples,
we must draw on prior frameworks for understanding learning and motivation
in games. This study draws on emerging research which connects game
attributes to their impact on motivation and learning. Motivation and learning
scholars aim to better link game attributes and learning outcomes. In a survey
of 39 game attributes, researchers determined that six were the most influential
in learning and engagement in serious games: fantasy, rules/goals, sensory
stimuli, challenge, mystery, and control.18 Below is an evaluation of the game
mechanics of Apples to Apples and how they correspond to these attributes
(Figure 1). I developed this table by comparing the definitions of each attribute
to the rules of Apples to Apples.19 For all of the ways it engages players well in
socially motivated play, Apples to Apples falters on many of these core attributes.

15. Brad Paras. “Game, Motivation, and Effective Learning: An Integrated Model for Educational
Game Design”. DiGRA 2005: Changing Views.
16. Gifford Cheung, Alison Lee, et al. "Dispensable, Tweakable, and Tangible Components
Supporting Socially Negotiated Gameplay." Games and Culture 8.4, pp. 259-288.
17. Robyn Hromek, Sue Roffey. "Promoting social and emotional learning with games:" It's fun and
we learn things"." Simulation & Gaming 40 (2009), pp. 626-644.
18. Rosemary Garris, Robert Ahlers. "A game-based training model: Development, application, and
evaluation." Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation & Education Conference, Orlando, FL. 2001.
19. As established by Rosemary Garris and Wendy Bedwell. See Wendy L Bedwell, Kyle Heyne, et al.
"Toward a taxonomy linking game attributes to learning an empirical study." Simulation & Gaming 43.6
(2012), pp. 729-760.
 Learning to Evaluate Analog Games for Education 65

Figure 1: A Chart by the author evaluating the learning goals of Apples to Apples.

One problem this chart reveals is that because Apples to Apples focuses so much
on the social aspect of the game, many traditional board game attributes such
as challenge and control are lost in the gameplay experience. While minor
66 Analog Game Studies
simulation elements often provide board games the opportunity to explore
social dynamics, economy, and ideology, such rules are not present within
Apples to Apples. This is not to say that Apples to Apples should be turned into
an economics simulation, but instead that the framework can draw inspiration
from other board games in ways that compliment the socially negotiated play
that makes it an engaging experience.
Talk the Talk, a game about adolescent sexual health, shows how Apples
to Apples can be adapted to provoke an increased interest in the topic. It
does this through mechanics that represent many of the virtues of socially
motivated play, encouraging players to take on the role of characters confronted
with sexual health issues. While this sense of role-play and conversation can
be transformative and freeing, there is also a degree to which the game’s
social mechanics lead to a less controlled experience that is more comical than
informational. For example, a scenario posed from Talk the Talk states “My
boyfriend thinks I’m cheating on him and wants to go through my phone.
Do you have advice about (insert card).” Certain cards such as “Blogger,”
“Cheerleader,” and “Likes to Take Selfies” simply don’t fit into this formula
and force players to rely on heavy argumentation skills to make them valid in
this context. Despite these anomalies, many other cards present an opportunity
for a conversation. However, these conversations often rely on the idea that
many people in the group are already informed about the issues addressed by
these cards, or even more tellingly, that there is a trained facilitator present in
the group to control and steer conversation. The above framework suggests
that improving aspects of challenge and control (originally absent in the Apples
to Apples framework) can positively impact one’s educational experience. It is
important to understand the limitations of the Apples to Apples framework, so
we can find paths to improve upon it in engaging, yet accessible ways.
One game which expands on this framework successfully is Before the
Storm (2009). Here, a fantasy scenario is created where players must role-
play a community facing potential climate disasters. Before the Storm takes the
core mechanics of Apples to Apples and includes a minor layer of resource
management and negotiation. Players take the role of a community preparing
for upcoming natural disasters. Instead of responding to just one “Prompt”
card, players must respond to a sequence of cards of growing intensity. Players
recommend actions to be taken to address immediate problems, such as a light
shower, culminating with a long term forecast of severe flooding. Even though
a judge decides on the best actions to be taken from the players’ cards, the
judge’s decision can be challenged by the players though a vote, adding yet
 Learning to Evaluate Analog Games for Education 67
another layer of social dynamics. The game includes resource management as
players must work with a set of finite resources when planning for different
forecasts. Negotiation takes place when players debate their decisions, leading
this game to better integrate thematic mechanics within the game’s design.
These additional rules encourage players to think critically about climate
change, forcing them to negotiate their social interests with a set of finite
resources. In this way, Before the Storm takes the general idea of Apples to
Apples and alters its dynamics of challenge and control in order to modify the
shortcomings of the original model.
With the inclusion of these two mechanics, Before the Storm becomes an
excellent example of how the Apples to Apples framework can be modified
according to some basic educational principles. By incorporating minor
elements of chance, challenge, and negotiation, additional complexity is added
to the experience. In this way, the game maintains the socially negotiated
nature of gameplay that makes Apples to Apples an engaging experience, yet
offers new attributes that were lacking in the original framework. Fortunately
analog games are easily modified, and, as such, we educators can strive to
use frameworks such as the chart offered in Figure 1 to consider how to best
incorporate games in the classroom.
Pen and Paper
 Out of the Dungeons: Representations of Queer
Sexuality in RPG Source Books
Jaakko Stenros & Tanja Sihvonen

In this article, we are asking why representations of LGBTQ themes and

characters have been so scarce in the context of role-playing games. A
preliminary analysis of the first three decades (1974–2005) of English language
RPG source material shows that when the topic has not been silenced
altogether, it has been met with reactions that seem humorous or extreme in
hindsight. Our aim here is to map an alternative history of role-playing game
source books, one that pays attention to queer sexualities, and connect these
representations to other cultural spheres.

Introduction
Games that deal with sexuality are few and far between, and games that deal
with non-normative sexualities are even less common. Generally speaking,
games and game worlds have not been inclusive of individuals or themes
that are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ; for practical
reasons, we will use ‘queer’ to refer to LGBTQ in this article).1 Explicitly queer
content has started to appear only relatively recently in genres where sexuality
is considered relevant for the portrayal of the fictional world or the characters
inhabiting it, such as simulation and role-playing games.2
Although there is substantial research on role-playing games and player
cultures that surround them,3 non-normative sexualities seems to be a topic
that still calls for initial study. Furthermore, the various histories written on

1. Note also that the article uses terminology found in the research material, some of which is not
considered appropriate or correct today.
2. Adrienne Shaw. “Talking to Gaymers: Questioning Identity, Community and Media
Representation.” Westminster Papers, 9.1, 2012, pp. 67–89.
3. For examples, see: Gary Alan Fine. Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1983. Daniel Mackay. The Fantasy Role-Playing Game: A New
Performing Art. Jefferson: McFarland, 2001. Sarah Lynne Bowman. The Functions of Role-Playing
Games. How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems and Explore Identity. Jefferson:
McFarland, 2010. Markus Montola. On the Edge of the Magic Circle. Understanding Role-Playing and
Pervasive Games. Doctoral dissertation, University of Tampere. Tampere: Tampere University Press,
2012.

71
72 Analog Game Studies

A Wilder from White Wolf’s Changeling: The Dreaming (1997).

role-playing games are mostly silent on the topic as well; gender is sometimes
discussed, but sexuality is scarcely mentioned at all.4 In the context of digital
games the academic discussion on representation and identification is further
 Out of the Dungeons: Representations of Queer Sexuality in RPG
Source Books 73
along, but since the practices of play are different in analog, social games, that
discussion is not directly applicable here.5
Despite its long history as something that is perceived as dangerous,
blasphemous and alternative, the culture of tabletop role-playing games has
remained fairly conservative, especially so when it comes to social issues.
However, since role-playing games are shared social game experiences that use
textual sources as starting points and not as determining guidelines, the actual
practice of role-playing may have had content markedly different from the
guidebooks. This article, however, concentrates on the representation of queer
sexualities in role-playing game source books, not on actual play practice.
On the basis of an examination of English-language RPG source books
from years 1974–2005, our starting point is the observation that queer themes
have been either completely absent or extremely sporadic for most of the history
of role-playing games. Where the topic has not been silenced altogether, it
has often been handled in a way that seems odd, humorous, or extreme in
hindsight. In this chronological research article, we will track down both textual
and visual mentions and hints at queer sexualities and see how they function
within the context of the game. The instances of male homosexuality – as those
we initially started to look for – as well as ‘queerness’ more generally are then
analyzed as representations in the context of cultural studies and the discussion
on identity politics. Our survey is far from comprehensive, and indeed, this
article is intended as an opening into a new field of study.6

Basics of Role-playing Games

When analyzing characters in role-playing games, one of the most important
things to consider is the function of the character position. Game characters
vary from being a near-invisible tool (almost like a cursor on the screen) used to
implement changes on the game world, to a complex depiction of beings akin
to real-like humans with rich personal histories. This progression from a cursor

4. Michael J. Tresca. The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games. Jefferson: McFarland, 2010. Jon
Peterson. Playing at the World. A History of Simulating Wars, People and Fantastic Adventures from
Chess to Role-Playing Games. San Diego: Unreason Press, 2012. Shannon Appelcline. Designers &
Dragons. A History of the Roleplaying Game Industry. Silver Spring: Evil Hat Productions, 2015.
5. Adrienne Shaw. Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015. Anna Anthropy. Rise of the Videogame Zinesters:
How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Drop-outs, Queers, Housewives, and People Like
You Are Taking Back an Art Form. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2012.
6. Indeed, we encourage readers who are aware of queer representations in role-playing game source
books not mentioned in this article to contact the authors.
74 Analog Game Studies
to an avatar to a possible person is tied to the game context. Genre, theme, and
general aim of the game play an important part in setting up the context. For
example, games focusing on exploration of terrain and violent conquest have
less use for multifaceted character constructs than games examining societal
issues or simulating alternative social structures.
Today’s role-playing games span this whole spectrum. In fact, as the term
“role-playing game” (RPG) suggests, one of the most important aspects of
the RPG is ‘playing a role’, adopting and adapting characteristics in order to
become someone else for the purposes of a game. However, role-playing games
are not always about nuanced character study. In the dawn of role-playing
games, play consisted mainly of fighting, exploration of space and adventure,
while character development referred to measurable statistics, not growth of
a personality. Furthermore, this tradition is still alive and well, even if it is
nowadays only one approach to role-play among many.
In the 1970s and 1980s, role-playing games were generally not dealing
with societal themes. When RPGs were attacked as subversive and dangerous,
the defense was that they were simply make-believe and imagination.7
Considering the context where role-playing games emerged – a male-
dominated wargaming community – it is not surprising that the themes
concerning sexuality or gender were not dealt with in the source books. Jon
Peterson’s meticulous history of the roots of the original Dungeons & Dragons
(1974), Playing at the World, notes that the wargaming community that the
role-playing hobby grew from was a particularly conservative youth culture.8
Sexuality was hinted at in the earliest publications, but those instances were
quickly removed in later editions. It seems that role-playing games and their
source books in the 1970s were based on rather conservative and conformist
values.
Indeed, the role-playing hobby acquired its reputation as a dangerous
subculture in the 1980s based on its alleged flirting with demon worshipping,
not its sexual open-mindedness. A case in point of this is the coverage of role-
play conventions by the popular press. For instance, Michelle Nephew notes
in her dissertation Playing with Power how this kind of reportage tends to
show “aging boys” as awkward and desexualized – while often also including
a picture of a token woman, scantily clad. In the popular media, both role-
playing games and their players have been considered remarkably asexual for a

7. See, for example, Gary Gygax quoted in Michelle Nephew. Playing with Power: The Authorial
Consequences of Roleplaying Games. Doctoral dissertation, The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee,
2003.
8. Peterson, 2012.
 Out of the Dungeons: Representations of Queer Sexuality in RPG
Source Books 75
long time. Indeed, portrayals of Dungeons & Dragons in the media often act as
shorthand for males who are overweight, socially awkward, living with their
parents – and perpetually single.
The objectified and sexualized women in the visual material commonly
associated with role-playing source books have been there from the very
beginning. Bare female breasts can be found from the very first edition of
D&D. However, there was a clear move away from such sexist imagery by
the late 1970s, coinciding with a debate on female character and players.9
Although sometimes used in imagery, sexual themes did not proliferate in role-
playing games. Alas, sexuality was not the only essential element of real life
missing from role-playing games. This passage, from the description of clerics
in the extremely popular ‘Red Box’ version of Dungeons & Dragons (1983) is
particularly telling of the attitude of the publishers at the time:

In D&D games, as in real life, people have ethical and theological beliefs.
All characters are assumed to have them, and they do not affect the
game. They can be assumed, just as eating, resting and other activities are
assumed, and should not become part of the game.

We can assume that sexuality is covered by this statement: ‘it should not be part
of the game.’
However, source books and actual practice of play are two separate issues.
Playing of tabletop role-playing games are poorly documented, but Gary Alan
Fine’s ethnography Shared Fantasy conducted in late 1970s amongst role-players
shows for instance that, at least among his informants, raping of female non-
player characters by male player-characters was rampant in the games
conducted by all-male player groups. The source books only provide the
starting point for role-playing games, and they cannot determine player
contributions and the actual practices of play.

Feeling Your Way in the Darkness

Queer sexualities started to figure in the role-playing game books towards
the end of the 1980s. However, in these early depictions, male homosexuality
is presented as especially villainous, traitorous, and deceitful. There are also
a few scattered instances of characters that can be described as transgender

9. Aaron Trammell. “Misogyny and the Female Body in Dungeons & Dragons.” Analog Game
Studies, 2.4 (2014). Online at http://analoggamestudies.org/2014/10/constructing-the-female-body-in-
role-playing-games/ Jon Peterson.
76 Analog Game Studies
or genderqueer – but also transphobic. There is Slaanesh, for example, the
god of lust and excess, who has fluid gender expression and who inhabits the
Warhammer fantasy world (from Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness, 1988).
When it comes to the introduction of queer themes, GURPS (Generic
Universal Role-Playing System) led the way with a licensed game based on the
Wild Cards novels, GURPS Supers Wild Cards (1988). There you could find a
closeted gay homophobe, an anti-hero imported from the novels called Mack
the Knife. Similarly, in the superhero supplement for I.S.T. International Super
Teams (1991), there is a closeted gay man from the Soviet Union (a gay hero
living with AIDS was cut from the manuscript, but published online years
later). Perhaps the most positive mention of queerness is to be found in Bunnies
& Burrows (1992, inspired by Richard Adams’ novel Watership Down), which
contains a passage that describes how a male bunny in heat will hump anything,
including inanimate objects and other male bunnies.

Character description of Mackie Messer from GURPS Supers: Wild Cards (1988).

The earliest mentions of queers in RPG source books are either inspired by
 Out of the Dungeons: Representations of Queer Sexuality in RPG
Source Books 77
mythological or specific fictional texts – or these characters seem to be included
for the purposes of comic relief. As HIV/AIDS was becoming more of a social
issue in the course of the 1980s and starting to figure in all kinds of cultural
texts, hints of it also made their way into role-playing game materials. At times,
the moral panic around queer sexualities was very prominent also in the context
of role-playing games.
The darkest representation of homosexuality at the time comes from
publisher Task Force Games. In 1988 they released a game called Central
Casting: Heroes of Legend. In its source book, being transsexual, asexual, gay,
bisexual, fetishistic, voyeuristic, or necrophiliac are all listed as sexual disorders
and examples of terrifying dark sides of personality.

The same publisher mentions homosexuality in its later works as well. In Heroes
Now! (1991), they have a designer position statement that expresses a wish that
these kinds of abominations (such as being gay) should not be brought into
the game at all. If they for some reason had to be included, these dark features
should be played in such a way that they would be awful burdens and obstacles
which the player characters would try to get rid of. The game is positioned
as having explicit conservative values. When writing about homosexuality and
other “perversions”, the game’s authors declare that a sexual relationship is
appropriate only between husband and wife, all perversions can be tamed and
cured, and using the role-playing game for experimenting with a ‘wrong kind
of behavior’ is a very bad idea:

Despite “popular” trends in culture and psychology, the authors of this book
believe the following three statements to be true:

• Any sexual relationship other than between a husband and wife

is wrong.
• Perverse sexual desires are a form of learned and ingrained
behavior and as such can be controlled, overcome and eventually
replaced by healthy desires and behavior.
• Using roleplay to vicariously experience wrong behavior is a
bad idea.

While we are not called to be judges, it is our belief that those who chose to
continue in perverse behavior will ultimately be held accountable for their
actions. Those who seek to brainwash society into accepting such behavior
as normal are only making the problem worse for themselves and others.
78 Analog Game Studies

Sexual Disorder table in Central Casting: Heroes of Legend (1988).

Tables for random generation of events or effects were a widespread trope in

early role-playing source books. Such tables were places where queer sexualities
and relationship options could slip in as if through the cracks. The Central
Casting books are an extreme, explicit example: in Cyberpunk 2020 (1990) there
is a table where you can end up creating an ex-lover for your character – of
the same sex. Over the Edge (1992) does not have a random table, but a list of
 Out of the Dungeons: Representations of Queer Sexuality in RPG
Source Books 79
examples of secrets a character might have. On the list we can find, “You are
gay and feel the need to keep this a secret”, but also “You worked for the CIA”
and “You are a cannibal.”
Generally speaking, queer sexualities started to break in more noticeably
in games belonging to the cyberpunk genre. A particularly interesting example
of gay male representation is offered by Cyberspace: Sprawlgangs & Megacorps
(1990). In it a homosexual gang called ‘Models’, consisting of handsome male
fashion models, randomly assaults beautiful women in the street. They cut their
faces with knives, then point the finger at them and shout: “Now we are prettier
than you!” The source book also explains that even though all the members of
this gang are openly gay, “they will not ‘stoop’ to prostitution as a matter of
‘pride’”.

These early representations of male homosexuality are interesting in the sense

that clearly there was a wish to bring in more contemporary, “adult” themes
among RPG designers, but handling such matters was very awkward. It looks
like conservative designers felt compelled to include these kinds of themes –
while advising against actually playing with them. It is notable that while it
is strange to read these storylines and character descriptions today, some of
these were ground-breaking at the time of their publication. Later on it has
turned out that there were gay designers working on those games, as well, but
even they struggled with the narrow-minded politics of representation at their
disposal.
There are allegations that some companies, such as Dungeons & Dragons
publisher TSR and Warhammer publisher Games Workshop, have periodically
had rules that banned the depiction of queers. Although such claims are
common, we have thus far been unable to substantiate them. Nevertheless, it
does not take effort to interpret the TSR Code of Ethics from 1984 relating
to rape, lust, and sexual perversions to also ban queers: “Rape and graphic lust
should never be portrayed or discussed. Sexual activity is not to be portrayed.
Sexual perversion and sexual abnormalities are unacceptable.” It has to be noted
that the general acceptability of these themes has always depended on the
games’ target demographics, too. For instance, it is easy to encounter claims
that the sexuality of god Slaanesh was diminished by Games Workshop in 1990
when the company started to address a younger player-base.

A New Day Starts at Dusk

A watershed moment in the treatment of queer sexualities in RPGs is the
influential game Vampire: the Masquerade from 1991. In fact, the whole game
80 Analog Game Studies

Description of the Models gang from Sprawlgangs & Megacorps (1990), an organizations
sourcebook for Cyberspace.

series of World of Darkness (WoD) took sex and sexuality among its main
themes. WoD presented players with an unprecedented array of sexual
encounter options, naturally including bloodsucking as the principal form of
 Out of the Dungeons: Representations of Queer Sexuality in RPG
Source Books 81
having sex between vampires. These games unmistakably targeted a different
audience, one that at least self-identified as more mature and more
contemporary than earlier role-players. As Paul Mason has wryly noted:

[…] Vampire and its successors took role-playing out of its core
constituency (which could perhaps be pithily, if unkindly, be described
as Lord of the Rings-reading social inadequates) and established an
alternative fief – in this case that of undead-obsessed ‘goths’.10

Indeed, Michelle Nephew makes the argument that White Wolf, the publisher
of Vampire, was consistently playing with fears of parents in order to position
role-playing games as subversive.11 The Vampire creators and the audience they
attracted presented themselves as ‘alternative’ in every sense of the word. Black-
dressing “gothic” people obviously welcomed homosexuals and other queer
characters with open arms, even if just to join forces in gaining a subculturally
significant status together.
Over the years World of Darkness-related publications not only included
suggestive queer imagery (such as the opening image of this article from
Changeling: The Dreaming 2nd edition), but they also extensively discussed queer
sexualities. Especially the fictional parts which were meant to set the atmosphere
and exemplary characters could be openly queer and non-normative. The text
of the game is often defiant: these exemplary characters are politically inclined
and they evoke ideas of positive discrimination. There is, especially in the early
inclusions, an air of tokenism as oftentimes the whole point of having gay
characters seems to be having gay characters. Interestingly, one also does get a
feeling that many of these roles are actually written by gay people themselves.
In the 1990s, a lot more positive attributes start getting attached to queer
characters in RPGs. For instance, in many source books from this decade the
special power of homosexuals is being good-looking. These exemplary gay
characters always have more Appearance points than the regular guy. The only
officially ugly gay character in WoD is probably in the first Clanbook: Nosferatu
(1993) clan book. Even gays are affected by putrefactive blood.

The influence of WoD in developing and distributing positive representations

of queer characters cannot be overestimated. In a few short years the depictions

10. Paul Mason. “In Search of the Self. A Survey of the First 25 Years of Anglo-American Role-
Playing Theory.” Beyond Role and Play: Tools, Toys and Theory for Harnessing the Imagination.
Edited by Markus Montola and Jaakko Stenros. Vantaa: Ropecon ry, 2004, pp. 1–14.
11. Nephew, 2003.
82 Analog Game Studies

Equalizer from Clanbook: Nosferatu (1993) is a paradigmatic example of a character that is all
about being gay.

of gay and other non-normative characters became normalized and publisher

White Wolf had proven its open-mindedness and earned queer credentials.
After that, gay characters could be portrayed as evil and strange again, but in
 Out of the Dungeons: Representations of Queer Sexuality in RPG
Source Books 83
a more meaningful and humane manner. For example, in Vampire supplement
Montreal by Night (1997), there is a gay Sabbat group called Queens of Mercy
(that has ties to real world gay history) which beat up straight people. They also
organize rituals for which they kidnap regular people, dress them up, and make
them compete in absurd things like high-pitch screaming. In the end, these
kidnappees are forced to act out the catfight between Joan Collins and Linda
Evans from the TV show Dynasty.

Homosexual Fantasies
While horror, cyberpunk, and some other genres started figuring and
negotiating queer sexualities during the 1990s, the fantasy genre lagged behind.
Dungeons & Dragons remained free of gay influences due to company policy.
Not even the brothel description of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons hinted at
queer sexualities. Perhaps most striking of all is the lack of homosexuality
in Theatrix Presents: Ironwood (1995), which is an RPG adaptation of a
pornographic comic with the same name. The role-playing game is surprisingly
tame, and only hints faintly at homosexuality.
However, all of this does not mean that fantasy was completely free of
homos. Rolemaster: Shadow World (1996) had a gay character and some world
description, although only in the web supplement. In the source book of Fading
Suns: Lods of the Known Worlds (1996), it is stated that the (fairly strict) church
does not frown on any sexual orientation. HârnMaster 2nd edition (1996) has a
table relating to character creation, where everyone has a 10 per cent chance of
ending up gay or bisexual. In Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play, 2nd Edition (2005),
there is an opaque reference to a count having taken a liking to a beautiful
young man. Sometimes the references are so vague that they seem almost as
if coded, and the designers would only confirm their intentions on internet
forums.
The classic Dungeons & Dragons supplement of The Temple of Elemental Evil
presents an interesting case. The original came out in 1985 and is obviously
queer free. The sequel, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (2001) features an
allusion to a closeted gay couple, Rufus and Burne. This is the relevant passage,
describing their habitat:

An inner wall identical to the curtain wall surrounds this main structure.
It has towers with a single gate (same as those in the barbican), creating
an inner bailey surrounding a keep, called the donjon. The donjon has four
84 Analog Game Studies
levels with a grand hall, a feast hall, a huge kitchen, many storerooms, an
apartment for Rufus and Burne, a vast library, and guest chambers.

We think it is fair to say that this quote does not exactly shout gay. Yet the
principal author Monte Cook is sure about it:

It was not the intention of the original creators of Rufus and Burne (who
were PCs together and played through the adventure) that they were gay.
However, it was absolutely my intention to portray them as such in
Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (there’s only the one bedchamber
for them in the entire castle), without saying “and they’re gay,” which would
be silly. (Silly because it’s really not an issue, and because I didn’t identify
straight characters as such.)12

As social mores were changing and other role-playing games started to include
references to homosexuality, fantasy tried to keep up, but in a very covert
way. However, player cultures were still not following the books, and that was
starting to become visible when player creations achieved higher circulation
and visibility due the expansion of computer networks.

Towards Rule 34
In the mid-1990s, as the Internet was starting to figure in the lives of early
adopters, fan supplements to role-playing games began to surface. The tone in
these web publications was playful, as they featured spells like ‘Mordenkainen’s
lubrication’. Some of these had openly sexual themes, such as (the unofficial)
GURPS Sex (1993) and The Complete Guide to Unlawful Carnal Knowledge
(1996). The latter compared homosexual relations to interracial marriages (such
as human-elf) and featured an essay on the topic of, ‘has anyone played a
homosexual character’. It also suggested plot points such as ‘reverse rape’
(described as a gay man raped by a woman). The guide contained a tongue-in-
cheek reference to choices of professions for gay people:

Homosexuals are, however, rumored to be found in disproportionately high

numbers among certain groups, such as adventurers, who have often been

12. Cook quoted from webforum ENWorld. http://www.enworld.org/forum/

showthread.php?157547-Gay-PCs-or-NPCs/page8&p=2746140&viewfull=1#post2746140. Interestingly,
in the computer game version of Temple of Elemental Evil (2003) there is a gay sub-plot (one of the first
in videogames): a pirate named Berham openly flirts with his male gaming buddies, promising eternal
love and worship if he is freed from the hands of his captain.
 Out of the Dungeons: Representations of Queer Sexuality in RPG
Source Books 85
driven to adventure because they couldn’t quite fit into normal society, and
the priesthoods of faiths which require celibacy, since the priests never need
to explain their lack of interest in conventional marriage.

After the year 2000, there was a rush to publish general RPG supplements on
sexuality. Some of these tried to take advantage of the open d20 license, but a
“quality standard” provision was added in time to prevent Book of Erotic Fantasy
(2003) from being issued under the license. The book contains a passage that
recalls the description of beliefs from D&D red box:

Sexual orientation has no impact whatsoever on a character’s ability scores,

fighting prowess, spellcasting, class abilities (with the exception of prestige
classes that might require a character to be one sexual preference or another),
or other mechanics of the game. A gay character lives, eats, and breathes
like anyone else and can be kind, just, cruel, selfish, loving, haughty, or
amusing… just like anyone else.

It is interesting to note this supplement explicating that out of all ‘humanoid

races, humans tend to be the most diverse sexually.’ Other sex supplements
published around that time included a new version of The Guide to Unlawful
Carnal Knowledge (2003) and Nymphology (2003); Naughty and Dice (2003) was
based on GURPS Sex. Some of books had well-meaning and inclusive takes on
queer sexualities, although the texts were seldom particularly insightful.

Four general supplements for sexuality in role-playing games from 2003.

We’re Here! We’re Queer!

In the early 2000s, the representations of queer identities in RPGs proliferated.
Although core fantasy was still largely a no homo zone, most other genres were
interspersed with a wild bunch of non-normative characters, too.
86 Analog Game Studies
Throughout the nineties, GURPS had continued to occasionally feature
setting-appropriate mentions of homosexuality. Usually the tone was very
matter-of-fact, trying not to make a big spectacle of the gay content. Gradually,
queer representations started to become more varied and more prominent.
Particularly, the publisher White Wolf continued on this track with its
superhero game Aberrant (1999), where many of the primary supplements had
prominent gay characters, some of who were also tied to the metaplot of
the setting. Sometimes the representations went a bit over the top, though.
In Aberrant, a wish-fulfillment power fantasy, the wishes being fulfilled are
certainly fairly stereotypical.
In Player’s Guide (2000), a gay superhero gang Queer Nova Alliance is
introduced. Its gang members include a once-bullied nightclub owner from
Ibiza named Ironskin, a drag queen named Glamora, BDSM-related character
called The Master, the protector of San Francisco named Rainbow, and self-
cloning Tommy Orgy. In this game, the most powerful guy in the world, Divis
Mal, also happens to be gay, although he is not a member of this posse.

Transcript of a meeting of the Queer Nova Alliance, from Aberrant: Player’s Guide (2000).

After the turn of the millennium the representation of queer sexualities seemed
 Out of the Dungeons: Representations of Queer Sexuality in RPG
Source Books 87
to start to normalize in role-playing game source books. For example Blue
Planet 2nd Edition Player’s Guide (2000), Love and War (2003), Mutants &
Masterminds: Freedom City (2003), Unknown Armies 2nd Edition (2002) all
feature queer content. It seems that a key factor is the publisher; some publishers
(e.g. Green Ronin, White Wolf, Atlas Games, Steve Jackson Games) considered
queer people a part of their audience. Sometimes the wording in these source
books is still awkward, but the intent seems inclusive, although representations
of gay male sexuality are obviously much more prominent and varied than, say,
those of transgender people.
At the very end of the period under scrutiny here is one more source book
that should be discussed for its progressive, yet gratuitous depictions of queer
sexuality. Blue Rose (2005) belongs to the genre of “romantic fantasy”, and it is
decisively targeted at female players. The world it portrays is based on feminist
and egalitarian principles in the style of Mercedes Lackey, Diane Duane, and
Tamora Pierce. As in these books, this game is rife with sensitive and lovable
gay boys. The source book has names for different kinds of love – heterosexual
(cepia luath) and homosexual (caria daunen) – and makes a point saying that
same-sex love was born in myths before straight love. The introductory
adventure in the core book features young boys who are secretly in love with
each other.13
It thus seems that in the 2000s it is possible to have a strongly queer-
themed role-playing game out in the market, and nobody thinks twice about
it. Whereas in most RPGs queer relations are relatively easy to bypass if the
players are not interested in trying them out, in Blue Rose that may not be
possible. If one would really try, the same-sex couples depicted in the book
could perhaps be interpreted as “just friends”, but rewriting the central world-
shaping mythos would take a lot of effort. Why even consider such an option?
The discussion on the general acceptability of such queer thematics is clearly
indicative of the history of role-playing games, which has not been inclusive or
unbiased towards such content for a very long time.

Possible People
On the basis of our observations, it is clear that the role-playing game industry
has been rather conservative overall when it comes to representations of queer
sexuality. Here we have searched for queer sexualities in role-playing game

13. Another noteworthy RPG source book published in 2005 is Wraethu: From Enchantment to
Fulfilment, based on the Wraethu novels by Storm Constantine. The game features male humans
transformed into hara, an androgynous hermaphrodite species. Sexual themes are present.
88 Analog Game Studies

Blue Rose (2005) mythos explains the birth of homosexual love.

source books, but a key question remains: Do queer characters matter and if yes,
to whom?
More specifically, does representation of queer sexualities – and
identification with and as the characters – matter? Adrienne Shaw’s book
Gaming at the Edge, an ethnography of queer players of offline digital games,
shows that representation and identification are complex issues, and often
players do not even seem to care about representation. Based on just reading
role-playing game source books we are unable to comment if the same applies
to role-playing games. However, if role-playing games are not just about
exploration and conquest, but feature societal and personal themes, then we
would tend to think that representation and identification have to be important
for many players.
The literature on immersion and experience in the larp context supports
this,14 and so does the media panic rhetoric around role-playing games about
players identifying too strongly with their characters and getting stuck in
them.15 One reason for this difference is that in analog role-playing games
the character has a stronger presence and is more personal as players have

14. For examples, see: Heidi Hopeametsä. “24 Hours in a Bomb Shelter. Player, Character and
Immersion in Ground Zero.” Playground Worlds. Creating and Evaluating Experiences of Role-Playing
Games. Edited by Markus Montola and Jaakko Stenros. Helsinki: Ropecon ry, 2008, pp. 187–198.
Markus Montola. “The positive negative experience in extreme role-playing.” Proceedings of DiGRA
2010 Conference. Experiencing Games: Games, Play, and Players. Stockholm, Sweden, 16–17 August,
2010. Jaakko Stenros. “Behind Games: Playful Mindsets and Transformative Practices.” Gameful World.
Approaches, Issues, Applications. Edited by Steffen P. Walz and Sebastian Deterding. Cambridge: The
MIT Press, 2015, pp. 201–222.
15. Nephew, 2003.
 Out of the Dungeons: Representations of Queer Sexuality in RPG
Source Books 89
more agency in their creation and actions. On the other hand, in one emic
theory of role-playing from the discussion forum The Forge, there are different
stances towards how a player arrives at the decision concerning the character’s
action.16 Stances include Actor (using only the knowledge of a character),
Author/Pawn (decision based on player preference), and Director (affecting not
just the character but the environment). It is interesting to note that none of
these stances require identification with the character. In terms of play studies
this implies that role-playing does not need to be pretend play (playing as if
someone else), but can be and often is carried out as object play (play with
conceptual objects, in this case characters).17
Even if identification were to be unimportant, through the concept of
representation it is possible to think about what kinds of existences are possible
in games. In her book, Shaw lists three arguments for representation: seeing
people “like them” in media, seeing people unlike them (in order to educate
about plurality), and seeing who is possible. It is this third category that seems
most appealing to us and relevant in the study of role-playing game source
books. These books are basically game rules; they delineate what the games
and game worlds are like. Having any kind of queer presence signals that the
game worlds can and do include queer people. Opening this kind of possibility
space seems quite important. However, this remains speculation without proper
player studies.

Conclusions
In this article we have started to construct an alternative history of role-
playing game source books, one that shows that queer people have been and
are possible in various game worlds at least since the late 1980s. Even when
the terminology used and values embedded are questionable by contemporary
standards, the inclusion of queer people signals the possibility of such lives in
fictional settings.
For a long while, character actions and behaviors not directly related to
questing and adventuring were not described in the worlds of role-playing
games – or at least in the source books these practices were based upon.
Questions of faith and activities such as eating were sometimes explicitly
defined as not being relevant for role-play, even if characters were

16. Ron Edwards. “GNS and Other Matters of Role-Playing Theory.” The Forge. The Internet Home
for Independent Role-Playing Games. 2001. Online at http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/4/
17. Stenros, 2005; see also Gordon M. Burghardt. The Genesis of Animal Play. Testing the Limits.
Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.
90 Analog Game Studies
representatives of religions and there were rules for the consumption,
purchasing, and demand of food as fuel. As these canvases of role-playing games
started to become more varied, also sexuality began to play a more prominent
role in them. The emphasis was no longer in simply approaching the character
as a cursor in a fantastic world, but a plausible, possible character – a persona.
Yet queer sexualities were usually completely absent from these texts, or they
were in the end associated with derangement, chaos, and evil.
The influence of individual game designers and authors has no doubt been
important, even in cases of many of the representations today being regarded as
rather negative. The context where some companies had strict rules about the
total erasure of queers even tiny mentions may have been important victories
at the time. Even the most fleeting mention, a veiled remark, would signal
that the game world does indeed feature queer people. However, grasping
the importance of such occurrences cannot be achieved through studying the
source books alone. Later the influence of player practices has grown, especially
as the significance of internet has increased – although player debates in gaming
related periodicals were significant from the beginning. It is evident that the
more adventurous material usually emerges from fan forums.
It is worth noting that although the presence of homosexuals has grown
and the handling of queer themes has become more nuanced during the period
under scrutiny, intersectionality is still largely missing. As is evident from the
examples in this article, for example, male homosexuals are predominantly
white. Questions of ethnicity, although present in discussion around fantasy
literature, did not seem to influence queers in source books in any significant
manner during the first three decades of RPGs.
This is not to say, however, that role-playing games would be
disintegrated with the world around them. Relevant to the queer context, the
HIV/AIDS crisis was reflected in RPGs, although much of that was filtered
through horror literature. Instead of being at the forefront of issues of
representation and inclusion, RPGs have mostly followed trends emerging
elsewhere in popular culture. Even the arguably most blatantly gay role-playing
game from the period under scrutiny, Blue Rose, simply continues the thread
where traditionally conservative and conventional role-playing games are
becoming more inclusive due to adaptations from other media, in this case a
specific fantasy sub-genre interested in gay characters. The Wild Cards RPG
was one of the firsts to feature an explicit homosexual character, and Vampire:
The Masquerade certainly owns a significant debt to the homoeroticism of Anne
Rice’s vampire novels.
To sum up, the early role-playing games silenced queer sexualities
 Out of the Dungeons: Representations of Queer Sexuality in RPG
Source Books 91
completely, on the grounds of not being relevant for the gameplay. An
approach that has followed, and that is still relevant, is that of veiled mentions.
Queers are possible in the fiction if the reader pays close attention to the choice
of words. There have also been blatant, agenda driven uses of queers, both
arguing that queers are an abomination, and ones proclaiming inclusivity and
alternativity. More recently, the inclusions of queer sexualities have been more
matter-of-fact, described without underlining – unless queerness has somehow
been a key theme in the game setting. The first three decades of role-playing
game source books have shown us, how representations of queer sexuality have
moved from the complete darkness of dungeons out into the open.
Reimagining Disability in Role-Playing Games
Elsa S. Henry

Role-playing games have a fraught relationship with disability. Take Numenera

(2013) as an example: the game is set in a world where scientists have continued
the project of eugenics, endeavoring to “perfect” the human form. This setting
effectively erases disability from Numenera’s cyberpunk future. Here, disabled
bodies are rendered invisible and therefore undesirable and unplayable. But
while eugenics may lie far from the concerns of able-bodied designers, for
disabled players, seeing eugenics succeed is not interesting. It is terrifying.
Numenera, however, marks only one case where the problematic of disability
in role-playing games is particularly clear. This essay analyzes the ways that
disability is handled within the World of Darkness setting in order to articulate
some common problems with the implementation of disability in role-playing
games.
To address this issue, I must speak to my own experience as a gamer. I
started gaming in my teens. My friends were really into World of Darkness,
which is a role-play setting that includes vampires, wraiths, mummies,
werewolves and other fantastical creatures. That is where I began. This was
my first introduction to the concept of point-based disabilities—my disabilities
were reduced to points. When I was creating my first character, I saw listed
next to things like “wrathful” and “alcoholic,” the word “blind.” Blindness here
was reduced to a flat five point negative. I was blind, but I did not feel like
it was a flaw, I felt like it was just a part of who I was. Blindness is not the
only “flaw” available for players to take. Interested players are offered a veritable
buffet of “flaws” to choose from. Does placing point values on disability really
help players to understand how to best perform disability in a game?
I discuss two specific games, both from the World of Darkness
setting—Changeling: The Dreaming (1997, about faeries) and Vampire: The
Masquerade (1998, about vampires). In each there are various groups to which
players can belong. In both Vampire and in Changeling, the games allow players
to take “flaws” which are related to disability. These flaws include deafness,
blindness, bad sight, and many mental health conditions. Problematically, all
of these “flaws” are boiled down to a number of points. Players can take up
to a certain number of “flaws” in exchange for points that can be redeemed

93
94 Analog Game Studies
for abilities they want. These supposedly “positive” abilities typically relate to
driving, extra health, or attractiveness.
The “flaw” system fails to account for both the real-life struggles of disabled
individuals and the medical science of their conditions. Here is how Changeling:
The Dreaming treats lame characters:

Lame: (3 points, Flaw) Your legs are injured or otherwise prevented from
working effectively. You suffer a two dice penalty to all dice rolls related
to movement. A character may not take this Flaw along with the Merit
Double Jointed.1

There are a number of issues with this quote, but the biggest one to start with
is that of the language. The word “lame” has been used by the medical system
to refer to people with various disabilities or disorders, and historically it was
considered a negative term.2 This term is identified by people in the disability
rights movement, and in the academic work of “crip theory” as problematic and
insensitive, especially given the colloquial use of the word. Furthermore, the
game’s restriction of not being able to also be double jointed with this “flaw” is
a bit harsh given that this is not paralysis, this is a leg issue. No mention of canes
or anything is made, and this is a flat-out dismissive oversight. For example, a
person with Cystic Fibrosis might use canes, cuffed to their forearms and then
grips for the hands below. This does not say anything about what their arms
can do, and in fact, their arms may be stronger from the constant load-bearing
use. One can be double jointed in an arm but not double jointed in the legs.
Restricting such things makes it seem as though a disability affects the whole
body, rather than certain areas. Some disabilities do affect the whole body at
large, but others do not.
When you are a disabled gamer, systems like this feel like they are placing
point values on a large part of your life.
I have Congenital Rubella Syndrome with the full trifecta of symptoms.
I am legally blind, I am deaf, I wear a hearing aid, and I have cardiac issues
that were mostly resolved in my infancy. Additionally, I live with chronic pain
and post-traumatic stress disorder. I have been disabled my whole life, and aside
from the time before the traumatic onset of my PTSD, I have never lived any
other way. For me, being disabled is not just an illness or an inconvenience, it

1. Richard Dansky, Brian Campbell, Jackie Cassada, and Ian Lemke. Changeling the Dreaming 2nd
edition. Stone Mountain, GA: White Wolf Publishing, 1997, p.169.
2. s. e. smith. "Ableist Word Profile: Lame." http://disabledfeminists.com/2009/10/12/ableist-word-
profile-lame/
 Reimagining Disability in Role-Playing Games 95
is an important part of my identity. Disabled politics are my politics. Disabled
communities are my communities. It is important for me that game designers
treat disability with the sensitivity and respect it deserves.
Disabilities are at best neglected by players over the course of a game, and
at worst used as a punch line for a bad joke. I have seen people take “blindness”
as a character trait and never use it. In one game of Vampire, a paralyzed
character claimed that they did not have to actually use a wheelchair because
they were only paralyzed before they became a vampire. Changeling characters
use magic to get out of their disabilities in the same way. For example, a
wheelchair using Mage might simply cast a healing spell on himself and then
walk. Or a cyberpunk genre game ends up with a blind character who after two
sessions decides to get sight augmentations, thus entirely negating the point of
taking blindness as a character trait.
World of Darkness is not the only system that is culpable for mistakes
made with regard to disability in games. Newer systems are also at fault,
and perhaps even in more problematic ways. Where World of Darkness places
disability within the text at a point value system, Vincent D. Baker’s Apocalypse
World (2010) has them listed as “debilities” – permanent flaws to your character
when they have sustained large amounts of damage. While I love Apocalypse
World as a system because of its mutability in the context of queerness
(Monsterhearts) and in the way that it allows for big stories with competent
characters, it certainly does not leave room for playing a disabled character from
the very beginning. By removing the option, Apocalypse World essentializes
disability as a bad thing that happens to you and not a regular part of the
character’s experience with the world.
Gaming is supposed to be fun. But when you start out with a character
creation system which takes something that impacts your life as much as say,
blindness does, and reduces it to a five point flaw, it hurts. It hurts because it
feels a lot like erasure. I have never been able to see myself as a character in a
game. And while some people have gotten to play a variant of themselves in say,
a Seventh Sea (1999) game, I have never done so. I have never gotten to play a
bad-ass blind and deaf character who swashbuckles, or who is a ghost, an angel,
or a vampire. There is little space for disabled characters because games are most
frequently written and played by white, cis-gender, heterosexual, able-bodied
men. Their experiences are frequently limited to the stories they can access, and
the stories that they themselves want to play out.
It is important for people to be able to see themselves in the games that
they play, even if they do not want to play a version of themselves. By this I
96 Analog Game Studies
mean that it is psychologically important to feel as though you are a part of the
universe in which your story is set. One of the games which I can point to and
say that I feel psychologically attached is Wraith (1998) from World of Darkness.
Wraith has never had disability as a part of the system, but the fact of the matter
is that it did not really need to. Here, players take on the role of a specter which
must almost single-mindedly focus their energy around a singular object in the
world – a memento of their past self. This plot structure is accessible to players
of all sorts. In fact, Wraith was meaningful to me because it helped me grieve
my father’s death, and it was meaningful to me because I could see my fellow
disabled people as a part of the game. Death is something that people of all
abilities, creeds, races, sexualities, and genders experience. There is not anything
implicit or obvious about inclusion in Wraith; the game resonates because it
focuses on an experience we all face, death. Other systems like World of Darkness
and Apocalypse World obscure death within systems of coercion and combat,
which in the real world are the vocations of a patriarchal elite.
Inclusion means more than assuming that one is included, it means being
named.
Many disabled gamers feel left out of the equation because implicit
inclusion does not feel like inclusion. Inclusion means more than assuming that
one is included, it means being named. Frequently, disabled gamers talk to each
other within closed gaming forums – such as the Disabled Gamers page on
Facebook. Places where it is safe for us to discuss what we are not getting out
of games, because in the public sphere, harassment is a problem for all of us.
By reducing disabled identities to marginal paragraphs and point values, the
gaming market itself is losing out on a whole group of players waiting in the
wings to play. As a disabled gamer, who works with other disabled gamers,
and who consistently pushes the agenda, the only question I ever get is: “Why
should we bother?”
Well, we should bother because the world of games has changed drastically
since the first publication of Dungeons & Dragons in the 1970s. Where we are
now is a place where we should diversify and accept that our culture and hobby
is growing. We can do this by changing the way that games look at disabilities.
They are not flaws, or blockades to the heroism we want to play out. They
are not antithetical to the adventurers we play, or the knights who save the
realm. A disabled knight is still a knight, her ability—whether or not she can
hear—is a part of her physical representation. Disabilities should be written into
games as a part of the space, a part of regular play, not as a flaw which does not
acknowledge that disability is more than just physical: it is an identity we carry
with us from day to day.
 Role-Playing the Caper-Gone-Wrong Film in
Fiasco
Felan Parker

Like mainstream role-playing games, many indie RPGs situate themselves in

relation to familiar genres and settings from other cultural forms: Tolkienian
fantasy in Burning Wheel (2002), post-apocalyptic fiction in Apocalypse
World (2010), silver age superheroes in ICONS (2010), and so forth.1 A handful
of these games go one step further, however, simulating not only the kinds of
stories told in other media, but also the narrative form of those stories. Jason
Morningstar’s Fiasco (2009) is one RPG that succeeds at this approach. The
game simulates the kind of blackly comic, often excessively violent caper-gone-
wrong films – or what J.P. Telotte calls “fatal capers” – associated especially with
the Coen brothers, but also with Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, 1994), Guy
Ritchie (Snatch, 2000) and others.2 “The typical Coenian narrative,” R. Barton
Palmer argues, “focuses either on pathetic losers whose attempts to make a ‘big
score’ of some kind spectacularly misfire, or on those of more virtue or purer
heart who in their cunning or simplicity persevere to transcendence of some
kind.”3 The text of Fiasco describes the material of the game itself in similar
terms:

“Fiasco is inspired by cinematic tales of small-time capers gone disastrously

wrong – particularly films like Blood Simple, Fargo, The Way of the
Gun, Burn After Reading, and A Simple Plan. You’ll play ordinary
people with powerful ambition and poor impulse control. There will be
big dreams and flawed execution. It won’t go well for them, to put it
mildly, and in the end it will probably collapse into a glorious heap of
jealousy, murder, and recrimination. Lives and reputations will be lost,

1. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Film Studies Association of Canada in
2012. https://www.academia.edu/4530327/The_Set-Up_the_Tilt_and_the_Aftermath_Role-
playing_the_Caper-Gone-Wrong_Film_in_Fiasco.
2. J. P. Telotte. “Fatal Capers: Strategy and Enigma in Film Noir.” Journal of Popular Film and
Television 23.4 (1996), pp. 163-71.
3. R. Barton Palmer. Joel and Ethan Coen. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004, p.
54.

97
98 Analog Game Studies
painful wisdom will be gained, and if you are really lucky, your guy just
might end up back where he started.”4

Fiasco can be seen as a sort of colloquial, playable form of film criticism: the
game must establish certain theoretical premises about caper-gone-wrong films
and how they work in order to simulate the sub-genre in terms of a system of
game rules. Because it produces a simulation, this game system is selective and
simplified. Nevertheless, simulations are value-laden and never neutral, always
highlighting and de-emphasizing aspects of the source system.5 To say that
Fiasco simulates the Coenian caper film means that the game presents a specific
conception or interpretation of the forms and conventions of the films that
inspired it.
I will not rehearse the rules and gameplay of Fiasco here. The rulebook
is concise and very readable, and “actual play” accounts of Fiasco sessions can
be found elsewhere, such as the full session featured in the popular webseries
Tabletop.
In the execution of its gameplay mechanics, Fiasco simulates – with
surprising reliability and verisimilitude – Coen brothers-style fatal caper films.
Rather than adapting any one film or story –although who would not play
Fargo: The Game? – the game is instead grounded in general themes and
principles that are presumed to guide this kind of filmic narrative. Joris
Dormans argues that the rules of a role-playing game suggest a certain style
of play, and are conducive to certain kinds of stories.6 The rules of Fiasco –
like many indie RPGs – are specifically designed to “match” its subject matter
as closely as possible. As indicated by the terminology used in the rulebook
– setups, scenes and acts, flashbacks, montages, and so on – Fiasco actively
encourages players to imagine the story in the form of a film playing out.7 The
paratextual presentation of the game helps reinforce this cinematic framing. The
rulebook and playsets are designed in the style of Saul Bass movie posters (and in
particular, the Bass-inspired poster for the Coens’ Burn After Reading, 2008), and

4. Jason Morningstar. Fiasco. Chapel Hill, NC: Bully Pulpit Games and Amusements, 2010, p. 8.
5. Ian Bogost. Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2006, pp. 98-99.
6. Joris Dormans. “On the Role of the Die: A brief ludologic study of pen-and-paper roleplaying
games and their rules.” Game Studies 6.1 (2006). http://gamestudies.org/0601/articles/dormans.
7. Other RPGs that notably use cinematic framing devices include James Bond 007 (1983) and Feng
Shui (1996). Primetime Adventures (2004), similarly, uses the language of ensemble television series,
dividing the action into scenes, episodes, and seasons, presided over by a Producer.
 Role-Playing the Caper-Gone-Wrong Film in Fiasco 99
the text is peppered with no less than 56 movie quotes and references, ranging
from canonical to obscure.

Poster for Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

designed by Saul Bass. Original copyright held by
Columbia Pictures, 1959.

In addition to a paragraph of “flavor text” to be read aloud to establish the

setting and mood, each playset comes with a handful of “Movie Night”
suggestions suited to the specific setting or genre – the Transatlantic ocean liner
playset lists Bitter Moon (1992), Legend of 1900 (1998), Titanic (1997), Duck Soup
(1933), The Impostors (1998), The Love Boat (1976), Poseidon Adventure (2005),
and Deep Rising (1998).
As noted above, simulations are not direct or simple copies of their objects.
Rather, they translate, adapt, interpret, and represent the source material in
100 Analog Game Studies

A comparison between respective Saul Bass emulations: the Fiasco RPG (left) and the Burn After
Reading poster (right). Fiasco Cover by John Harper, 2009. Art direction for Burn After Reading
poster by David Swayze, 2008, Copyright Working Title Films.

terms of another system. Cinematic conventions can be expressed through the

rule-based system of a game and – in order to be generative of dynamic play
situations – these rules need to produce a specific range of genre-appropriate
possibilities. It is in this sense that I contend that Fiasco is a form of criticism that
presents a cinematic account of a caper-gone-wrong. The game’s conception of
cinematic narrative is fairly structural and formulaic, with plot elements divided
neatly into different categories that interact in various ways. Fiasco conceives of
the caper-gone-wrong film not so much as a sub-genre, but as a sur-genre, a
narrative pattern that can be identified and mapped onto many different kinds
of films. Fiasco, through its rules and textual framing, pragmatically constructs
a category – what might be called the “fiasco film” – making it both sensible
and playable. This simulation is based on three over-arching themes or concerns
that Fiasco positions as central to the caper-gone-wrong film: black humor, fate,
and chaotic breakdown.
While nothing in Fiasco necessarily guarantees that it will generate a darkly
humorous story every time – the game could be played “straight” to tell a cold,
 Role-Playing the Caper-Gone-Wrong Film in Fiasco 101
serious story along the lines of, say, Mystic River (2003) or Heat (1995)– the
paratextual framing and the plot elements included in most playsets certainly
encourage an ironic approach.8 Palmer points to the Coens’ use of “farcical
violence and regional stereotypes” as a primary source of humor, to which I
would add genre stereotypes and Hollywood clichés, particularly in films like
Burn After Reading and The Ladykillers (2004).9 In the supplementary rulebook
The Fiasco Companion, this kind of over-the-top black comedy is referred to
as “gonzo”: “Shooting drug dealers inside a tornado is gonzo,” for example.10
Similarly, the more outrageous moments in films like Pulp Fiction or Snatch
rely on precisely their farcical absurdity to make the audience cringe and
laugh. Even when the game is played with more restraint and grounding
in realism, however, perverse irony and dark humor almost inevitably seeps
into the narrative. Telotte explores the links between the post-modern fatal
caper and film noir, arguing that the sarcasm and irony that pervades Reservoir
Dogs (1992) represents both an intensification of the shadowy, violent visions
of film noir and an ironic distancing from its bleak subject matter.11 Thomas
Leitch contends that, far more than other genres of film comedy, the films
of the Coen brothers depend on their “ruthlessly stylized visuals” – and the
detachment they engender – for humor.12
While Fiasco does not have visual imagery in the filmic sense, Michael
Ryan Skolnik has argued that the peculiar aesthetics of tabletop role-playing
games, contrary to popular discourses of immersion in a fictional world, skew
closer to the anti-immersive, defamiliarizing drama of Bertolt Brecht and
Augusto Boal with their disjunctive flow and self-reflexive
performativity. Fiasco’s system of rules takes advantage of the distanciation
13

inherent in the medium. The game emphasizes archetypal characters and

settings, literally random (and often absurd) plot elements (“Forty chickens in
eighty cages”), with its overall tone and presentation encouraging the kind

8. For more on paratextual framing in RPGs, see David Jara. "A Closer Look at the (Rule-)
Books: Framings and Paratexts in Tabletop Role-playing Games." International Journal of Role-playing
4 (2013). http://www.ijrp.subcultures.nl/wp-content/issue4/IJRPissue4jara.pdf
9. Palmer, p. 95.
10. Jason Morningstar and Steve Segedy. The Fiasco Companion. Chapel Hill, NC: Bully Pulpit
Games and Amusements, 2011, p. 17.
11. Telotte, p. 164.
12. Thomas Leitch. Crime Films. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 279.
13. Michael Ryan Skolnik. "The Anti-Immersive Theatre of Role-Playing Games." Proceedings of the
International Conference for Meaningful Play. East Lansing, MI: Meaningful Play, 2008. Online.
http://meaningfulplay.msu.edu/proceedings2008/mp2008_paper_90.pdf
102 Analog Game Studies
of ironic distance produced by the Coens’ visual style. Leitch goes on to say
that “ambiguity and irresolution are at the heart of Fargo’s comedy, which […]
works by systematically depriving viewers of any single privileged perspective
from which to interpret its outrageous events.”14 In Fiasco, the constant shifting
from viewpoint to viewpoint, the shared control over the setting, plot and
characters, and the jarring mid-game Tilt phase – which introduces new,
destabilizing narrative elements – ensure that the story is never simple or linear.
Palmer claims that “To laugh, we must withdraw from what we witness. Black
humor is always, for this reason, a joke on us as well.”15 Playing Fiasco is as much
about telling bleakly funny and violent stories as it is about implicating each
other in the joke, as players try to cajole and one-up one another into more and
more gonzo plot developments, and still-darker and more startlingly graphic
fates for their characters.
“That the caper might end in death, then, is hardly a surprise,” Telotte
writes of the fatal caper film, pointing to another inheritance of film noir:
the inevitability and unpredictability of its ambiguous world.16 The sense of
“relentless causality” in these stories is paired with a profoundly enigmatic sense
of contingency; fate is inexorable and chance is cruel and vindictive.17 The
fatalistic undertones of the caper-gone-wrong are highlighted right from the
set-up in Fiasco, in which every character begins not as an individual, but
a node in a randomly-generated network of relationships, needs, locations,
and objects. These plot elements in many ways have more agency than the
characters derived from them, as they act upon the characters through the
players, determining the range of possible identities available to them, and
constituting their roles in the story. As Palmer is quick to point out, however:

“none of these films imagines a strictly deterministic universe, whose

inhabitants are crushed by both random mischance and the unreliability of
what knowledge they manage to attain. If their plans fail, and they always
do, it is as much the result of their bungling, irresolution, or venality.”18

Like it says in the rules, “poor impulse control” characterizes most of the
protagonists in a caper-gone-wrong film, and much of the fun of Fiasco is
in making and playing out terrible choices for them. The game is structured

14. Leitch, p. 283.

15. Palmer, p. 101.
16. Telotte, p. 164.
17. Palmer, p. 100.
18. Palmer, p. 80.
 Role-Playing the Caper-Gone-Wrong Film in Fiasco 103
such that, by the time the Tilt comes around, the players should already have
made a series of increasingly poor decisions. If they have not, the escalating Tilt
elements will ensure that they start very soon. As Leitch suggests, the characters
in caper-gone-wrong films are willfully ignorant of “what must seem to most
viewers blindingly obvious generic cues,” choosing instead to continue along
their doomed paths.19
The most direct way Fiasco simulates this narrative combination of
foolishness, determinism, and contingency is the Fate Dice mechanic, whereby
players amass dice that chart the downward spirals (or unexpected good
fortunes) of their characters, ultimately deciding their fate. The Fate Dice are
simultaneously representative of the players’ choices and decisions, as well as
out of the players’ control, since the Tilt table or a low roll in the conclusive
Aftermath phase can thwart even the most well-laid plans.
In the end, it all falls apart, and in many ways this is the aspect of the
caper-gone-wrong film upon which Fiasco places the greatest emphasis. The
game’s entire system is focused on what Telotte describes as the inevitable
catastrophic breakdown of social action and planning in favor of individual aims
and survival.20 Unlike the classical noir, in which the status quo is ultimately
reasserted (however tenuously), the fatal caper presents a deeply enigmatic
and futile conclusion.21 The facade of normalcy in the settings established by
the core Fiasco playsets – a nice Southern town, flyover country USA, etc.
– is violently shattered by the resulting fiasco. The probabilities of the final
Aftermath dice roll ensure that most characters end up somewhere in the
middle, with merely sad or pathetic outcomes, and one or two faced with a truly
horrible fate. If a player does end up with a lucky high roll, it often translates in
the fiction into a deus ex machina that brings them unexpected success, salvation
or wealth. While in other kinds of narratives this would be frustrating, in the
caper-gone-wrong it delightfully reinforces the themes of inexorability and
ambiguity, not to mention the ironic distancing described above. As Palmer
says of the Coen brothers’ protagonists: “They become reconciled to
dissatisfaction. Capable, at best, only of ironized victories.”22 In Fiasco, these
victories are not earned or even intended, and almost always come at the
expense of others.
The central mechanics of Fiasco, the overall structure of gameplay, and the

19. Leitch, p. 284.

20. Telotte, p. 167.
21. Telotte, p. 164.
22. Palmer, p. 39.
104 Analog Game Studies
specific kinds of plot elements that the game deploys work in tandem with the
Saul Bass-style presentation of the game and references to films that inspired it
in order to help players produce a shared, imaginary caper-gone-wrong movie,
scene by scene. The rules and gameplay of Fiasco offer not only a satisfying,
hilarious, and highly enjoyable simulation of the fatal caper film, but also a
compelling, workable and surprisingly nuanced account of the sub-genre that
resonates strongly with critical and academic interpretations. Palmer argues that
the power of the Coen brothers’ films lies in their “postmodern doubleness,”
which allows them to tell the truth “about fiction with fiction.”23 These stories
function as grimly funny, deeply ironic depictions of human frailty and failure,
but also as serious commentary on cinematic stories and the mechanisms of
storytelling.24 By the same token, those strange, intermedial texts that occupy
the intersections between different cultural forms, such as Fiasco, perform a
double function as both enthusiastic tributes and critical interrogations. Just as
caper-gone-wrong tropes circulate outside of cinema, the idea of cinema as
a medium circulates in and through other cultural forms, and Fiasco invites
players to thoughtfully and playfully explore the complex processes at work in
cinematic genre narratives.

23. Palmer, p. 102.

24. Palmer, pp. 81, 102.
Live Action
 The Trouble with Gender in Larp
Maury Elizabeth Brown & Benjamin A. Morrow

While representations of gender have received attention for most media, stories,
and games, the topic of gender in live action role-playing games (larps) is
particularly important because of the degree of embodiment that is uniquely
characteristic of the medium. When role-playing a (gendered) character, the
player’s own body is at play, a fact that tends to constrain the performance,
as both out-of-game and in-game expectations of attributes such as beauty,
strength, leadership, and friendliness create restrictions on what is considered
an authentic, true, or “real” performance of masculinity or femininity. This
standard of believability in larp derives from powerful social norms and thus
tends to reify the dominant gender binary of feminine=female and
masculine=male as well as heterosexual relationships as the default. In this
essay, we will explore the affordances of two approaches to writing and casting
gendered characters in theatre-style larps1 in order to demonstrate how they
each replicate or subvert dominant ideologies of gender and sexuality, and how
larp may open a space for performances of possibility: a wider range of genders,
sexualities, and bodies that portray them.
First, we will address the theoretical foundations that inform this approach
to understanding gender as performance. Next, we will address two styles
of game design in theatre-style larps. Although there are many genres and
styles of larp, we will be specifically examining theatre-style larps that feature
characters that are pre-written by a game designer, as opposed to campaign2 or
boffer larps3—which use player-generated character creation techniques based
on hierarchical attributes in the style of Dungeons and Dragons4 or more

1. Theatre-style larps tend to focus more heavily on role-playing than on live combat, which is the
primary focus of “boffer” larps. Theatre-style larps are intended to be run over a single session of set
duration, which may vary from a couple of hours to multiple days.
2. Campaign larps are played over a series of sessions with narrative arcs that can span several weeks to
several years. These larps are characterized by intense world-building and are often played with very
large casts of characters that may come and go over time.
3. As noted above, boffer larps tend to focus primarily on simulated combat with the use of foam-
padded weapons.
4. Michael J. Tresca. The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland, 2010; Sarah
Lynne Bowman. The Functions of Role-Playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems
and Explore Identity. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2010.

107
108 Analog Game Studies
deliberately experimental or artistic larps designed specifically to explore
gender.5 Within this genre of theatre-style larp, we will first describe
mainstream theatre-style larp design, exemplified in larps run at gaming
conventions in the U.S. and the U.K., an approach in which the game designer
and/or game master assigns gender and sexuality to players by means of pre-
written characters. In contrast, we will then address the newer larp practice of
gender-neutral casting, in which all characters are written as gender-neutral,
leaving the assignment of gender and sexuality up to the player. Based on our
observations as game participants, we will analyze two parlor larps from the larp
convention Intercon (Chelmsford, MA; 2014, 2015) alongside the new popular
larp, College of Wizardry (Poland, 2014). While neither game design can fully
ensure that a more broad performance of gender and sexuality is enacted in
the game, we assert that the gender-neutral design, by giving greater agency
to players in choosing how gender is performed and what kinds of character
relationships are formed, allows for more performances of possibility outside of
merely reifying a gender binary and default heterosexuality.

Gender as Performance
In the past fifty years, sociologists, psychologists, and cultural studies scholars
have demonstrated that gender and sexuality are societal constructs and are not
innate or biologically determined.6 By this view, gender is portrayed through
“language, gesture, and all manner of symbolic social sign”7 and gender identity
is “compelled by social sanction and taboo.”8 Gender becomes a matter of
conviction, composed of a complex system of semiotic signs that produce a
cohesive sense of a singular gender role. These signifiers—such as clothing

5. Some games explicitly explore these gender power structures and create gender-exclusive spaces to
do so. For example, Eliot Wieslander’s larp Mellan Himmel och Hav was designed with the purpose of
exploring non-binary genders and alternative relationship structures, and the Nordic larps Mad About
the Boy and It’s a Man’s World have been run with an all self-identified female and all self-identified
male cast, respectively. A deliberate exploration of gender as a larp’s focus is itself a challenge to
normativity, and these games are an exception to the typical larps, particularly in the United States, that
we refer to here as mainstream theatre-style larps.
6. Judith Butler. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge,
2006; Erving Goffman. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, first edition. New York N.Y.: Anchor,
1959; Suzanne J. Kessler and Wendy McKenna. Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach, reprint
edition. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1985; Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman, “Doing Gender,” Gender
& Society 1.2 (1987), pp. 125–51, doi:10.1177/0891243287001002002.
7. Judith Butler. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and
Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal 40.4 (1988), p. 519.
8. Judith Butler. Undoing Gender. New York, NY: Routledge, 2009, p. 416.
 The Trouble with Gender in Larp 109

Promotional image for College of Wizardry. Photo by Christina Molbech.

style, pitch of voice, and physical gestures—are associated with gender-based

assumptions about ability, sexuality, and behavior.9 The notion that there are
only two options for gender identity—male or female—is a result of gender
performativity, which philosopher Judith Butler defines as the repetition, over
time, of a particular performance, creating an expectation that the performance
continues and a sense of fixedness of identity. Sociologist Chris Brickell notes
that the gender performance of individuals is “subject to the surveillance of
themselves and others” and people “may be held to account if gender is not done
in an approved manner.”10 And, as Butler has noted, this process of surveillance
and approval can result in life-or-death consequences for those whose gender
performances break the categories in some way, which is why representations
of gender are worth critiquing.
The role-play in a larp mirrors this role-play of everyday life, as players
deliver a gendered performance that is “compelling illusion, an object of
belief”11 that is upheld during the game and affects the performance of others

9. Aaron Trammel. "Mysogyny and the Female Body in Dungeons and Dragons." Analog Game
Studies 1.3 (2014).
10. Chris Brickell. “Performativity or Performance? Clarifications in the Sociology of Gender.” New
Zealand Sociology 18.2 (2003), p. 173.
11. Butler 1988, p. 520.
110 Analog Game Studies
interacting with the player. Since the gender binary is the dominant norm
in Western society, it tends to be replicated within the games created by
members of that society. Larp participants tend to know where the boundaries,
expectations, and tropes are for each gender since “rules and norms about what
constitutes ‘competent’ gendering are established, enforced, and changed in
particular contexts,”12 such as in a larp. Indeed, a larp is often designed with
the assumption that its players will know, understand, enact, and enforce these
norms as a way to quickly create a shared fictional space within which to play.
Thus, as a result of taking on a role in a larp, players may become more
consciously aware of the performative nature of gender in everyday life.
Although cultural conceptions of gender performances and the
believability of the material bodies that portray them are brought into a larp
through its design, players in larps have the ability to make choices that can
subvert these standards. According to game scholar Markus Montola, in a larp
“the decisive power to define the decisions made by a free-willed character
construct is given to the player of the character.”13 The player may use this
power to reject the forced choices of a gender binary, and to create instead a
“third space of possibility within which all binaries become unstable.”14 This
space of possibility, however, enacted by an individual player, is only as good as
the shared space of possibility that the players create together.
In order for the player choices to become integrated into gameplay, the
other players must not only believe them, but accept them. Since players
are operating under shared beliefs about a fictional world, there are specific
expectations that players must conform to, lest their deviance spoil the
consensus. These become a set of implicit rules that are used in addition to the
explicit rules and mechanics introduced by design. Implicit rules are enforced
by the social contract of the game, and the alibi of character, and they are often
formed according to the out-of-game dominant cultural norms.15 A player
whose performance is considered deviant by the implicit or explicit game rules
runs the risk of becoming a spoilsport. As historian Johan Huizinga notes in his
seminal text, Homo Ludens, the figure of the spoilsport faces the risk of being
ostracized from the community for “trespassing against” the social contract of
the game.16 Thus, non-normative expressions of gender and sexuality in a larp

12. Brickell, p. 173.

13. Markus Montola. “The Invisible Rules of Role-Playing: The Social Framework of Role-Playing
Process.” International Journal of Role-Playing 1 (2009), p. 24.
14. Judith Halberstam. Female Masculinity. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1998, p. 26.
15. Maury E. Brown and Benjamin A. Morrow. “Building Empathy and Empowering Others
Through Live-Action Role Play.” May 2, 2015.
 The Trouble with Gender in Larp 111
could be seen as spoiling the game. And, as in social situations outside the game,
performances of gender and sexuality that deviate from expectations run the risk
of serious consequences, both in- and out-of-game. Non-normative gender
expressions and sexualities can create a break in the expectations of and faith in
other players, and may therefore become a source of dispute or even aggression.
Larp designers and organizers have tended to deal with this potential for
“gender trouble” in one of two ways: by pre-assigning character gender and
sexuality based on casting questionnaires and player preference (which we refer
to as mainstream theatre style larp design), or by allowing players to choose the
genders of their characters and create the subsequent intimate relationships at
their own comfort levels (what we call gender-neutral larp design).

Mainstream Theatre-Style Larp Design

In mainstream theatre-style larp design, gender is assigned to a character by
the game designer and/or game master (GM), who has certain performance
and narrative objectives in mind. As a result, a gender role is then assigned
to the player who is cast to portray that character. The casting decisions are
traditionally based on the player’s answers on pre-larp casting questionnaires
or on information provided by the player prior to the game, which usually
includes player age and sex, along with the player’s contact information. In
the absence of information from a casting questionnaire (or player-GM
communication to the contrary), a cisgender, heterosexual, male/female binary
gender identity for the player is usually taken for granted by the GM, and
casting decisions are made according to that assumption. Typically, GMs
choose players whose out-of-game gender expressions match the pre-assigned
gender of the character.17 The player then, through in-game costuming and
performance, conforms their own embodied gender expression to the
character’s.
One reason this casting practice remains so popular may be because of its
function with regard to casting logistics for game conventions, where games
have a certain number of slots available, and minimum gender quotas are
used in order to ensure the game can run properly. Casting by gender is
necessary due to narrative considerations, such as for a fixed relationship, or a
plot reveal. In these instances, the game’s design is rarely flexible enough for

16. Johan Huizinga. Homo Ludens. Boston: The Beacon Press, 1955, p. 11.
17. We recognize that sometimes players are cross-cast, with a male-identified player portraying a
designated female character and vice versa. However, this depends on both a negotiation with the GM,
and the player’s comfort level and preferences. A thorough discussion of cross-casting is outside the scope
of this article.
112 Analog Game Studies
a pre-gendered character to be revised by the player.18 Thus, a binary gender
system, and agreed-upon norms of the appropriate portrayal of a certain gender,
become hard-coded into the game’s imaginative space, and become a code that
other players quickly decipher in order to determine how to interact with that
character. These implicit rules tend to follow cisgender and heterosexual norms
by default, as these are not only the dominant gender and sexual expressions
out-of-game, but also may be presented as default portrayals in the game.
For example, in Miss Maypole and the Christmas Pudding Affair a Peaky
Games larp which ran at Intercon O, Maury played Wisteria Asquith-Jones,
who was pre-written as female, age 57 (though a timeless beauty),19 married,
and having a long-standing affair with the patriarch of a rival family. Ben
played Teddy St. John-Smythe, a naive young male who used the Christmas
party to pursue available women until his true family heritage was revealed.
GMs assigned us to these roles based on our casting questionnaire information
and their own preferences for the look and feel of each character, so that their
prewritten characters were brought to life with believability and verisimilitude
by appropriate player bodies and performances. Players were expected to
encode the characters with plausible markers of the gender and sexuality that
were written, so that other players could properly decode them and gauge
their own interactions and immersion. Did Ben look and behave like a dashing
young rake, for example? Did Maury embody the conservative British
aristocratic woman keeping up appearances at a dinner party as things fell apart
around her? Was it believable that her character was “a timeless beauty” who
would be at the center of a love triangle and rivalry? An affirmative answer to
these questions helps create immersion into the scenario and tends to positively
affect other people’s play.
Whereas the characters’ sexual orientations were merely implicit in Miss
Maypole, characters were assigned both a gender and a sexuality in Bad Apples,
which ran at Intercon N and O. In this game, Maury played Nina Reddy-
Murphy, who was a 32-year-old, bisexual woman. Gameplay required Nina to
have relationships with her in-game husband (a secretly gay man), her in-game
lover (a bisexual man) and any “other characters you find attractive,” regardless
of their portrayed gender.20 The character description indicated that Nina had

18. Although some games also have a certain number of characters that can be portrayed as either male
or female without affecting the game’s design, it is usually because those characters are not required to
engage in romantic or sexual relationships.
19. Graham Arnold, Nickey Barnard, Dream Cloutman-Green, Jon Cloutman-Green, Clare Gardiner,
and Sue Lee. “Wisteria Asquith-Jones Character Sheet.” Miss Maypole and the Christmas Pudding Affair.
Peaky Games. February 27, 2015, Intercon O, Chelmsford, MA.
 The Trouble with Gender in Larp 113
had several relationships with other women, was interested in a threesome with
her husband and lover, and in exploring additional sexual relationships. The
game was forthright in letting players know ahead of time that it would include
such portrayals, and GMs made casting decisions based on player preferences as
indicated on an extensive casting questionnaire. Player genders and sexualities
did not necessarily correspond to character genders and sexualities, but for
the performances to be believable players had to have a certain knowledge of
and comfort with portraying non-normative genders and sexualities, as well as
interacting with other characters expressing them. Players sought to embody
those performances based on their own understandings of gender and sexuality,
informed by out-of-game normativities and their own experiences, and then
conformed to the pre-written role. Casting from player preferences indicated
on the questionnaire helped to ensure that players were given a role within
their comfort level as well as to help avoid problematic caricatures of gender
and sexuality that could have arisen. However, since a larp is interactive and
character relationships rely on both parties agreeing to participate, pre-written
sexualities and queer relationships can flounder when there is a disparity among
players’ comfort levels and awareness. Players need to trust each other enough
to risk portraying non-normative genders and/or sexualities as there may be in-
and out-of-game consequences.

Gender-Neutral Larp Design

However, it is possible to use a different game design that writes all characters
without a predetermined and pre-assigned gender, leaving the choice of gender
expression up to individual players. For example, College of Wizardry, a highly
immersive European larp held at a Polish castle, uses the design principle
of writing all 130+ characters as gender neutral.21 This larp was first run in
November 2014, and players portrayed college students, professors, and staff at
a four-day event that simulated a hidden wizarding world inspired by Harry
Potter.22 Maury played in the inaugural run, and both Ben and Maury played

20. Tom Dimiduk, Alon Levy, and Thomas Wohlers. “Nina Reddy-Murphy Character Sheet.” Bad
Apples. February 2014, Intercon N, Chelmsford, MA.
21. A Grandiose Disaster, a U.S. larp by Michael K. Young, and Inside Hamlet, a Nordic larp created
by Cecilia Dolk, Bjarke Pedersen, Martin Ericsson and Simon Svensson also have characters that are
written as gender-neutral, with the player choosing what gender to portray.
22. The November 2014 and April 2015 runs of College of Wizardry were set in the Harry Potter
universe, which Warner Brothers allowed provided future events did not include the Harry Potter
intellectual property. College of Wizardry has been rewritten and runs beginning in November 2015
will be set in an original universe.
114 Analog Game Studies
in the sequel in April 2015. In addition to being participant-observers, Ben
and Maury are part of the design team for future College of Wizardry runs in
Europe,23 and we have written or revised many of the characters for gender
neutrality, complexity, depth, and player agency. As we write and design a
completely new wizarding universe based on North American magical lore and
history, we are using an expanded gender-neutral design.
By “gender-neutral” we mean that the character is written without a
pre-determined or assigned gender, and that all descriptions eschew gendered
pronouns or idioms, metaphors, or other rhetorical devices that convey a
particular gender expression. Writing characters as gender-neutral does not
mean that gender is removed from the game, only from the character sheets
themselves. Unlike in the examples discussed above, narratives in gender-
neutral larp design are not dependent on any particular character being any
fixed gender. Characters are written with a surname and a first initial, and
descriptions are written in the second person to address the participant. After
the character is cast, the player adds gender-specific elements as they flesh
out the concept presented to them. Gender identity is their own choice, not
a forced determination by an external authority figure. Some players may
choose to explore gender expressions different from those they portray and are
perceived as outside of the game, and some may choose non-binary identities.
After choosing their character’s gender expression and orientation, the CoW
design then asks them to collaborate with other players (using online tools
such as Facebook groups and online forums) to determine their character’s
relationships and romantic attachments. Rather than face the stress of being cast
in circumstances outside their comfort zone, players choose both the gender
expression of the character and their relations at their own initiative and
comfort level.

Letting players carry the weight of gendering their character alleviates a

common logistical problem in mainstream theatre-style larp design, in which
gendered characters are pre-written and then cast according to the available
players’ gender preferences. Many organizers have found themselves in a
scenario where their larp has enough player interest to be run, but the players
themselves do not necessarily conform to the gendered characters as written.
Such a circumstance often results in players playing outside their comfort
zone, or hasty rewrites that might also challenge players’ comfort zones when
character relationships now change to a different dynamic. Writing the

23. College of Wizardry will run November 12-15, 19-22, and 26-29, 2015 at Zamek Czocha in
Poland.
 The Trouble with Gender in Larp 115

Promotional image for College of Wizardry. Photo by Christina Molbech.

characters as gender-neutral, however, allows for any combination of

participants, as any player added to the game can be cast as any of the remaining
characters, regardless of their out-of-game gender identity, desire to play a
particular gender, or function within the game.
However, escaping one’s biases, politics, and out-of-game gender
ideologies as a game designer is not easy,24 and designing gender-neutral
characters does not necessarily ensure queer identities are represented in the
game. Larp, as a medium, allows for player choice that may subvert the game
designer’s intentions, especially if more than one player reinforces certain ideas
or types of play. In other words, removing gender identity from the character
design allows freedom of choice just as much as it allows players to universally
adopt cisnormative and heteronormative roles and relationships by default.
Powerful out-of-game normativities tend to bleed into game play, and
although all gender identities and expressions may be allowed through a
gender-neutral design, the result may nonetheless be a lack of queer identities
and relationships altogether. Gender-neutral casting, then, can inadvertently
result in the privileging of certain types of identities seen as more palatable

24. Benjamin A. Morrow. “The Struggle to Create Gender-Neutral Characters.” Inexorable Progress,
July 9, 2015.
116 Analog Game Studies
or sanctioned by the cis-het dominant out-of-game hierarchies, especially if
other portions of the game design—or the emergent play—tend to reinforce
binary identities, assume heteronormativity, or privilege certain queer identities
and sexualities over another. For example, bisexual women are often fetishized
by cis-heterosexual males, as are lesbian relationships. These queer expressions
may be somewhat more privileged and perhaps involve less risk of portrayal
in a game. For the same reason, strict societal masculinity standards tend to
disincentivize men from exploring varying gender expressions or portraying a
non-heterosexual identity. As a result, women may feel more able than men
to portray queer identities and relationships in games whose design and ethos
ostensibly allow any player to choose any identity and sexual preference.

Promotional image for College of Wizardry. Photo by Christina Molbech.

These complications occurred in College of Wizardry in November 2014 and

April 2015, where—although a few players chose to express multiple forms of
gender, including gender-fluid and agender—the majority of players chose a
binary male or female identity. Furthermore, players of non-binary gendered
characters ran up against the problem of the in-game titles of “witch” for
assumed female characters and “wizard” for assumed male characters. Some
players worked around such gendered appellations by creating the portmanteau
“witchard.” Gender and sexuality of a character became an integral part of the
game as a result of the game’s concluding event: a traditional ball for which
 The Trouble with Gender in Larp 117
every student had to obtain a date. This plot element required that a player’s
gender and sexuality become a topic of conversation and an opportunity for
misrepresentation and misunderstanding of a certain encoded performance. As
in society outside the game, bisexuality was mainly erased as characters were
assumed to be either heterosexual or homosexual by default. The gender-
fluid characters who used plural pronouns were a source of confusion as other
players attempted to reconcile these non-normative performances with the
traditional norms of male-female heterosexual dates for a dance. Sometimes
another character’s actions or dialogue reinforced a heteronormative default,
such as when asking whether a particular character had obtained a date for the
ball using the assumption of a dominant gender identity or sexual preference.
While these could be corrected by the character who was misgendered or
whose sexual orientation was wrongly assumed, the presence of such default
assumptions exposes how resilient these categories can be.

Conclusion
While games can be written that open spaces to question the performative
nature of gender and sexuality or to challenge a reliance on gender binary
categories to determine player roles and character relationships, the design itself
does not ensure that non-binary expressions of gender and/or non-heterosexual
relationships will emerge in the game. Strong cultural influences from out-
of-game, as well as an insider gamer culture that tends to reinforce a binary
classification system and assumptions of default heterosexuality, create implicit
rules of play that may limit what players find to be believable or possible in
a given game, regardless of whether it is a mainstream theatre-style larp or a
gender-neutral larp. Players bring to any game their own expectations of what
it means to be male or female. These expectations are derived from out-of-game
norms as well as from in-game conventions, representations, and traditions,
themselves based on normative gender performances over time. Players, as
characters, react to other characters based on a shared understanding of these
gendered performances, operating from within an insider semiotic system that
comprises both out-of-game and in-game elements in order to make meaning.
Since players have to share a co-created world in a larp, agreed-upon visual and
verbal cues—including gender and sexuality—that determine interaction with
another character are an important part of play.
The presence of a physical body in a larp—as opposed to a representation
of gender through artwork on a card, as a miniature or token in a tabletop
game, or a customized avatar in a video game—brings a level of physicality
that can constrain believable gender expression and affect the choices other
118 Analog Game Studies
players make, thus affecting the game’s narrative and outcome. Actual bodies
in play also introduce other physical elements such as sensory experiences,
pheromones, proximity, and potentially touch that affect game play, invoke
out-of-game relational or sexual interactions,25 and also make gender more
clearly performative than representational. When an actual player body is
incongruous with the character concept—either as a result of the player’s
presented gender or deviance from dominant ideas of gendered attributes such
as beauty or strength—the believability of the character performance is affected.
Since player expectations can reinforce gender and sexual normativity as
the default, a game design that does not counter these norms can create a
situation where players that fall outside default normativities, by gender, by
sexual orientation, by appearance, by body type, or by other factors, are at risk
of having a marginalized game experience. While writing characters that allow
the players to make decisions regarding character gender does create more
player agency than having character gender and/or sexuality pre-assigned, the
constraints on gender expression do not always emerge from game design but
through the normativities that designers and players bring from their culture
to the game. As a result, game design itself cannot alleviate the gender trouble
we can experience in larp, but better game design can mitigate some of the
stress and discomfort and help create the space and opportunities for inclusion of
expressions of gender and sexuality that exist outside the default normativities.

25. Maury E. Brown. “Pulling the Trigger on Player Agency: How Psychological Intrusions in Larps
Affect Game Play.” In Wyrd Con Companion Book 2014, edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman. Wyrd Con
Creative Commons License, 2014, pp. 96–111.
 A Look Back from the Future: Play and
Performance in Biosphere 2013
Moyra Turkington

For two years in the early 1990s, I did larp onstage for a paying audience.
None of us called it larp then, but in retrospect I have come to recognize the
similarities of what I do now and what I did then. We called them “soaps,” and
considered them live improv serial dramedies. Biosphere 2013 was neither the
first, nor the last, soap to be featured at the Union Theatre, a small, black box,
poverty theatre1 that lived a brief but vibrant life in Peterborough, Ontario,
Canada in the late 80s and early 90s.
In this article, I present an autoethnographic look into the production and
address how it relates to analog games, particularly to live action role-play. I will
describe the system of the production—including preparatory work, rehearsal
play, scene lists, and performance improv—and have a look at similar techniques
used in some genres of living games, specifically Nordic larp, black box, and
jeepform. I argue that the presence of an audience creates a radical reorientation
in contrast to the larp environment, and explore how play changes when goals
shift from the experiential to the outwardly performative.

Biosphere 2013
Prior to initiating the production, the Director and the Creative Director
(Frederik Graver and Kate Story), created a contextualization brief for the
show. Set in a dystopian near-future of ecological collapse and corporate
control, Biosphere 2013 aimed to explore ideas of autonomy, obedience, mind
control, surveillance, and scarcity in an increasingly technological world. The
context brief was a twenty-page document that spoke to the transition of
society from 1990-2013 and described the formulation of the corpratocratic
North American Intelligence Network (NAIN) government, and the
development of climate controlled and regulated experimental biospheres that

1. Poverty theatre is a term used to describe a not-for-profit, collectively run theatre in which the
totality of work performed for the running and maintenance of the space, or its productions, are
performed by volunteers and in which productions are generally low-budget and minimalist. The term
may have come from a reference to Jerzy Grotowski’s “Poor Theatre” which is used to describe the
productions themselves.

119
120 Analog Game Studies

Original poster for Biosphere 2013. Image provided by the author.

were meant to protect NAIN citizens from the toxicity of the declining
environment. The document also described a resistance network of
revolutionaries, neo-luddites and saboteurs that opposed the corporation. This
document served as the first source of creation for the show; in role-playing
terms, it was the setting and situation text.
 A Look Back from the Future: Play and Performance in Biosphere
2013 121
The casting for the show was similar to many improv-specific theatre
productions. A call for auditions was posted, responding actors were assessed
through group improv exercises to determine their suitability, and callbacks
were interviewed. However, despite the fact that the play had been “cast,” no
specific roles had been developed for the production at the time of casting.
Instead, characters for the show were developed through a long series of
workshops and rehearsals that ran over the course of two months. A wide
variety of personas were collaboratively invented by the cast through casual,
non-canonical improv play2 within the setting and situation as established by
the directors. Characters that did not work or create dynamic tension were
discarded, and over the course of rehearsals key figures emerged that formed a
cast of character prototypes.
Once the base cast was set, characters were firmed up in development
rehearsals. Intensive hotseat interviews3 provided background, depth and
interrelatedness to the characters, meditation exercises4 allowed the actors to
turn inwards to understand their characters better, Laban movement
workshops5 helped the actors construct and adopt character physicality, and
voice workshops6 helped them find character voice. Finally, directed improv
work with the directorial team put them in situations to test the tightness of
interaction with each other and with the setting. Following this, the directors
went back to the contextualization brief to include elements that had emerged
through the rehearsals, and to eliminate elements that were not working, and
set down the foundation of the show.
With the cast, roles, setting and situation set, the production was ready
to launch. The show was produced in ten weekly installments, or episodes, on
Friday nights after the theatre’s main scheduled production had let out. True to

2. This refers to improv play that does not become part of the official framework of the fiction, setting,
or production until it is officially accepted into the canon by the directors.
3. Hotseat interviews are a workshop technique in which actors assume their character and subject
themselves to rapid-fire questions from workshop participants in order to establish details about the
character’s background and personality.
4. Character meditation: a workshop technique in which a workshop facilitator leads actors through a
guided meditation in order to develop character internality and depth of feeling in relation to a fictional
proposition, such as a hypothetical situation, or a setting element.
5. Rudolf Laban pioneered the analysis and documentation of human movement. Laban Movement
Analysis has been used extensively in theatre environments to determine and develop a movement
“fingerprint” for a character: a unique way in which the character, like a person, habitually moves.
6. There are many different types of voice workshops. In this production, workshops focused on
warming and projecting the voice, and determining speech patterns and affectations specific to the
character.
122 Analog Game Studies
the form of a black box production, the show used minimalist lighting, props
and costumes, experimental staging, and adapted to the set design of whatever
show was being featured at the main production hour.
These soaps were neither devised theatre (a collaborative process that
results in fixed performance piece) nor improv theater (fully spontaneous
performances), but represented a hybrid model between the two. The dialogue,
blocking and presentation was always improvised, but the structure of each
episode’s narrative arc was devised by a directorial team and based on
exploratory scenes that had been improvised during a rehearsal several days
in advance. Each episode of the serial followed a cycle of production: on
Wednesday evening before the Friday show, the cast would gather in a
rehearsal space, and play out potential scenes for the upcoming episode. Cast
members would have the opportunity to call scenes that would showcase their
characters and introduce interesting plot points that they thought would bring
good narrative value to the show. Directors could also call for scenes, or request
a scene be rerun in several ways to understand its potential. The directorial team
would then meet and construct a scene list for the performance itself.
On Friday night, an hour and a half before doors opened to the audience,
the cast would gather in the performance space and the director would post the
scene list up on a wall. The cast would gather around eagerly to find out what
scenes they were in, and where the narrative direction of the show was going.
The scene list would contain a structure for the episode consisting of eight to
twelve scenes in which groupings of characters would meet in a named place
and pursue a described objective. In the first few episodes, these scenes were
written with detail, but by about Episode 3, when the process had matured, the
scenes were brief, simple, and direct, and afforded the actors a greater range of
improvisational liberty. Many scenes were variations of the scenes discovered in
rehearsals, but each episode also contained new scenes and new ideas.

The ensuing hour would be a flurry of rapid engagement between the actors,
who would pair up with scene partners to quickly discuss staging and blocking
and agree on the mood and dramatic tension of a scene. The cast would
explore the set design that the main production had introduced, and call out
quick lighting cues to the technician. Finally, we donned costumes and makeup
and squeezed in a quick vocal warm-up just as the doors of the theatre were
opening. During the performance itself, the cast would self-direct, making
entrances and exits according to the scene list, pre-show negotiations, and
improv instincts, while managing timing and dialogue on the fly.
Because the format for this production was a legacy of a number of
 A Look Back from the Future: Play and Performance in Biosphere
2013 123

One of the many scene lists for Biosphere 2013. Image provided by the
author.

other successful improv soaps—The Coffin Factory (historical fiction), East Side
Stories (soap opera), Hurricane Ridge (surreal mystery), One Red Shoe (Noir
124 Analog Game Studies
detective)—the show had a bit of a cult following that came back loyally week
after week. The audience was engaged, high spirited, and unruly, equipped
with the knowledge that their response in the moment and over time could
shape or shift the direction of the scene or the show in general. They were vocal
and sometimes outright rowdy throughout the performance, cheering, booing,
heckling or cajoling the actors in order to spur a response to their demands.

Commonalities
There are obvious parallels between this production and larp in that the actors,
as players, participated in the production through the locus of characters and
drove action through them to create a narrative arc in a fictionalized world.
They made decisions and built creative content based on a model of who their
characters were, and how they would respond to the situation as contextualized.
Not unlike a game master or larp facilitator, the directorial team acted as
architects and gatekeepers to the production: they contextualized the situation,
guided and organized play, acted as arbiters to the fiction, and essentially
determined what was possible within the world of the show. And of course,
actors physically adopted their character’s behavior, improvised dialogue and
used costumes and props to enhance verisimilitude, as do many larps.
The production took place in the traditional context of a black box theatre
and therefore it is unsurprising that it bears some strong similarities to larp and
freeform practice in the Nordic arthaus tradition—particularly to jeepform and
black box scenarios that have been built on and informed by the traditions of
experimental theatre. Techniques used during Biosphere 2013’s setup, rehearsals
and production can also be seen in many Nordic arthaus larps. For example,
character engagement meditations are used in Mad About the Boy (first run
Norway, 2010), flashbacks in When Our Destinies Meet (first run Sweden, 2009),
hotseat interviews in Pan (first run Denmark, 2013), and monologues in Doubt
(first run Denmark, 2007). In addition, Play With Intent (2012) neatly illustrates
how many of the techniques used in Biosphere 2013 are part of the common
toolkit of structured freeform games.

Differences
First and foremost, the most crucial and obvious difference between Biosphere
2013 and larp is that it was performed for a consumer audience. This addition
demands a paradigmatic shift in goal orientation for players/facilitators, which
in turn fundamentally changes the production dynamic from play-as-
participation to play-as-performance.
 A Look Back from the Future: Play and Performance in Biosphere
2013 125
In analog game contexts, we rarely play with the intent of having an
audience. The act of role-playing is centered on individual and communal
fulfillment; that is, an individual plays because they like the experience of
playing. Individuals play together to enable that experience, and because often
the act of playing together is a critical component to enjoyment. In individual
play communities or game designs, the theatrical quality of the game may also
be an important component to enjoyment. These communities may include a
notion of fellow-players-as-audience to enhance performance quality or social
attentiveness. However, this concept differs critically from a theatre audience
in terms of externality: even when we act as each other’s audience, we are still
collaborating solely in the service of our own communal fulfillment. In a role-
playing model, the goals of play serve the experiential satisfaction of the players
themselves, individually or collectively. In the presence of an audience, the goal
of play is to serve the experiential satisfaction of that external audience first and
foremost.
This shift in goal orientation radically changes the entire network of
engagement. Without an audience, the primary role of the facilitator is to help
produce the play experience: they serve as a procedural guide through the game
structure, a gatekeeper to the fiction, and a manager of the group dynamic.
When serving an audience—particularly for a serial, such as Biosphere 2013—the
director’s primary job is to curate the product of play: to monitor the satisfaction
level of the audience, calibrate the narrative arc according to the audience’s
enjoyment, and drive the players/actors to bring the best performance possible.
This change of directorial role in turn demands a shift in player/actor
expectation. If a player’s experience is at the heart of the activity, then personal
needs are prioritized: players have a reasonable expectation that their
participation will be equitable, that their ideas will be incorporated, and that
they get to decide what is good enough in terms of story, performance and
play. But when an audience is at the heart of the activity, then players do not
have the same expectations: they will be featured only inasmuch as their ideas
or performance quality suit the production as assessed first by the directors and
ultimately by the audience.
This creates a sharp delineation between play-as-experience and play-
as-product. First, the concepts of player agency and narrative incorporation
become fully independent from each other when play is in the service of
product. For instance, in rehearsal play for Biosphere 2013, participants could
take any action that fit the conceptualization brief, but nothing counted until
it became incorporated into the scene list by the directorial team, and thus was
scheduled to meet the audience. In essence, the players/actors held near-total
126 Analog Game Studies
agency for creating content, but zero agency for incorporating it, and had no
mechanism by which to push their personal agendas, aside from anticipating
and feeding the production’s goals in as high-skilled a way as possible.
Furthermore, the definition of “high-skilled” is much expanded in a play-
as-product context. Role-playing generally requires robust imaginative
thinking, rapid idea generation, theory of mind management, and social
mediation skills. Larp further extends the skill demand to physical acting and
emotional embodiment. However, larping for an external audience demands
all of those skills ratchet to a new level because the audience has become the
arbiter of quality, and therefore play must be proved to be “worth it” before it
is integrated into the production. Furthermore, the social dynamic compounds:
players no longer have to just forecast how their character thinks and how their
fellow players (and respective characters) think, but also what the directors will
think that the audience will want as well as how the audience will actually
receive the performance. It no longer suffices for us to just understand and feel
our characters and stories; we now have to also project them to the audience in a
way that will enable them to form emotional connections with the production.
Every participant must always be viewing their performance with an objective,
assessing eye and steering their character actions and physical performance
towards the audience’s satisfaction. To earn the ability to be featured in the
Biosphere 2013 in significant ways was to master performance skills and the
observer/performer calibration process.
It is also important to note that the soap audience’s active role created
an enhanced demand for rapid incorporation of live feedback into fictional
actualization without breaking the constraints of the episode’s frame and
intention. When the audience did not like how a scene was progressing they
would heckle, and when they wanted to see more they would cheer or shout
out encouragement. Under a pressure framework of attention and timing to the
production’s quality, the players/actors had to incorporate suggestions to serve
the audience’s needs.

Conclusions
So how can knowing about a twenty-plus year-old black box theatre soap
inform what we are doing today? First and foremost, it teaches us something
about the relationship between goals and structures in games and how
opportunities for design and experience are created. Looking at Biosphere 2013
through the lens of larp cleanly illustrates how changes in goal orientation
demand different frameworks and dynamics for play. In the delineation
between play-as-participation and play-as-product, devised and
 A Look Back from the Future: Play and Performance in Biosphere
2013 127
improvisational theatre hybridized to find a niche genre and create new
opportunities for performance. This kind of cross-comparison of larp-on-the-
borders with neighboring fields could create the same innovation for analog
games.
Looking at larp through the lens of Biosphere 2013 demands that we
question the strong demarcation often drawn between theatre and analog
games. It asks us to look at what we take from theatre (e.g. techniques), to ask
what we have left behind (e.g. the audience), and to examine validity and use
value of some of the things we take for granted as basic rights of play (e.g. player
agency). Shifting paradigms, even subtly, demands new structures and patterns
of social engagement, creates opportunities to see how we might approach our
games differently, and encourages us to explore how different the output of our
play might be as a result.
Expanding the territory of the game field into the externally performative
provides new opportunities for design innovation and skill development. New
ways of being with our characters and the fiction open different loci of
enjoyment for players to engage with. Just as larp itself provides a new platform
of exploration for players with a desire to physically engage with characters and
fictions, performative larping would, for some players, extend that opportunity
further, or in new directions. Players who have a strong desire to develop
performance techniques may find the demands of a performative larp helpful in
achieving those goals, and players who find fulfillment in character enactment
and performance may find new vistas of satisfaction in play when in front of an
audience.
Finally, it is worth noting that designers on both sides of the equation
are playing on these boundaries already. The experiential theatre world seems
to be entering a new renaissance where improv, performance, and audience
interaction are creating such innovative productions as Sleep No More and
Then She Fell. In larp, Nick Smith and Jake Richmond and Jackson Tegu’s
Sea Dracula (2008) is played with the help of an audience who deliberates
on conflicts as expressed through physical dance-offs. Furthermore, two of
Jason Morningstar’s larps in development venture strongly into a play-as-
performance model. Ghost Court (2015) is a high-spirited courtroom comedy
about ghosts and people pursuing small claims cases against each other and
includes a gallery-audience of observers (who may or may not become players),
and a dynamic of brief interactions that encourage players to ham scenes up
for an increasingly rowdy audience. The Dream (2015) finds a fascinating niche
between larp and silent movies, pushing the ephemeral nature of play-as-
128 Analog Game Studies
participation into the endurance of play-as-product when the game produces a
literal short silent movie that can be shared as a persistent artifact of play.
 Manipulating Environments in American
Freeform
Jason Cox

Larps—American freeform games among them—have the potential to

create sensory experiences surpassing the limits of language. Perhaps because
larps have so long been associated with theatrical works,1 we often refer to
them in the language of theater, and so too focus on strictly their linguistic
properties.2 Larps have loose pre-written “scripts” that guide the improvisation
of an experience. Depending on the style of the larp, play might already be
structured around a plot or narrative, prioritizing specific authorial voices.
Sometimes larps co-opt the language of film and video by considering how a
scene is “framed” or where the “audience” can be presumed to be.
But although the language of theater may feel natural to larp, to speak
of it solely in these terms underestimates the importance of non-linguistic
engagement. As arts-based education researcher Elliot Eisner tells us, “meaning
is not limited to what words can express.”3 Works that explore what it is to be other
than we are will indeed incorporate stimuli beyond words, and we must take
these somatic stimuli seriously. To do so requires redirecting scholarly attention
to the environments in which games happen, keeping in mind arts-research
Graeme Sullivan’s dictum that “as contexts change, meanings change,”4 and to
consider how a change in those environments changes the experience of play.

Framing and Freeform

My own perspective on larp as a professor of art education and the particular
types of larp I employ—American freefom games—heavily inform my analysis. I

1. See, for example, Sarah Lynne Bowman. "Connecting Role-Playing, Stage Acting, and
Improvisation." Analog Game Studies 2.6 (2015); Marjukka Lampo. "Ecological Approach to the
Performance of Larping." International Journal of Role-Playing 5 (2015); Emma Leigh Waldron. "Larp-
as-Performance-as-Research." Analog Game Studies 1.1 (2014).
2. Angelina Ilieva. "Cultural Languages of Role-Playing." International Journal of Role-Playing 4
(2014), pp. 26-38.
3. Elliot Eisner. The Arts and the Creation of Mind. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002, p.
230. Italics in the original.
4. Graeme Sullivan. Art Practice As Reserach: Inquiry in Visual Arts 2nd edition. Thousand Oaks,
California: SAGE, 2010, p. 32.

129
130 Analog Game Studies
use larps as instruments for collaborative arts-based inquiry regarding ideas,
situations, and emotions that are difficult to access through traditional means of
research. The artistic encounters experienced by communities of play5 present
opportunities for members of these communities to have experiences
normally inaccessible to them in their lives, thereby allowing for the
participants to understand what it is like to be other than they are.6 The
collaborative nature of these experiences generate inter-subjective space of
“shared symbolically-mediated meanings”7 that enable the community of play
to create and recreate identities on both individual and communal levels. My
dissertation on arts-based inquiry and American freeform8 applied these ideas
by investigating communities’ enactment of scenes from the point of view
of students, parents, teachers, and administrators in an imagined educational
community.
Larpwright and journalist Lizzie Stark describes American freeform as
“a style of rules-light, story-oriented, one-shot, live or semi-live (freeform)
roleplaying scenario design.”9 It is light on props and costumes, and is known
for the incorporation of “meta-techniques.” Meta-techniques are mechanics
that interrupt the narrative, heighten the drama, inject uncertainty, and/or
provide the players with insight that remains hidden from their characters,
essentially disrupting illusory experiences in favor of investigating cognitive
spaces.10
What does or does not “count” as American freeform is (somewhat
intentionally) vaguely defined, a factor that suits it as a medium for collaborative
research as it encourages diverse experiences for the communities of play.
Participants have the ability to incorporate what is already familiar to them,
allowing them to already enter the larp with a degree of expertise, thus
making the games accessible to players with different levels of experience.

5. See Celia Pearce. Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual
Worlds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009.
6. Elliot Eisner. "Art and knowledge." Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research. J. Gary Knowles
& Ardra L. Cole, eds. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2008, pp. 3-12.
7. Michael Parsons. "Art and Culture, Visual and Verbal Learning: Where are the Bridges?" Australian
Art Education 8.1 (July 1994): pp. 7-14, here p. 12.
8. Jason Cox. Educational communities, arts-based inquiry, & roleplaying: An American freeform
exploration with professional and pre-service Art educators. Dissertation. Columbus, OH: The Ohio
State University, 2015.
9. Lizzie Stark. Pocket Guide to American Freeform. eBook. 2014, p. 10.
10. Stark.
 Manipulating Environments in American Freeform 131
Immersion, Identity, and Environment in American Freeform
Because I am speaking of the environmental impact of the space on a game,
the nature of immersion in an American freeform game must be addressed.
William J. White, J. Tuomas Harviainen, and Emily Care Boss note that
the precise meaning of what is meant by “immersion” greatly depends on
the culture of role-playing from which a speaker originates.11 They contrast
indie tabletop RPGs’ focus on encouraging particular shared experiences with
the individual psychological experiences encouraged by the Nordic games
movement jeepform. The mimetic and meta-level nature of American freeform,
in which constant and ongoing negotiation of what linguist and games scholar
James Gee identifies as the perspectives of the players, their characters, and
a hybrid player-character transpires,12 uses the tension between such
perspectives to move back and forth between shared and individual experiences.
This fluidity provides the tools to enact what Gee describes as a “good role-
playing game,” as it creates a space to “think new thoughts about what I value
and what I don’t.”13 By choosing and inhabiting the role he/she creates through
action and game-play, a player’s connection between context and interpretation
is pushed into the foreground. Somewhere in the amalgamation of assumed
and extra-diegetic identities involved in the game, players construct an ever-
changing “core identity”, representing player beliefs.
According to Marinka Copier, the negotiation of roles and boundaries is
integral to games and game play.14 She highlights how the trope of the ‘magic
circle’ as a boundary between real life and play is actually far more permeable
than it initially appears to be. Because the theoretical membrane between those
realities is transparently and repeatedly pierced in American freeform, there is
a tension in that negotiation, a state of play that encourages players to actively
interpret and re-interpret the experience.15 In this sense, the goals of most
American freeform players do not fit the divisions Mike Pohjola outlines in the

11. William J. White, J. Tuomas Harviainen, and Emily Care Boss. "Role-Playing Communities,
Cultures of Play and the Discourse of Immersion." Immersive Gameplay: Essays on Participatory Media
and Role-Playing. eds. Evan Torner and William J. White. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012, pp. 71-86.
12. James Paul Gee. Why Video Games Are Good for Your Soul: Pleasure and Learning. Melbourne,
Australia: Common Ground Publishing, 2005. It is worth noting that Gee focuses most of his research on
video games, though the concepts he speaks to with regards to RPGs are also applicable to tabletop
games and larp.
13. Gee, p. 115.
14. Marinka Copier. "Challenging the magic circle: How online role-playing games are negotiated by
everyday life." Digital Material: Tracing New Media in Everyday Life and Technology. Eds. Marianne
Van Den Boomen, Sybille Lammes, Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Joost Raessens, and Mirko Tobias Schafer.
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009, pp. 159-172.
132 Analog Game Studies
Manifesto of the Turku school.16 They are not specifically focused on trying to
“win” the game (gamist), to act out a story (dramatist), to simulate a working
society (simulationist), or to completely inhabit their characters (eläytyjist), but
rather to participate in the game in order to have the experience of the game
itself. The impact of the game is simultaneously an experience that can be
shared with other players while simultaneously being intensely personal and
emotional. This duality encourages what arts educator Maxine Greene refers to
as “communitas,”17 a unifying shared experience that still preserves individual
interpretations and differences.
Social environments constructed in American freeform games are
enmeshed with the physical environments in which the game occurs. A game’s
environment incorporates the design ideas of the creators to emphasize
particular actions or ideas and, in doing so, shapes a theoretical space in which
the play will occur.18 To realize this space, the players of the community
of play contend with what Evan Torner identifies as practical and logistical
considerations, such as the money, time, and travel limitations of the players.19
However, each community of play also has their own specific affordances,
such as the knowledge base of the players, the versatility of the environment
in which they play, and the community’s capacity for manipulating that
environment. The resultant gameplay occurs at the intersection of the players,
the game, the environment and the social context. Because American freeform
uses relatively few props and typically can be completed in a single session,
its physical environments tend not to focus on mimetic reality but instead on
crafting an emotional environment that reinforces particular themes.

15. James S. Hans. The Play of the World. Amherst, Massachusetts: The University of Massachusetts
Press, 1981.
16. Mike Pohjola. The Manifesto of the Turku School. 2003.
17. Maxine Greene. Variations on a Blue Guitar: The Lincoln Center Institute Lectures on Aesthetic
Education. New York: Teachers College Press, 2001. Greene adapted this term from Paul and Percival
Goodman’s conception of a society that employed shared experience for palliative means. See Paul
Goodman and Percival Goodman. Communitas. New York, NY: Random House, 1966.
18. Henry Jenkins. "Game Design as Narrative Architecture." First person: New Media as Story,
Performance, and Game. Eds. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press,
2004, pp. 118-130.
19. Evan Torner. "Air Castles Built on Concrete." The Official Book of Knutepunkt 2013: Crossing
Physical Borders. Eds. Karete Jacobsen Meland and Katrine Øverlie Svela. Oslo: Fantasiforbundet, 2013,
pp. 9-20.
 Manipulating Environments in American Freeform 133
Illustrations of Environment in American Freeform
Keeping the above in mind, the construction of environment in American
freeform games can be understood along the lines of Katie Salen and Eric
Zimmerman’s schema for meaningful game design: an intersection of rules (the
organization of a system as designed by its creator), play (the manner in which
players experience and modify a system), and culture (the social and physical
contexts engaged with and inhabited by the game).20 These intersections
produce the individual and collective narratives of the community. According
to Henry Jenkins, environment fosters immersion in such narratives “in at least
one of four ways: spatial stories can evoke pre-existing narrative associations;
they can provide a staging ground where narrative events are enacted; they
may embed narrative information within their mise en scène; or they provide
resources for emergent narratives.”21 Three different games illustrate this
principle: Jason Morningstar’s The Climb,22 Rafael Chandler’s ViewScream,23 and
Lizzie Stark’s In Residency.24 These examples are not meant to be exhaustive,
but rather reveal the impact of and possibilities for sensory environments in
American freeform games.

The Climb
The Climb is designed as a GM-less scenario in which a group of four to six
mountaineers (the players) are making an illegal first ascent up a mountain.
This expedition could theoretically result in a high degree of fame and prestige
for the climbers, but includes catastrophically dangerous risks. Aside from those
dangers, the characters have conflicts with one another that make trust scarce.
The overarching feeling is of isolation and loneliness, a feeling reinforced by
the premise, characters, and environmental factors that Morningstar has put in
place.
In The Climb, movements and locations of the players are limited in the
first half of the game to three small areas that represent the “tents” of the base
camp while the sounds of a blizzard are played from an mp3 file. Although the
game can be played without the soundtrack, its inclusion is highly effective
for establishing a context and for the pacing the game.25 The constant wind

20. Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge, MA &
London, England: The MIT Press, 2004.
21. Jenkins, p. 123.
22. Jason Morningstar.The Climb. Durham, NC: Bully Pulpit Games LLC, 2013.
23. Rafael Chandler.ViewScream. Neoplastic Press, 2013.
24. Lizzie Stark. In Residency. Boston, MA: Stark Scenarios, 2014.
134 Analog Game Studies

A page from the game materials for The Climb. Used with permission from Bully Pulpit Games.

and experience of either being cramped or abandoned in the small spaces

enhance the tense atmosphere and feelings of isolation, creating bleed through
artificial movement restrictions and suggestions of inclement weather. The
sound of the blizzard breaks at the thirty and forty minute marks, when there
are weather reports in Chinese. Diegetically, this alerts the
characters—particularly Sweet, as the meteorologist—that if they are going
to send a group up the mountain, they must do so soon. The
soundtrack mechanically controls the pacing of the game and adds a certain
discordant “out of place” feeling to the piece.
At the forty-five minute mark, there is one minute of silence, during which
players split into two groups: three players go to a new space (ideally out of
range of sight and hearing) to construct what is essentially a “radio play” of
what happens on the summit, which is communicated by walkie-talkie or by
cell phone. Meanwhile, the other players remain as support at the base camp and

25. It also heightens the importance of the character Sweet as both a meteorologist and a rookie
climber.
 Manipulating Environments in American Freeform 135
react to the story the ascent team creates. The soundtrack and game itself end
after ninety minutes, followed by a debriefing session.

The author playing as Lund in The Climb. Photo used with permission by the author.

I have run The Climb for several communities, but the run I consider the most
successful was set at a gaming convention, a context which fit the tight structure
and pacing (although it also technically “broke the rules” by including one too
many players.) The affordances of the convention center meant that we had
access to two secluded, relatively comfortable rooms, wherein the lights were
controlled via dimmer switch. Because of some late arrivals, I removed myself
from gameplay and instead focused on facilitating. These variables greatly
affected the game. In addition to the regular play materials, I had prepared
lanyards that displayed each character’s name, provided small flashlights for
136 Analog Game Studies
each player, and used masking tape to denote the “tent” areas that each had an
opening (a break in the tape) that faced inward toward the other “tents.”
The introductory narrative describes how the raging snowstorm alternates
between extremely bright and dark conditions, and during play I adjusted the
lights to reflect or suggest moods to the players. I also removed my shoes,
allowing me to walk very quietly on the carpeted floors and blend into the
background while listening into the conversations. I would change the
environmental variables to suit emergent play. Because I was not playing a
character I was on hand to provide direction to the “ascent team” in the second
act, and to use their decisions to anticipate what environment would be most
effective for the “base camp” players.
The most poignant moment for me was when Sweet had to be left alone
at the base camp for her health while a rescue party was sent up for what was
left of the summit team. I left her alone in the room as well, sitting in her “tent”
under a spotlight. Later, the player told me she prized that existential loneliness
even as it also bled into her own struggles with depression.

ViewScream
Rafael Chandler does not call his game ViewScream an American freeform game,
instead referring to it either as a “live-action game designed for play using
video-chat software like Skype or Google Hangouts” or as a “varp” (video-
augmented role-playing game). Nevertheless, it shares some of American
freeform’s essential characteristics and an innovative environmental mechanic.
It is also a GM-less game, with the expectation being that players leap into
their roles as soon as the chat begins and never break out of character until
play ends. It presents several adventures that follow the same general premise: a
damaged spaceship and its four remaining officers (Medical, Bridge, Weapons,
and Engineering) face imminent destruction, a fate they must confront together
even while they are only able to communicate via the ship’s viewscreens.
Playing ViewScream requires that players have a clear set of expectations, both
because familiarity with the setting and rules helps keep players from breaking
character, and because the system and the theme conspire to create an ending
wherein at least one character will die horribly. The basic gameplay is that
each character has three problems which only one of the other characters can
solve, improvised over the course of several scenes.
The text of the game breathlessly asks:
“Will you turn on your shipmates? Will you work with them, even though
some of them may be guilty of horrific crimes? What happened to the rest of
 Manipulating Environments in American Freeform 137
the crew? How many minutes do you have before it happens to you, too? Can
you escape, or will someone find your mangled corpse floating in the void?” 26
ViewScream essentially transforms attributes that would break immersion
in a larp—the personal distance and lack of physical interaction of online
chats—and co-opts them for a tangible representation of the characters’ diegetic
experiences. The stories the game presents concern the panicked, fearful, and
angry responses of the characters to the dire situation they face, and the
enforced helplessness of literally being cut off from one another reinforces that
fact. While the scarcity of resources determines play in the mechanics, it is
the presence or absence of sensory data that matters for the lived experience
of the players. However, the diegesis is necessarily founded on trust between
the players, who describe the ship and its hazards with evocative language rich
in sensory detail. Players are encouraged to fill dead air as much as possible to
keep play from going stagnant and to maintain the tense atmosphere through
a constant barrage of words. Even when they are not speaking, the players
are asked to contribute and signal their emotional state through their body
language. At the end of the game, each character has a few final words as
they either escape the ship or realize that their demise is imminent, after which
they switch off their camera and deprive the remaining characters of even that
tenuous connection.
Chandler offers some suggestions for players to further tailor their
experience by further manipulating their environment,27 offering suggestions
such as using specialized lights, wearing costumes, or creating a backdrop. This
is interesting because it is a collaborative effort, with each player altering their
own space rather than a single player orchestrating everything, and because
those alterations are largely done for the benefit of the other players rather than
for the person actually creating them. Chandler further suggests that mobile
technology could allow one or more players to move the play outside of a single
room and to act as a member of an “away team,” or that additional players
could be recruited to represent the threats a more mobile player might face.
This incorporation of techniques and ideas prevalent in ARG (Alternate Reality
Game) experiences, in which the events of a single story are told through
multiple platforms,28 opens up new possibilities for technology in American
freeform by altering its role from something that enables play to something
central to the play experience.29

26. Chandler, p. 6.
27. Chandler, pp. 36-37.
28. Jason Cox. “Role-playing games in arts, research and education.” International Journal of
Education through Art 10.3 (2014): 381-395.
138 Analog Game Studies
In Residency
Lizzie Stark created In Residency to explore ideas, themes, and experiences she
found prevalent in the art world, and to make those experiences accessible to
players who were not professional artists. It was inspired by her own time at an
artist’s colony, wherein she found juxtaposed within the cloistered walls of the
colony “the loneliness of creating art with the sometimes claustrophobic social
atmosphere of the colony.”30 She admits that the result has been designed to be
more dramatically charged than her own experience, but it nevertheless offers
a unique insight on the professional, social, and personal highs and lows in the
arts.
Stark employs several techniques in her game that are common to parlor
larps, such as a signal between characters that indicates one ought to improvise
a monologue (in this case, a fist bump), or a bell to indicate the beginning or
ending of particular scenes.
Where the game is truly innovative, however, is in its demarcation and
application of communal and personal spaces. The physical space is divided
into two large areas and one smaller area: the veranda, in which characters
hold serious conversations about their work; the pool house, where characters
relax, engage in debauchery, and actively cross social barriers (such as by telling
secrets or destroying artwork); and the sculpture garden, which serves as an
“off-screen” space for narrative events (such as sex) or for players to take a break
as needed. She suggests appropriate lights, furniture, and sound for each setting
to create the ideal atmosphere, most significantly the sheet that represents the
pool. If a character is on top of the sheet, they still have their bathing suit on.
If they are underneath it, they are skinny-dipping. Once three or more people
are in the pool, the majority rules and everyone in the pool is either in suits
or skinny dipping. These affordances and rules encourage players to engage in
specific public/private behaviors.
Each of the physical spaces is focused on particular forms of socialization,
and contrast strongly with the intensely personal experience of the guided
meditation with which each act of the game begins. During the meditation,
the players are instructed to find a space of their own and to listen with their
eyes shut as the facilitator describes the sensory input that is feeding their
creative efforts for the day and asks questions they tailor to their own particular
experience. For this game, the art a character creates is connected to some form

29. For more on overlap on ARGs and larps, see Emily Care Boss. "Of Rabbit Holes and Red Herrings:
Interactive Narratives of ARG and Larp." WyrdCon Companion Book. Ed. Sarah Lynne Bowman
(2013), pp. 22-30.
30. Stark, In Residency, p. 8.
 Manipulating Environments in American Freeform 139
of trauma that is meaningful for the character and which was chosen with some
randomness at the start of the game. At the end of the meditation, the players
open their eyes, the work day over, and are once again thrust into a communal
space with one another.
This transforms artmaking in In Residency, whether the character creates
it from tapping on a keyboard or on a slab of marble, from a visceral and
embodied act into an internal exploration of what it might feel like to be an
artist, and allows for experiences tailored to both the tastes of the player and
those of the character. This is interesting because it troubles the difference
between the emphasis on thinking about art in an academic sense—a concept
that can be referred to as the aesthetic tradition—and experiencing art
independently of conscious thought, what arts researchers Jan Jagodinski and
Jason Wallin refer to as aisthesic thought. Where aesthetics attempts to
understand a work by considering and comparing its different facets, aisthetics
attempts to “go beyond perceptual standards”31 and to encounter the arts as
a force that exists independently of the will of the artist or the viewer. In
Residency renders this bifurcation unstable through a process of interpretation
and reinterpretation enacted in the meditations, discussions, and revelries of the
constructed environment in which the characters exist.

Conclusion
Environments in American freeform games are necessarily representative of the
network that exists between the mechanics a designer puts in place, the context
of play, and the innovations and alterations enacted by a community of play.
But if games are, as art and games researcher Mary Flanagan would have it,
“reality engines, frameworks for meaning making,”32 and if those engines are
going to allow us to glimpse what it is like to be other than we are,33 then each
member of that network must pay special attention to how that environment is
constructed .
This is not to say that any one person will get it “right,” or that the dialogue
around which so much play has centered is necessarily “wrong,” but that in
considering these manipulations of environment we encounter new realms of
experience and thought. In closing, I would like to repeat the words of games

31. Jan Jagodinski and Jason J. Wallin. Arts-based Research: A Critique and a Proposal. Rotterdam:
Sense Publishers, 2013, p. 46.
32. Mary Flanagan. “Creating Critical Play.” Artists Re:Thinking games. Eds. Ruth Catlow, Marc
Garrett, and Corrado Morgana. Liverpool, UK: FACT, 2010, pp.49-53, here p. 53.
33. Eisner.
140 Analog Game Studies
guru Bernard De Koven as a guide for developing these environments, in that
“when we all own the game, when we all acknowledge that we are merely
trying it on, seeing if it fits, because it might work, no matter who suggested it,
we become remarkably, astonishingly empowered.”34

34. Bernard De Koven. The Well-Played Game. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1978, p. 116.
Theater
 Connecting Stage Acting, Role-Playing, and
Improvisation
Sarah Lynne Bowman

One of the most common questions that people ask with regard to the role-
playing phenomenon is “How is role-playing like theatre acting?” Indeed,
many role-players use the corollary of improvisational theatre in order to
explain the concept to outsiders.
My goal is to investigate this correlation in depth, as the two psychological
and performative states are clearly similar, if not identical. In what ways can
we connect the role-playing experience with that of stage acting and improv?
Where are the points of departure between these forms?
To explore this topic, I compare theories and thick descriptions from both
role-players and actors. This essay focuses on connecting Keith Johnstone’s
Impro1 connecting his experiments with mask work and other forms of improv
with role-playing theory concepts such as immersion, dual consciousness, bleed,
alibi, and possession. My analysis looks at how character immersion is conceived
by role-playing theorists, and then turns to discussion of dissociation and the
theory of mind, both of which may illuminate the phenomenon of character
enactment.
The goal of this work is to bridge the gap between these performative
activities, which have emerged as Western cultural forms in isolation from one
another. As performativity and creative expression are essential aspects of the
human experience, exploring the phenomenological states involved in acting,
improv, and role-playing can help us understand the overall psychology behind
the enactment impulse.

Distinctions
In many ways, the activity of immersing into a role-playing character is quite
similar to both stage acting and improv. Yet the distinctions between these
modes of enactment, however superficial, make a dramatic impact on the degree
of creativity and agency of the performer.
Stage and screen acting often involve performing based upon a script and

1. Keith Johnstone. Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre. New York: Routledge, 1989.

143
144 Analog Game Studies
adhering to the physical and emotive instructions of a director. Improvisational
acting forgoes the need for a script, as actors spontaneously perform creative
roles in simple, usually short scenarios. Both of these forms of acting are usually
performed for an external, presumably passive audience.
Role-playing is most similar to improv in that players enact spontaneous,
unscripted roles, but for longer periods of time in a persistent fictional world.
Additionally, role-playing involves a first-person audience rather than external
viewership, meaning that the other role-players are the only audience members
and are also immersed in their roles.2 Ultimately, we can consider these forms
as cousins. Daniel MacKay suggests that scholars view role-playing games as
a new, unique form of performance art, offering a detailed description of
their aesthetics within this framework.3 Similarly, Jaakko Stenros and Jamie
MacDonald have developed an aesthetics of action in order to describe the
formal elements of the role-playing experience from the perspective of art and
performance theory.4 Regardless of these distinctions, many similarities exist
between these phenomenological states, as explored in the following sections.

Atrophy, Transgression, and Constraints

All adult creative activities require constraints of some sort. While childhood
pretend play is more freeform in nature with little, if any, imposed rules,
adults require structure and boundaries in order to engage in creative behavior.
Keith Johnstone believes that one of the goals of society – and, specifically,
of education – is to impose limits on the creative impulse of human beings.5
Mainstream society encourages its subjects to leave behind pretend play during
adolescence. Indeed, Brian Bates explains how Western society once
marginalized actors in the same way that role-players have been stigmatized
in recent years. Because they enact alternate roles, actors were assumed to be
untrustworthy, dangerous, and even criminal.6

2. Markus Montola and Jussi Holopainen. "First Person Audience and the Art of Painful Role-
Playing." Immersive Gameplay: Essays on Participatory Media and Role-Playing. Eds. Evan Torner and
William J. White. Jefferson, NC: 2012, pp. 13-30.
3. Daniel MacKay. The Fantasy Role-Playing Game: A New Performing Art. Jefferson, NC:
McFarland, 2001.
4. Jaakko Stenros. “Living the Story, Free to Choose: Participant Agency in Co-Created Worlds.”
Alibis for Interaction Conference. Landskrona, Sweden, Oct. 25, 2013. Reprinted as “Aesthetic of
Action.” Jaakkostenros.wordpress.com, Oct. 28, 2013: https://jaakkostenros.wordpress.com/2013/10/28/
aesthetics-of-action/
5. Johnstone 1989.
 Connecting Stage Acting, Role-Playing, and Improvisation 145
Describing the demoralizing process of his own educational experience as
a student and a teacher, Johnstone asserts,

“Most people lose their talent at puberty. I lost mine in my early twenties. I
began to think of children not as immature adults, but of adults as atrophied
children.”7

Indeed, many adults may think they have no creative impulse left at all when, in
reality, their abilities may be simply lying dormant waiting for the opportunity
to emerge.
In short, the adoption and performance of new identities and narratives is
considered transgressive against society, which otherwise sorts individuals into
specific roles and understandings of reality.8 Stage and screen actors transgress
through their ability to effectively convey entirely new identities, performing
narratives that may critique or interrogate socio-political norms. Improv actors
transgress in their expression of chaotic, impulsive creativity, which often
reveals taboo material from the unconscious and even expressions of deep
spirituality and vulnerability.9 Drag performers transgress by temporarily
shifting their assigned gender, often in provocative and outrageous ways. 10
Role-players transgress in a way that mainstream society may find most
alarming: they adopt persistent roles in a fictional reality for long periods
of time. Outsiders often view this behavior as a rejection of the normative
reality to which they all adhere, whereas role-players consider their enactments
relatively safe and consequence-free. In the future, like acting, filmmaking,
and novel writing, role-playing may become more acceptable as an understood
creative form as it gains more positive exposure in media and academia.
All of these performative activities involve what Erving Goffman calls
frame switching: when an individual shifts from one social role and performative
“stage” to another.11 In each of these cases, the switching of frames is conscious

6. Brian Bates. The Way of the Actor: A Path to Knowledge & Power. Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1988,
pp. 18-21.
7. Johnstone, p. 25.
8. Sarah Lynne Bowman, The Functions of Role-playing Games: How Participants Create
Community, Solve Problems, and Explore Identity. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010, p. 7.
9. Johnstone, pp. 132-133.
10. Steven P. Schacht and Lisa Underwood, eds. The Drag Queen Anthology: The Absolutely
Fabulous but Flawlessly Customary World of Female Impersonators. New York: Harrington Park Press,
2004.
11. Erving Goffman. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. London: Harper
and Row, 1974; Gary Alan Fine. Shared Fantasy: Role-playing Games as Social Worlds. Chicago, IL:
146 Analog Game Studies
and methodical, unlike when we change roles in daily life, e.g., from work to
home, etc. Performers understand and play with the notion of switching social
stages, behaving in a deliberate and sometimes provocative fashion. In order
for these frame switching behaviors to remain possible in our society and for
our previously established roles to become reinstated, we must ritualize these
experiences by providing a clear beginning, middle, and end to the liminality
of the performance.12
Other rules of engagement are also necessary for entrance into what
game studies theorists call the magic circle of play.13 In stage and screen acting,
performers must adhere to a set script written by someone else, the physical
blocking and vocal elocution required by the director, and the time constraints
of the format. These limits are imposed in order to convey the character and
story as effectively as possible to an external audience. These limits are so
exacting that Johnstone believes that they stifle the creative impulse of the actor
almost completely. Instead, he advocates improvisation as the key to an actor’s
self-expression.
However, even improvisation (improv) has certain constraints. Most
improv performances are short, particularly in terms of how long a person
immerses into a role or scenario. Although Johnstone often advocates for a
serious tone, particularly in his Mask work, most people experience
improvisational theatre as comedic, especially with the popularity of groups like
ComedySportz, Second City, and the television shows Whose Line is It Anyway?
The comedic elements allow for the breaking of taboos, emergence of repressed
content and its joking dismissal as inconsequential or entertaining.
Role-playing games vary in terms of constraints by genre and form.
Tabletop RPGs are bounded by play around a table and often include paper,
dice, and other forms of abstract representation. Larps are bounded by time and

University of Chicago Press, 1983. For an excellent recent application, see Olga Vorobyeva. “Entering
and Leaving the ‘Magic Circle’ as Symbolic Acts: The Case of Russian Field Larps.” The Wyrd Con
Companion Book 2014 edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman. Los Angeles, CA: Wyrd Con, 2014, pp. 76-87.
12. Christopher I. Lehrich. “Ritual Discourse in Role-playing Games.” The Forge. last modified Oct. 1,
2005: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/ritual_discourse_in_RPGs.html; J. Tuomas Harviainen.
“Information, Immersion, Identity: The Interplay of Multiple Selves During Live-Action Role-Play.”
Journal of Interactive Drama: A Multi-Discipline Peer-Reviewed Journal of Scenario-Based Theatre-
Style Interactive Drama 1.2 (Oct. 2006), p. 11; Bowman, Functions, pp. 48-53; J. Tuomas Harviainen
and Andreas Lieberoth. “The Similarity of Social Information Processes in Games and Rituals: Magical
Interfaces,” Simulation & Gaming (April 10, 2011), pp. 528-549.
13. Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, eds. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 2004; Markus Montola. “Exploring the Edge of the Magic Circle: Defining Pervasive
Games,” Proceedings of the Digital Arts and Culture Conference. Copenhagen, Denmark: 2005.
 Connecting Stage Acting, Role-Playing, and Improvisation 147
space constraints. In addition to these physical boundaries, role-playing games
also impose limitations on imagination and enactment through rules, norms of
the play culture, and genre considerations. These limitations are imposed by the
game design, the organizers, and to a certain degree, fellow players.
However, role-playing games offer a far greater degree of personal agency
than either stage acting or improv. Because the constraint of an audience is
no longer a factor, role-players enact their characters mainly for their own
edification and in order to engage with one another. While some role-players
prefer a dramatic style of play – often called dramatism or narrativism14– with
grand gestures and vocalizations intended to enhance immersion of other
players, the audience still consists of fellow participants, not of passive viewers
who expect to be entertained for their money. Therefore the expectations of
performativity are different in role-playing, and the experience could be said
to be more subjective and personal than grandiose and evocative.15 As Jamie
MacDonald explains, theatrical performance is “beautiful to watch,” whereas
role-playing is “beautiful to do.”16

Immersion and Method Acting

One intriguing connection between theatrical and RPG enactment emerges
when comparing method acting to the “immersionism” style of role-playing.
While method acting is most commonly used in stage and screen acting, which
adheres to the above-mentioned limitations of pre-scripted and heavily directed
characterizations, the “method” involves embodying lifelike performances by
creating in the self the feelings and thoughts of the character. Pioneer Sanford
Meisner described method as “living truthfully under imaginary
circumstances.”17
This style of acting corresponds with the immersionist school of role-
playing championed by theorists such as Mike Pohjola. Pohjola defines
immersion as a form of role-playing in which the player assumes “the identity of
the character by pretending to believe her identity only consists of the diegetic

14. John H. Kim. “The Threefold Model FAQ.” last modified Feb. 14, 2003,
Darkshire.net: http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/threefold/faq_v1.html; Ron Edwards. “GNS
and other matters of role-playing theory, Chapter 2.” last modified Oct. 14, 2001. The
Forge: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/
15. Jaakko Stenros. “Nordic Larp: Theatre, Art, and Game.” Nordic Larp, edited by Jaakko Stenros and
Markus Montola. Stockholm, Sweden: Fëa Livia, 2010.
16. Jamie MacDonald. “From Performing Arts to Larp.” Nordic Larp Talks. April 11,
2012: http://nordiclarptalks.org/from-preforming-arts-to-larp-jamie-macdonald/
17. Sanford Meisner. Sanford Meisner on Acting. New York: Vintage, 1987.
148 Analog Game Studies
roles.”18 Petter Bøckman further explains that immersionism “values living the
role’s life, feeling what the role would feel. Immersionists insist on resolving in-
game events based solely on game-world considerations.”19 In this way, both
method acting and immersionism require adhering to the external constraints
of the aesthetic form while connecting as deeply as possible to the character. In
future work, I will compare the specific processes and techniques involved in
method acting with those commonly used by immersionists to explore further
connections.

Dual Consciousness, Possession, Bleed, Mask Work, and Alibi

Examining Johnstone’s Impro in more detail, strong parallels exist between the
ways in which improv actors and role-players describe their psychological states
while engaged in play. While some role-play theorists such as Stenros, Pohjola,
and MacDonald have certainly drawn upon acting theories to illuminate the
role-playing experience, fascinating patterns emerge when comparing the
language used to describe the phenomenon of transforming into character,
especially when considering ethnographic research from role-players who are
likely unaware of acting literature. This section looks at several concepts
highlighted by Johnstone with reference to role-playing: dual consciousness,
mask work, alibi, possession, and dissociation. These cursory summaries serve as
an outline for future detailed research on these concepts.
Both role-players and actors speak of inhabiting a dual consciousness when
performing a role in which the player passively observes the actions of the
character to greater and lesser degrees. Jaakko Stenros describes it thus: “You
have a sort of dual consciousness as you consider the playing both as real –
within the fiction – and as not real, as playing.”20 The degree of consciousness
on the part of the observational player can vary throughout the experience.
Some players always have a strong sense of distance and control, whereas others
seek to abandon their own identity to that of the role. Consider these two
quotes from an improv actor and a role-player respectively:

There is a part of me sitting in a distant corner of my mind that watches

18. Mike Pohjola. “Autonomous Identities: Immersion as a Tool for Exploring, Empowering, and
Emancipating Identities.” Beyond Role and Play, edited by Markus Montola and Jaakko Stenros.
Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry, 2004, pp. 84-85.
19. Petter Bøckman. “The Three Way Model: Revision of the Threefold Model for Scandinavian
Larp.” As Larp Grows Up, edited by Morten Gade, Line Thorup, and Mikkel Sander. Frederiksberg,
Denmark: Projektgruppen KP03, 2003, p. 13.
20. Stenros, “Living the Story."
 Connecting Stage Acting, Role-Playing, and Improvisation 149
and notices changed body sensations, etc. But it’s very passive, this watcher
– does nothing that criticizes or interferes – and sometimes it’s not there
at all. Then, it’s like the ‘I’ blanks out and ‘something else’ steps in and
experiences. (Ingrid)21
My ideal, which I achieve occasionally, is to “become” the character
fully—I’m just a little background process watching out for OOC [out-
of-character] safety concerns and interpreting OOC elements of the scene
for [the characters]. They are in the driver’s seat; I feel their emotions,
have their trains of thought and subconscious impulses, and they have
direct control of what I am doing, subject only to veto. (Anonymized role-
player)22

In both of these cases, the player becomes a background observer to the

character’s actions. In the second case, however, the player sometimes
intervenes to maintain safety and “veto” the actions of the character if necessary.
In Ingrid’s description above, the “I” blanks out for a time, a form of
amnesia in which the character takes control of the body. This process is called
possession in some of the literature for both acting and role-playing theory.23
Johnstone asserts that such possession is difficult for many to achieve in his Mask
work exercises, as their ego instinctively wants to retain control: “You feel that
the Mask is about to take over. It is in this moment of crisis that the Mask
teacher will urge you to continue. In most social situations, you are expected
to maintain a consistent personality. In a Mask class, you are encouraged to ‘let
go’ and allow yourself to become possessed.”24 Interestingly, a Mask class likely
has a first-person audience rather than the static onlookers of traditional theatre
or even improv performance, which makes it more similar to a role-playing
exercise in terms of the flexibility of expression.
Brian Bates explains possession in a different fashion: “The traditional
actor has a double consciousness; one part is possessed, the other observes and
controls.”25 This definition indicates that the actor may still have some degree
of control in a possessed state. Similarly, one of Nathan Hook’s participants in
a phenomenological study of role-playing immersion explains: “I just let them

21. Ingrid, qtd. in Johnstone, 175.

22. Nathan Hook. “A Social Psychology of Immersion Among Live Action Role-players.” Wyrd Con
Companion Book 2012, edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman and Aaron Vanek. Orange, CA: Wyrd Con,
2013, p. 110.
23. For acting theory, cf. Bates; Johnstone. For role-playing theory, cf. Hook, pp. 106-117.
24. Johnstone, 151.
25. Bates, 72.
150 Analog Game Studies
borrow my body occasionally… [I let my character] take over almost entirely,
with just a small background safety thread.”26 Ultimately, the degree to which
a character during conscious enactment can completely take over a person is
subject to debate, as is the length of time that such a possession can happen.
In other cases, the personalities of the player and character temporarily
merge rather than one superseding the other. This experience may connect to
a phenomenon that role-players call bleed, where the character’s emotions and
thoughts spillover to the player and vice versa.27 Patrick Stewart, who immersed
in the Star Trek character of Jean Luc Picard for seven consistent years with little
time off, explains:

“It came to a point where I had no idea where Picard began and I ended.
We completely overlapped. His voice became my voice, and there were other
elements of him that became me.”28

In this extreme example of prolonged immersion, Stewart was likely

experiencing what Whitney “Strix” Beltrán terms ego-bleed, where personality
contents of the character bleed-out into the player and vice versa.29 In this
example, Picard was not “possessing” Stewart, but rather the frame between the
two personalities became weaker and less distinct over time.
Another role-playing concept regarding the distinction between player
and character is alibi: the idea that the player is neither “present” nor performing
the actions in game, but rather, the character is. Yet alibi is not necessarily
equivalent to possession. Rather, alibi is a psychological mechanism that
permits role-players to transgress normative social rules by playing a new
identity in a fictional space without “real world” repercussions. In this sense,
alibi is more of a defense mechanism than a dramatic shift in one’s psychological
state, unlike dual consciousness or possession. Certain ritualized activities

26. Hook, 112.

27. Markus Montola. “The Positive Negative Experience in Extreme Role-playing.” Proceedings of
DiGRA Nordic 2010: Experiencing Games: Games, Play, and Players. Stockholm, Sweden, Aug. 16-17,
2010.; Sarah Lynne Bowman. “Social Conflict in Role-playing Communities: An Exploratory Qualitative
Study,” International Journal of Role-Playing 4 (2013), pp. 17-18; Sarah Lynne Bowman. “Bleed: The
Spillover Between Player and Character.” Nordiclarp.org, Mar. 2, 2015: http://nordiclarp.org/2015/03/
02/bleed-the-spillover-between-player-and-character/.
28. Bryan Appleyard. “Patrick Stewart: Keep on Trekkin’.” The Sunday Times. Nov. 4,
2007: http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/culture/arts/theatre/article74502.ece.
29. Whitney “Strix” Beltrán. “Yearning for the Hero Within: Live Action Role-playing as
Engagement with Mythical Archetypes.” Wyrd Con Companion Book 2012, edited by Sarah Lynne
Bowman and Aaron Vanek. Los Angeles, CA: Wyrd Con, 2012, pp. 91-98.
 Connecting Stage Acting, Role-Playing, and Improvisation 151
consciously facilitate alibi, e.g., carnivals, concerts, festivals like Burning Man,
Halloween parties, acting exercises, and role-playing games.
Although not termed alibi in Impro, Johnstone describes giving improv
actors permission to transgress their normal identities, thereby unlocking their
creativity. Mask work encourages actors to dissolve their personality and wear a
mask to elicit spontaneous, improvised behaviors. This process requires
imposing alibi on the exercise: “I have to establish that they will not be held
responsible for their actions while in the Mask.”30 In Johnstone’s experience,
many of these mask behaviors resemble regressing into a child state, an
animalistic state, or some other pre-verbal state that does not adhere to a fixed
social identity.31 He explains:
[block quote]“Once you understand that you’re no longer held responsible for
your actions, then there’s no need to maintain a ‘personality.’”32[block quote]
Interestingly, Johnstone believes that this absolution of responsibility is a
“trick” and that the final step of the process after this “misdirect[ion]” is for
actors to “become strong enough to resume the responsibility themselves. By
that time, they have a more truthful concept of what they are.”33 In this way,
alibi is a tool for granting acting students greater access to their own creative
selves, which they should learn to accept and reintegrate into their self-concept.
Interestingly enough, Johnstone acolytes such as Alex Fradera have run
mask exercises for larpers in minimalistic theatre settings, fusing the role-
playing experience with the theatrical. Other experimental role-playing games
such as the Nordic larp Totem and the blackbox larps White Death and A
Beginning employ techniques similar to masking by limiting the verbal and
physical expressions of actors. Through alibi and the magic circle, these
experiences encourage role-players to explore interaction outside of the context
of our normal social conventions such as speech and contemporary etiquette.
However, the concept of “masking” is more generalizable than these
experiments in regression. To a degree, any form of makeup or costuming
provides both alibi and mask for the player, allowing them to more freely
inhabit the character. Both actors and role-players describe how the process
of donning a costume and applying makeup is transformative in nature, an
observation also made by drag queens when becoming their larger-than-life
female alteregos.34

30. Johnstone, 165.

31. Johnstone, 168-169, 180-181.
32. Johnstone, 156.
33. Johnstone, 142.
34. Schacht and Underwood.
152 Analog Game Studies
Furthermore, costumes, makeup, and masks can denote socio-political
significance in the context of a persistent world. To use a filmmaking example,
if a character is wearing the pope’s hat and garb in a movie about the Vatican,
he evokes the social meaning ascribed to that station. Similarly, costuming,
makeup, and masks “code” characters in larps in particular socially significant
ways according to that fictional universe. In this sense, the mask often imposes
a new social identity upon role-players while in game, one that may be as
fixed and constrained as their existing mundane persona. In a persistent fictional
world, characters are often expected to perform a consistent, realistic “self,” one
that may be similar or different from their normative roles in society. Therefore,
role-playing games are not entirely freeform spaces for creative expression;
rather, they often adhere to some of the social conventions modeled from
traditional society.
Finally, Moyra Turkington offers a role-playing theory that serves as an
excellent bridge between each of these concepts. Turkington describes four
degrees of immersion with relationship to the relative distance between the
primary ego and the character: marionette, puppet, mask, and possessing force. The
marionette refers to the player having the greatest distance and control over
the character, whereas in the possessing force, “the player abandons a personal
identity and surrenders to the character object as a goal of play in order to
directly experience the full subjective reality of the character.”35 Not only does
this description correspond strongly with the immersionism ideal, her choice of
terms is particularly useful in the context of theatrical applications; marionettes,
puppets, masks, and possession are all forms of theatrical enactment as well.
These four categories offer a strong visual representation of how enveloped the
player is by the character in terms of personal identification and ego control.
Steering theory36 in role-playing offers another analogy, this time involving
driving a car: is the player in the trunk, the back seat, the passenger seat, or
behind the wheel?

Dissociation and Theory of Mind

While studying acting and role-playing theory is fascinating, we can also
learn much from the field of psychology. Ultimately, I believe that these shifts
from one mental frame to the next are forms of dissociation,37 as psychologist

35. Moyra Turkington. “Getting in the Cockpit.” Sin Aesthetics. Nov. 17,
2006:http://games.spaceanddeath.com/sin_aesthetics/36
36. Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros, and Eleanor Saitta. “The Art of Steering: Bringing the Player and
the Character Back Together.” The Knudepunkt 2015 Companion Book, edited by Charles Bo Nielsen
and Claus Raasted. Copenhagen, Denmark: Rollespilsakademiet, 2014, pp. 106-177.
 Connecting Stage Acting, Role-Playing, and Improvisation 153
Lauri Lukka has also explained at length.38 Dissociation can take many forms,
including feeling disconnected from one’s body (depersonalization), from
reality (derealization) or experiencing amnesia, identity confusion, or identity
alteration.39 In the latter case of identity alteration, the individual’s normative
sense of ego identity shifts to another developed personality. Although identity
alteration is a taboo subject due to its association with Dissociative Identity
Disorder (DID), this ability to shift identities appears to be a normal part of
human consciousness, character enactment, and the creative impulse.
Indeed, Johnstone asserts that our personalities are far less stable than we
would like to believe. The process of improv involves letting the ego dissolve
and allowing other creative manifestations to emerge. These manifestations
range from small pieces of imaginative ephemera to fully formed personality
structures who can act autonomously from the original ego. For Johnstone,
our presented, performed ego is one of many possibilities. He quotes actress
Edith Evans, who states, “I seem to have an awful lot of people inside of me.”40
Shifting between these multiple “people” inside a performer is a conscious
form of identity alteration, perfected by comedians such as Robin Williams,
whose standup routine involved rapid-fire transitioning from personality to
personality in an improvisational manner.
Johnstone further explains, “Many actors report ‘split’ states of
consciousness, or amnesias; they speak of their body acting automatically, or as
being inhabited by the character they are playing.”41 This reference to amnesia
connects to the “blanking out” described by the actor Ingrid above, where the
primary consciousness no longer remembers what occurred in character. The
degree to which actors and role-players experience full amnesia while immersed
in character requires further research, though the enactment experience is often
described as ephemeral and confusing, as most liminal moments are.
Along with dissociation, Lukka invokes Piaget’s theory of mind to describe
how such psychological constructs can develop. Most humans have the capacity
to conceptualize the consciousness of another person, whether real or imagined.
For example, at a certain stage of youth, we learn to imagine what our
caretakers might think about a messy room and the consequences that might

37. Bowman, Functions, pp. 138-143.

38. Lauri Lukka. “The Psychology of Immersion.” The Cutting Edge of Nordic Larp, edited by Jon
Back. Denmark: Knutpunkt, 2014, pp. 81-92.
39. Marlene Steinberg and Maxine Schnall. The Stranger in the Mirror, Dissociation: The Hidden
Epidemic. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.
40. Johnstone, 151.
41. Johnstone, 151.
154 Analog Game Studies
entail; we internalize a model of that authority figure’s consciousness within our
own to predict behavior and act accordingly.
Fictional characters are no different in this regard. Stage and screen actors
must create a theory of mind for their character in order to interpret the way
that personality would authentically react to situations. Some actors invest a
great deal of time writing backstories for their characters in order to flesh
out elements not present in the script, a technique also employed by role-
players. Johnstone describes the “interview” improv technique, in which actors
interview one another in character, a process also performed in some role-
playing workshops.42 These techniques not only expand the performer’s theory
of mind for the character, but add a greater degree of personal investment in the
creative process of enactment.

Summary
This article provides a cursory examination of ways in which scholars can
compare the psychological states of acting and role-playing. Ultimately, the
two states seem to closely resemble each other phenomenologically and
probably involve identical psychological mechanisms, such as the theory of
mind and dissociation. As Stenros and MacDonald have explained, the main
distinction between the two forms is that stage acting generally involves
performing for an external audience, which requires a certain degree of
training, technical precision, structured movement, and scripted lines. Improv
performed for an audience faces similar constraints.
Role-playing involves a first-person audience, meaning that the onlookers
are the other performers, who are also immersed in their roles. Unlike most
improv, role-playing involves immersing into a spontaneous role for an
extended amount of time in a persistent fictional world. Players have a strong
degree of agency within this framework, less constrained by an audience or
director, but are rather limited by the format itself and the rules of engagement.
Regardless of these distinctions, the connections between these two forms and
the very act of frame shifting into different social roles can offer us fascinating
insights into the nature of the psyche and its creative potential.

42. Johnstone, 127.

 Joy and Meaning in Theater Games
Lisa Quoresimo

How do theater games help make meaning for performers and audiences? I
came to this question through my work on the production Charlotte Charke/Mr.
Brown, an experimental musical theater piece about the 18th century London
performer who lived much of her1 life dressed in men’s clothing. This theater
piece was devised using extensive game play. Theater games drawn from Viola
Spolin and Keith Johnstone, theater practitioners who developed games to teach
acting and improvisation, were used during the rehearsal process. We also
made up new games to help us embody our engagement with issues that arose
from the script, and even played some of these games in front of the audience
during the final performance. However, the playing of our games created such
an intensely bonded community that the energy and pleasure of the play was
not always communicated to those outside of the playing circle. We began to
bridge this gap in meaning through traditional performance techniques such as
enlarging the actors’ movements and voices to fill the performance space, and
extending their energy and awareness outward. The players stepped beyond
fourth-wall based Stanislavskian acting techniques as they learned to include the
audience, conceptually, as players of their games.2 This essay has been prompted
by the experience of writing and directing Charlotte Charke/Mr. Brown; it is a
critical analysis that shows how joy, spontaneity, and meaning are built into
theater games.
Theater games developed in the twentieth century as a technique for
keeping child-like joy and spontaneity in the play of actors of all ages. Viola
Spolin developed her use of theater games during her work in the Works
Process Administration (WPA) drama program, adapting the games she played

1. Despite the fact that Charlotte lived much of her life as Mr. Brown, she consistently refers to herself
in her writings as ‘daughter’ and ‘mother.’ Hence my use of the female pronoun.
2. The acting techniques developed by Constantin Stanislavski (1863-1938), or some derivation of
them, have dominated European and American theater for the last century. While Stanislavski’s circle of
attention would eventually open up to include the whole auditorium, see Bella Merlin’s description of the
four circles of attention, the largest of which includes awareness of sounds outside of the house in which
the characters are sitiing in the world of The Seagull, but none of the circles includes awareness of the
audience. Bella Merlin. Konstantin Stanislavsky. New York: Routledge, 2003. http://site.ebrary.com/id/
10731831.112-113

155
156 Analog Game Studies
with immigrant children in settlement houses for use in her adult acting classes.
Acting teachers and directors today use Spolin’s Improvisation for the Theater
and Theater Game File as resources for their warm-ups and actor training.3
Spolin’s son, Paul Sills, used her games to develop the improvisations which are
performed at The Second City in Chicago. Since 1959, Second City has trained
generations of comedians, from Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller to Tina Fey
and Keegan-Michael Key, and the improvisational techniques developed there
formed the basis of shows such as “Saturday Night Live” and “Whose Line is
it Anyway?”. The development of Theatresports, an influential improvisational
comedy troupe in Britain, arose from Keith Johnstone’s theater game work.
Johnstone’s work also emphasized spontaneity and his book, Impro, laid the
foundations of status work, which I address later in this essay. Both Spolin and
Johnstone were attempting to get their students to be in the moment, moving
away from the more presentational styles of acting which were prevalent in the
early-mid twentieth century. The problem I encountered with my cast was that
they became so involved in the moment that they were creating meaning for
themselves, but not for the audience. Theresa Robbins Dubeck describes Keith
Johnstone’s exhortations to actors to pay attention to the audience in terms of
staying within their ‘circle of probability,’ but this addresses narrative scene-
making, and we were performing the games as a counter to narrative flow.4
How could I help my actors include the audience in this type of meaning-
making without losing any of their joy and spontaneity?
Half of Mr. Brown consisted of traditionally scripted scenes, and in the
development and rehearsal of these scenes, we used theater games in equally
traditional ways. According to acting coach Viola Spolin, “games release
spontaneity and create flow as they remove static body movements and bring
the actors together physically.”5 Tsunami was one of the games we used to
work on these goals. This game begins with the players standing in a circle.
One player initiates a brief sound and movement that is repeated quickly by
each person around the circle. Once it has traveled the whole way around and
been repeated by its initiator, the next person in the circle comes up with a
new sound and motion. The game continues until all players have initiated.

3. Viola Spolin. Improvisation for the Theater: A Handbook of Teaching and Directing
Techniques. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999. Also see Viola Spolin. Theater Game
File. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1989.
4. Theresa Robbins Dudeck. “Keith Johnstone’s ‘Circle of Probability’: A Concept for Creating Stories
That Engage Audiences.” Theatre Topics. 23.1 (2013), p.45.
5. Viola Spolin. Improvisation for the Theater: A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques. p.
305.
 Joy and Meaning in Theater Games 157
Tsunami works on several levels; it encourages spontaneous reactions, makes
the players use their bodies and voices in unaccustomed ways, and has a strong
ensemble-building effect. Once an ensemble has embodied these spontaneous
responses to each other in a game like Tsunami, they are able to bring that sense
of spontaneity into their scripted dialogue and carefully rehearse movements,
allowing the audience the illusion of unscripted conversations and interactions.
As we rehearsed the scripted scenes in Mr. Brown, we used theater games
to heighten our meaning making. Keith Johnstone developed status work to
help his actors speak, not theatrically, but “like life as [he] knew it.”6 I attempted
to use his work to heighten the theatricality of the actor’s bodies in order to add
layers of meaning to the scene. In one scene where Charlotte, an 18th century
actress at the Drury Lane Theater, is visited in her dressing room by a group
of noblemen and by her father, the owner/manager of the theater, the actors
were having a hard time developing new physical habits. I asked the actors to
play a game in which they competed, without speaking, for high or low status,
thinking about what their physicality was saying about their relationship to
each other.7 Is the hand on the shoulder a friendly gesture or a patronizing one?
Is eye contact always indicative of high status, or can you sometimes show more
status by refusing to look at the other person? Through playing competing
status games, they were able to achieve an embodied understanding of these
subtle differences. When we turned back to the scripted scene, the noblemen
were able to physically express an exaggerated high status. Charlotte’s father,
Colley Cibber, was able to demonstrate, without saying a word, his lowered
status compared to the noblemen and his higher status over Charlotte. The
actress playing Charlotte physically expressed her discomfort with her status as
a woman in eighteenth century society by competing for status with her father
and lowering her status toward the noblemen until their sexual harassment
became too much for her. The physicality these student actors found through
the status games was large and open enough to make the situation and the
stakes clear to the audience. We had used Johnstone’s games to move in the
opposite direction from his intended purpose; the scene had gained meaning by
becoming meta-theatrical, by pointing at the physical performances that each
character had to constantly generate in order to maintain their high or low
status.

6. Keith Johnstone. Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre. New York, NY: Routledge/Theatre Arts
Books, 1987, p. 33.
7. Keith Johnstone. Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre. New York, NY: Routledge/Theatre Arts
Books, 1987, pp. 33-39.
158 Analog Game Studies

An example of the exercise through which players defined their characters through binary relations.
Image used with permission by the author.

In addition to the games which had been developed by Johnstone and Spolin,
I had to develop some of my own to help foster critical inquiry of gender
issues within the group. For example, early in the rehearsal process, we made
a list of adjectives that our culture views as gendered, and I gave the cast
foil stars to stick on the line between the oppositional adjectives to represent
themselves. The actors spent upwards of an hour playing with this chart, and
 Joy and Meaning in Theater Games 159
we held long discussions about what this meant for them and their places on
the gender spectrum. At a later rehearsal, I wrote each of these adjectives on a
big piece of paper and placed the papers in a circle around the rehearsal space.
I asked them to pick a piece of paper, and choose a repeated motion and a
sound to illustrate the adjective. We played this for a while, and then I asked
them to move from each adjective to its opposite, morphing the motion/sound
gradually as they moved across the room. They began moving in groups as they
played, so I asked them to move as one group, imitating one another until they
found a unified motion and sound for each adjective. After a couple of hours
of play, we had developed a game/dance which we performed in the show
each night. This game helped the cast reach an embodied understanding of
gender binaries, which informed their work on the rest of the show. Although
they performed this game each night with joy and spontaneity, and audiences
responded positively to it, the meaning of the dance was not overtly clear to
many spectators.
Meaning is generated differently when the size of the room and/or the
number of recipients changes. Think of the different levels of energy required
to communicate in a one-on-one conversation in a quiet room, and the energy
required to communicate a similar meaning (without technological
enhancement) in a large auditorium to several hundred listeners. As we moved
from our rehearsals into our performance space, I knew that the games as they
had been played in a small rehearsal room needed to change in order to fit
the one hundred fifty seat thrust theater. There were two goals I needed to
accomplish. First, with an awareness of the theatrical space as a new body being
added to our community, I wanted the cast to integrate the building as part
of their ensemble. Second, I needed the cast, as performers, to open up their
bodies, voices, and awareness to fill the bigger space. In order to accomplish
the first goal, the first thing we did in the theater space was to play a game
of sardines. Sardines is a reverse hide-and-seek game; one person hides, and
everyone else tries to find them and squeeze into their hiding place with them.
After ninety minutes of play, the cast was thoroughly comfortable with every
inch of the theater space, and the ensemble had embodied their integration. In
order to accomplish the second goal, I expanded our warm-up circle game of
tsunami. We had played tsunami in our small room in an intimate circle. In our
new space, we played it in a circle which encompassed the back rows of the
audience seats and the farthest reaches of the stage area. Playing this way helped
them expand their physicality, vocality, awareness, and energy to fit the new,
larger theater space.
Despite these improvements, some problems remained. Specifically, the
160 Analog Game Studies
actors were not yet communicating meaning outside of their ensemble. At
a rehearsal, one observer mentioned that, during the game scenes, the actors
seemed to be playing for themselves. Realizing this was true, I asked the actors
to make the games bigger physically, vocally, and to expand their energy to
the walls as they played. They did as I asked, but it still was not quite enough.
They had built such an intimate ensemble, what play scholar Johan Huizinga
would refer to as, a “feeling of being apart together,” that they made no
connection with the audience. During one of the next rehearsals, there were
about five observers present, mostly members of our tech crew. I asked them
to sit throughout the house, and then asked the players, during the game, to be
aware of one specific body in the house at a time, extending their awareness and
energy to that body, and then to another, conceptually including them in the
playing of the game. Our audiences reacted with laughter and tears, reporting
visceral reactions to, and feelings of bodily engagement with, the interludes.
The players, without losing the joy and freedom of their play, managed to
include in their circle the other present bodies.
Throughout the rehearsal process our use of games as warm-ups, scene
builders and problem solvers allowed the cast to be joyful in their play. Their
embodied practice of spontaneous interaction helped them bring that
spontaneity into even the most scripted repetitions. They discovered meaning
through their playful explorations of the issues raised by Charlotte Charke/Mr.
Brown, and learned how to communicate that meaning across large spaces and
to large numbers of spectators. The game playing and meaning-making we
did was not constrained by a narrative format; we were exploring issues by
playing with our bodies and voices without concern for logical structure or
linguistic communication. Part of our work was to point at the performance
that Charlotte constantly maintained, whether as Charlotte or Mr. Brown, and
so we needed to point at our own performance in a way that was neither
presentational nor attempting to be life-like. When Spolin speaks of “increasing
of the individual capacity for experiencing” through game play, she is speaking
of the actor’s capacity for experience. We increased the audience’s capacity for
experience, as well, by including them in our games. The players needed to be
in the moment, aware of the moment, and, in order to allow the audience inside
of our circle of meaning, include their bodies in each moment of awareness.
 Performativities in Play: Deception in J.L.
Austin, Theater, and Games
Jonathan Rey Lee

Is calling someone a ‘good liar’ a compliment or an insult? Or does it depend

on the circumstances?1 Play, for example, complicates simplistic distinctions
between real and virtual, tangible and intangible, truth and falsity. As a
consequence, play transforms the significance of the language it appropriates. If
statements in plays and in play are “lies” insofar as they subvert ordinary notions
of truthfulness, then they must be lies of a particularly interesting sort. Statements
made on stage and in games are meaningful in ways that play with the so-called
“ordinary” uses of such statements.2 In play, language acts both by performing
actions and by enacting a performance itself.
This article questions the special meaningfulness of playful forms of
deception, asking how language in theater and games can use their fundamental
unreality to real effect. Such deceptiveness, I suggest, is no simple untruth, but
rather establishes the fictionality of theater and the virtuality of games as ways
of playing with and within reality.

When Saying Becomes Doing

Building upon Ludwig Wittgenstein’s notion that “the speaking of language is
part of an activity, or of a form of life,”3 J.L. Austin defines performative utterances
as ones in which saying becomes doing.4 For example, statements such as ‘I do’
(during a wedding ceremony), ‘I promise,’ and ‘I wager’ perform rather than
describe social actions.
What happens to performative language within theater and games, forms
of social play that blend linguistic and bodily performance? These

1. Two famous polemics—Friedrich Nietzsche’s “On Truth and Lies in the Extra-moral Sense” and
Oscar Wilde’s “The Decay of Lying”—challenge simplistic assumptions about the naturalness of truth and
falsity, arguing that human experience needs certain productive fabrications such as metaphor and art.
2. Indeed, part of this play is to problematize this distinction insofar as the theater and games are
woven into (and out of) so-called ‘ordinary’ contexts in many ways.
3. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe. New York:
MacMillan, 1958, §23.
4. J.L. Austin. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975.

161
162 Analog Game Studies
performances, I argue, suspend certain elements of everyday conversation, such
as the standard division between truth and lies. At the same time, however,
the ‘magic circle’5 of the stage or game can only suspend so much—meanings
inevitably slip between the special circumstances of the play and the social
circumstances in which they are embedded. This contextual doubling generates
a spectrum of meaningful possibilities for its participants. Playful deceptions,
therefore, matter because they are simultaneously inconsequential and
consequential, because they perform virtual realities that paradoxically may
reflect, engage, or subvert the ordinary. This performance, moreover, operates
as a kind of language play in which the doubled significance of words as actions
generates potentially meaningful tensions, playful experiments with reality and
unreality.

Austin on Performatives
Verbal utterances in and as play deserve more scholarly attention, especially
with respect to analog gameplay, which tends to involve plenty of
conversation.6 Austin’s ‘ordinary language’ philosophy is, therefore, relevant to
game studies, although Austin himself bypasses contexts such as theater and
play, explaining:

A performative utterance will, for example, be in a peculiar way hollow or

void if said by an actor on the stage, or if introduced in a poem, or spoken in
a soliloquy. This applies in a similar manner to any and every utterance—a
sea-change in special circumstances. Language in such circumstances is in
special ways—intelligibly—used not seriously, but in ways parasitic upon
its normal use.7

The recognition of the specialness and parasitism that characterizes playful

utterances gives a glimpse of Austin’s potential contribution to game studies.
Precisely because Austin’s theory is general, yet simultaneously recognizes the
particularities of “a sea-change in special circumstances,” it is able to bridge the

5. The ‘magic circle’ is a common term in game studies for the separateness of a play space from
everyday life coined by Johan Huizinga and further popularized by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman.
See Johan Huizinga. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul Ltd., 1949); Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals.
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004).
6. An example of recent work on the topic would be Angelina Ilieva. "How We Do Larps With
Words." Playing Reality. Ed. Elge Larsson. Stockholm: Interacting Arts, 2010, pp. 231-242.
7. Austin, p. 22.
 Performativities in Play: Deception in J.L. Austin, Theater, and
Games 163
dual uses of language to constitute play within the game and circulate playfully
around the game.8 Moreover, this language of context-dependency might be
used to more precisely articulate the interplay between the nested contexts
of the game and its social milieu than the somewhat overused metaphor of
the magic circle.9 Furthermore, Austin’s method of reading language as
performance provides a compelling foundation for studying language in
performance and, by extension, in play. Gameplay is not only interactive and
performative like language, but is often interactive and performative through
language. After all, in games, words do things. Finally, Austin is particularly
relevant to an exploration of playful deception because he shows how as actions
words confound typical notions of truth and falsity. In short, Austin helps
elucidate how linguistic performances can become actions that can, in special
circumstances, become play.
As performances that generate actions, performative statements become
meaningful in relation to when, where, why, how, by whom, and to whom
they are uttered. That is, the significance of a statement is context-dependent.
Understanding performatives requires understanding their circumstances,
including implicit and explicit social conventions, particularities of the material
environment, and roles of individual participants. This means, moreover, that
performatives are not purely linguistic phenomena, but are moves within larger
social practices.10
Statements mean (and do) more than they say. Take, for example, the
statement “keep calm and relax” displayed on a throw pillow in someone’s
home. This statement performs the actions of advising and inviting the reader
to keep calm and relax. It advises by being overtly displayed11 where it will be
read as applicable wisdom. It invites, moreover, by alluding to its immediate
material context: a comforting environment within which the advice can be
followed. In these ways, this printed utterance performs an active role within

8. See Sicart’s distinction between ‘play’ and ‘playfulness.’ Miguel Sicart. Play Matters. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 2014.
9. In my view, what is typically called the "magic circle" is not the separateness of the play context
from the everyday context, but the appearance of separateness brought about by the doubled meanings
that arise from the simultaneity of the play and everyday contexts.
10. In this way, Austin’s work contributes to social constructivist notions like that of John Searle, who
developed his famous speech act theory from Austin’s work. What I find particularly compelling about
Austin is that his philosophy—like Wittgenstein’s—is more playful than some of this later work, being
more a performance of reading ordinary language than a systematic theory of language or society.
11. If the pillow were put in storage, the sentence on it would not be an utterance at all because it
would fail to circulate or be received.
164 Analog Game Studies
the social contexts in which it is encountered, doing something for its readers
by saying something to its readers. Although play performatives may differ from
this everyday example, they nonetheless make meaning in similarly contextual
ways. For example, a verbal utterance in a play may initiate a promise between
two characters and an utterance in a game may count as a move within the
game—advancing a guess, initiating a battle, selecting an available action, etc.
Understanding any performative, therefore, entails understanding both
how the conventions of its context determine what actions are performed
and how the purposes of its context structure how it is to be received.
Understanding play, likewise, entails understanding the play context as
systematically shaping how language performs. Contexts structure both the
performance and reception of linguistic actions, determining both
meaningfulness and appropriateness. Performatives (as actions) are threatened
not by falsity but by infelicity, “the things that can be and go wrong on the occasion
of such utterances.”12 Certainly, statements can go wrong in many ways, as
when a player fails to make a move within a game by stating an action that is
not allowed by the game rules.
Somewhat surprisingly, however, Austin draws on an ethics of speaker
intentions to argue that performatives may succeed and still be infelicitous.
False and broken promises are, for example, successful promises that play an
improper role within their social circulation because they lack sincere intentions
or are not fulfilled. They are not quite lies—because they are actions rather than
assertions—but they have something of the feel of lies. They are, in Austin’s
terminology, abuses—not necessarily in the sense of being unethical, but of
being abnormal or aberrant uses that undermine the social function of promises.
This kind of abuse can also occur on stage or in games—for example, in
disinterested acting or the play of a spoilsport—but is not characteristic of the
productive deceptiveness of plays or play in general. Contrary to abuses like lies
and false promises that undermine proper uses, theater and games properly belie
everyday reality in ways that powerfully reflect or represent that reality.
Performative language, therefore, contributes both to the constitutive
deceptiveness of the fictionality and/or virtuality of play in general and to the
particular uses and abuses of deception within these play spaces.

Onstage Performatives
Turning first to the theater, the stage seemingly depletes performative content,
since actors are not beholden to statements they make while performing their

12. Austin, p. 14.

 Performativities in Play: Deception in J.L. Austin, Theater, and
Games 165
roles. The same words spoken in the same tone by the same individuals might
be a proposal, promise, or insult offstage, but count as none of these onstage
as actors are not expected to become engaged, promised, or insulted as a
result. It is tempting, therefore, to consider stage performance as inimical to
linguistic performativity, the theater as all saying and no doing. While onstage
performatives certainly differ from most conversational ones, it would be a
mistake to minimize the complex ways linguistic performativity bears on stage
performance. Plays gain significance as an interplay between a staged fictional
world and the reality of the stage itself. Within this doubled context, words
themselves may take on special doubled significance as they simultaneously gain
special meaning within the play and reflect or refract their everyday meanings.
Stage performatives are genuine insofar as they apply not to the actors
but to the fictional characters they play. There is nothing strange about uttering
genuine performatives on behalf of others, as interpreters and messengers
routinely do. And there is nothing strange about fictional language becoming
meaningful in much the same way that ordinary language does. Therefore,
although we do not consider actors beholden to the statements they make,
we do consider characters so beholden—if in the first act the actor utters a
marriage proposal, promise, or insult, we fully expect this to influence the
subsequent story. Staged language is certainly differently consequential from
offstage language, but I believe it is precisely this difference that makes fiction
so meaningful. Thus, whereas Austin writes that “Walt Whitman does not
seriously incite the eagle of liberty to soar,”13 this statement has both force
and seriousness when its doubled meaning as an expressive poetic image and
metaphorical rhetorical incitement to the reader are properly understood. If
such theatrical, fictional, and poetic language is fundamentally ‘deceptive,’ it is
deceptive in a way that generally aims not to mislead but to express.
Onstage performatives have additional force insofar as they are directed
to the audience, encouraging spectators to participate in producing the
significance of the spectacle. The stage invites the audience to share in the
deception, to collectively dream rather than lie. Devices such as the soliloquy
or aside, for instance, allows the spectator to share intimate secrets, promises,
or insights with a character. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for
example, famously concludes with an address to the audience beginning with
the performative: “If we shadows have offended, / Think but this, and all
is mended.” Couched as a playful apology, Puck’s soliloquy is essentially an
invitation to engage in the play’s fantasy rather than judge its reality. This

13. Austin, p. 104.

166 Analog Game Studies
performative invitation is characteristic of an influential approach to theatrical
performance famously articulated by playwright Bertolt Brecht, who argues
that exposing the artificiality of the theater opens up certain forms of theatrical
meaning-making.14
I experienced this at a play called Best of Enemies, a dramatization of the
radical transformation of a KKK member based on a true story. As one might
expect, the play featured quite a few rather nasty racist insults.15 While this was
uncomfortable for spectators and actors alike (as one actor admitted in a post-
play discussion), the staging was designed to situate the performance within a
retrospective historical lens, using old newspaper headlines as a backdrop and
period-appropriate music to accompany scene changes. Maintaining a realistic
sense of the illocutionary force of the insults within the fiction while situating
these insults within this historical consciousness created a kind of performative
contract with the audience, a promise to redeem that language within the social
justice motivation of the theatrical experience. Similarly, the design of a game
conditions the relationships players develop with the game. To play is, in a
sense, to navigate the game as stage. Insofar as players are actors, therefore, they
use language in this theatrical way—to advance roles that have significance in
how they are received by others who are both spectators and fellow participants
within the world of the game.16
A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Best of Enemies both intentionally
highlight the artificiality of the stage to provide their audiences a particular
self-awareness about the performance and its performative language. This is by
no means the only way to navigate the double-layered context of the stage.
The imperatives of realism, for example, suggest that plays be designed and
performed to create a parallelism between the play’s real and fictional contexts.
Even as its artificial setting reminds the audience that it is just a story, for
example, Best of Enemies strives to remind us that it is a true story and presents
itself as realistically documenting America’s history of racial violence. In so
doing, the play echoes another of Shakespeare’s famous lines by reminding us
that “all the world’s a stage,” suggesting that the KKK’s performative rhetoric is
itself a social script and that its members are “merely players” stubbornly acting

14. Nick Mizer also uses Brecht to discuss ‘non-immersive gaming’ in the first issue of Analog Game
Studies. Nick Mizer. "'Fun in a Different Way': Rhythms of Engagement and Non-Immersive Play
Agendas." Analog Game Studies 1.1. http://analoggamestudies.org/2014/08/179/.
15. Insults are a form of performative that, as Austin discusses, demonstrate the importance of uptake
because they must be felt as well as understood. Thus, the formulation ‘I hereby insult you’ generally fails
to successfully insult someone.
16. At least in standard multiplayer games.
 Performativities in Play: Deception in J.L. Austin, Theater, and
Games 167
out the fiction that their world is designed for them alone. Just as the artificiality
of the staging reminds the audience that the actor is not the character, this
realistic scripting and acting suggests that the character is not the role, as
demonstrated by the character’s growing disenchantment with racist identity
politics that drives the Bildungsroman plot. In fact, the loci of Brecht’s artificial
theater and realism represent but two points on a vast spectrum of possible
ways to navigate the interplay of the real and the fictional, which produces a
multiplicity of generative possibilities that characterize theatrical play. Similarly,
gameplay performances are arrayed along a spectrum of possibilities that
navigate a tension between distance and immersion that often accompanies
gameplay. Although theater and games are by no means identical, I believe
they are both appropriately termed play for this reason—that they perform
a meaningfully doubling of fictional/virtual play spaces and the interpretive
contexts that circumscribe them.

Performatives in Gameplay
Just as theatrical performatives do not fully bear on actors, gameplay
performatives do not fully bear on players. Yet, as with their theatrical
counterparts, gameplay performatives only suspend so much.17 As statements
circulate in and around the game, they gain significance through the interplay
of two overlapping interpretive contexts, namely the conversational and gameplay
contexts.18 In some cases, statements are clearly situated within one of these
contexts, but this is often not so clear. A statement, for example, may be
ambiguous as in how the imperative “pass the chips” may refer either to
tokens within a poker game or snacks outside the game. More common,
however, are hybrid cases that fall along an interpretive spectrum generated
by the blending of the two contexts. This includes various forms of
metacommentary—discussing, explaining, exclaiming, strategizing, asking,
congratulating, taunting, etc.—that address gameplay from its conversational
context. It also includes a range of gameplay performatives that link verbal
game actions to the conversational context, such as “check” in Chess (a
metacommentary warning that functions as a game action insofar as its
utterance is mandated by the rules). Similarly, performative utterances may

17. Also drawing on Austin, Ian Bogost’s post “Persuasive Games: Performative Play” explores unusual
cases in videogames where in-game actions are also actions outside the game.
18. More accurately, at least two, since contexts often overlap in everyday circumstances. For example,
any or all of the following contexts might be layered atop the conversational and gameplay contexts: a
tournament, a charitable fundraiser, a gaming organization, a coffee shop, a local community, a national
community, etc.
168 Analog Game Studies
shorthand non-verbal moves (as in correspondence Chess) and even end,
suspend, or alter the game within the meta-discourses of the ‘forfeit,’ ‘time out,’
and ‘do-over.’
Since gameplay is a symbolic activity, saying becomes doing often and in
many ways. While not all statements made during play are performative in
the same way, there are some common conventions for translating speech into
game actions. It would be impossible to fully capture this dynamic range of
possibilities in a simple taxonomy, so I shall briefly present three examples of
the diverse uses of (deceptive) performative language in gameplay, specifically
in guessing and trivia games, gambling games, and social deception games. In
each case, game design facilitates a particular kind of interplay between the
conversational and gameplay contexts, relying on their simultaneous unity and
disunity to generate play.

Guessing and Trivia Games

One of the more straightforward interplays can be found in guessing and trivia
games (Trivial Pursuit, Twenty Questions, Charades, etc.) and game shows (Wheel
of Fortune, Jeopardy) that involve answer-giving as a performative that submits
itself for evaluation. Most such games directly involve real world contexts,
aiming at matching verbal game moves to facts about the world (or its
language). The challenge of such games is usually the difficulty in forging
the desired link between gameplay and reality due to the deployment of
uncommon knowledge, partial information, and/or time constraints.
Complicating such straightforward guessing games, deceptive guessing
games like Balderdash and Wise and Otherwise require players to invent plausible
fictions that lure other players into believing them to be the correct real-
world response. In these games, the acts of writing the fictions and of voting
for particular responses both function as gameplay performatives that
simultaneously commit the player to actions within the game and a stance
towards truth or plausibility19 outside the game. As Balderdash asks players
to complete incomplete facts and Wise and Otherwise asks them to complete
incomplete aphorisms, both games bring the world outside the game into the
game as an object of play. Most guessing games rely on fluency with discourses
outside the game, bringing not only the social context but also knowledge and
competencies from players’ everyday lives into play.

19. This relationship is subverted but not eliminated if a player chooses to write or vote for answers
that are silly rather than plausible.
 Performativities in Play: Deception in J.L. Austin, Theater, and
Games 169
Gambling Games
When guessing games bring the real world into play, they often trivialize
it—hence the term ‘trivia.’ Gambling games, in contrast, are at once trivial and
serious as the increased stakes render the play consequential in a real-world
sense.20 According to Jesper Juul, the possibility—but non-necessity of—real-
world consequences is definitional of games (he calls this negotiable
consequences).21 Thus, so-called gambling games can, like any game, be played
for any stakes. The design of a gambling game like poker, however, aligns
with real-world consequentiality such that even when no money is involved
the game nonetheless plays at gambling. In fact, the relative simplicity and luck-
dependence of the hidden information card games that underlie poker facilitates
an emphasis on wagering. The wagers themselves are generally conducted
through verbal performatives which draw a parallel between the conversational
and gameplay contexts—one wagers chips within the game that are associated
with money, whether in fact or in play. As a zero-sum game whose play
aims at the circulation and accumulation of chips (which both conventionally
represent and mimic money by being abstract signifiers of value), to play poker
is to gamble, even if only to gamble signifiers. Wagering is, in fact, an everyday
performative that is adopted and adapted in poker’s game design. As with its
everyday counterpart, wagering within poker is subject to standards of felicity
and infelicity. While certainly deceptive, however, bluffing is no abuse in
Austin’s sense because the performance of the wager does not require claiming
anything about the particularities of one’s hand. Instead, the actual abuse in
poker would be wagering what one is unwilling or unable to pay.

Social Deception Games

The lying within social deception games such as Mafia, Avalon, and Bang!
generally lack the explicit consequences of gambling (although social capital
can be staked and lost) that so strongly link conversational and gameplay
contexts. Instead, the lying in such games often depends upon the disunity
between these contexts, constituting both a legitimate move within the game
and an illegitimate description of the game. This disunity, moreover, reveals the

20. Raising the stakes of play moves towards what is sometimes called ‘deep play’ after Clifford Geertz’s
essay of the same name.
21. Jesper Juul, “The Game, the Player, the World: Looking for a Heart of Gameness,” Level Up:
Digital Games Research Conference Proceedings, ed. Marinka Copier and Joost Raessens. Utrecht:
Utrecht University, 2003, pp. 30-45.
170 Analog Game Studies
constitutive oxymoron of social deception games which are designed to promote
social interaction by subverting social norms.22
In the card game Coup, for example, each player receives two hidden
characters which enable certain game actions. Any player may perform any
action, but that player must be able to produce the corresponding character card
if challenged or suffer the consequences (the challenger suffers the consequences
otherwise). The first time I played this game, I developed a verbal tic of using
unnecessarily oblique language, saying “I declare myself to be the Contessa”
rather than “I am the Contessa.” In Austin’s view, these statements are identical
performatives except that the first is unnecessarily explicit. Within the doubled
context of play, however, these statements differ significantly—the first
performs a move within the game without making a corresponding infelicitous
statement (i.e. lying) whereas the second does both. In this way, such games
play with social norms regarding truth and falsity by establishing a context in
which certain forms of deceptiveness become viable social interaction. These
performatives entail performances, as players’ success in deceiving others
depends on their ability to lie convincingly—being a ‘good liar’ may be
acceptable or even desirable. At the same time, since social interaction is one
purpose of such games, their play treads a delicate balance between maintaining
and suspending social relationships.

Thus, there is another spectrum at work in performative gameplay—a spectrum

of player response, the diverse individual reactions that players may take when
confronted with the interplay of conversational and gameplay contexts. At
one end of the spectrum, deception games play with the psychology of lying
aversion,23 in which individuals experience difficulty lying even in circumstances
where lying is warranted or permissible. At the other end of the spectrum,
the carnivalesque pleasure of deception gameplay depends upon transgressing
commonplace norms within the playful suspension of everyday reality. Lying
aversion and carnivalesque pleasure are, in fact, sides of the same coin—the
taboo makes the transgression pleasurable yet fraught. Thus, more than a simple
spectrum, there is an entire topography of differing play responses which waver,
touch, and blend within the doubled context of the gaming experience.

22. Something similar is the purpose of the taboo-defying game Cards Against Humanity, which uses
the magic circle to—for good or ill—trivialize the uttering of otherwise offensive statements.
23. Uri Gneezy has done several controlled experiments on lying aversion (primarily in economic
transactions). He notes that such aversion varies amongst the general population.
 Performativities in Play: Deception in J.L. Austin, Theater, and
Games 171

Claiming to be the Contessa (far right) in Coup can counteract pesky assassinations, but being
caught in that lie could instantly lose one the game. Image by Indie Boards and Cards, used with
permission.

Conclusion
Both theater and gameplay maintain a doubled context for utterances to attain
meaningfulness both within and outside the magic circle. Theater performs
fictions by staging performative language that simultaneously generates
distance and intimacy with the audience. Similarly, gameplay depends upon
entering a rule-governed virtual play space that suspends certain aspects of
the everyday but simultaneously gains significance from the social contexts
within which the game is played. Any incongruities between these doubled
interpretations should, I argue, be understood as a complex play of reality and
unreality. In gameplay, deception can be a form of play-acting (both acting and
play) which, like theatrical play, depends upon performing a role that crosses
between reality and unreality. While play-actors are not necessarily beholden
to their performative utterances, their performance is a meaningful experience
of slipping in and out of the game-stage, an interplay which I suggest is part
of what makes such performances play. Saying becomes doing in theatrical
and gameplay contexts precisely because language is always a performance,
whether social, theatrical, or playful. Or, to put it another way, theater and
games are special circumstances in which saying can become playing. Indeed,
performatives seem peculiarly at home in plays and in play—perhaps because
172 Analog Game Studies
these activities are, after all, some of the important ways we explore how to do
things with words.
New Spaces
 Cocktail Cabinets: A Critique of Digital and
Ludic Essentialism
Samuel Tobin

Scene: I’m at Quarters arcade in Hadley, MA sitting at Tapper, the cocktail

cabinet edition, pint aglow from beneath as I try to get my bartender to the
end of the bar in time to catch empty steins. I take a drink, try to serve a drink.
Game Over. My wife comes over and she spreads the alternative weekly across
the cabinet. Should we get hot dogs?
If we wanted to understand this scene we would want to know all about
Tapper, but not just how I failed to keep up with its virtual patrons. We could
move from screen to scene, enacting a shift in objects of study. This is a move
from object to subject, from text to reader, from game to player – but it could
also be a move from one set of objects to another, toward new kinds of things.
Across the academy we see a move to study objects in new ways, not just in the
current waves of Speculative Realism and Object Oriented Ontology, but also
as part of a longer, slower, material turn.1 This turn orients us toward things
and toward objects, signaling a shift within game studies toward the spaces of
the player.2 Understanding the cocktail cabinet in the context of these shifts
adds important material and spatial dimensions to game studies’ readings of
characters, mechanics, and settings, along with the technical systems that enable
and constrain those phenomena.
We redefine our objects as we go – to understand the cocktail cabinet
from the perspective of players’ bodies, their comportments and postures, their
practices, their desires and their attitudes. The cocktail cabinet becomes many
things: a table for drinks, an impromptu bench or coat rack, a dinner table,
an ashtray, a place to grade papers, to hold hands, to do drugs, light candles,

1. Mark Fisher. "Speculative Realism." Frieze Blog. May 11, 2009. http://blog.frieze.com/
speculative_realism/
2. Helen Cunningham. “Mortal Kombat and Computer Games Girls.” In Electronic Media and
Technoculture. Ed. John Thornton Caldwell. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 1984. See also:
Raiford Guins. "'Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!' Video Games in Space." Journal of Visual Culture 3.2
(2004), pp. 195–211. James Hodges. "Antagonism, Incorporated: Video Arcades and the Politics of
Commercial Space." Media Fields Journal. May 7, 2014. http://www.mediafieldsjournal.org/antagonism-
incorporated/2014/5/7/antagonism-incorporated-video-arcades-and-the-politics-of-co.html. Jesper Juul.
A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2009.

175
176 Analog Game Studies
spill drinks, or even a play surface for fully analog games like Connect-4 (1974)
and Poker. This is not enough; we re-define and re-name our human subjects
and objects too. People do many things with these units besides playing (with)
them.
What are these activities? Cocktail cabinets are not just tipped-over upright
cabinets. Cocktail cabinets are part of a different constellation and genealogy of
game tables, descended from the practices of play and sociality that come with
them. If we take a step back and look at the posture of a cocktail cabinet player,
and not at the game being played, we see a bodily comportment and disposition
that goes further back and farther afield than the 1970s birth of the object. 3
Approached from this perspective we start to pay less attention to the
digital nature of the games played through the system. It does not matter so
much then whether one is sitting at an 1800s convertible backgammon and
chess table, a 1900s green velvet-lined card table, or a 1980s cocktail unit.
These tabletop gaming scenarios seem particularly akin to one another when
we investigate them as assemblages of bodily and social factors that define a
moment of play.4 These connections might be issues of, for example, the body
and its techniques,5 of control,6 of training and rhythms,7 of temporal and
spiritual dispositions,8 or of settings and contexts, in this case modes of public
seated play, likely in taverns or cafes.9 I want to show the ways in which we
can trace a different genealogy and trajectory, really a range of them, for the
cocktail cabinet. My goal here is not just to challenge the traditional, invention-
heavy narratives of arcades and public play– this has been done very well already
by, for one, Erkki Huhtamo in his “Slots of Fun, Slots of Trouble” and “From
Kaleidoscomaniac to Cybernerd,” where he performs a “media archaeology” of
games’ culture and history.10

3. Erkki Huhtamo. "From Kaleidoscomaniac to Cybernerd. Towards an Archeology of the

Media." Leonardo. 30.3 (1997), pp. 221-224.
4. T.L. Taylor. “The Assemblage of Play.” Games and Culture 4.4 (2009), pp. 331-339.
5. Marcel Mauss. Techniques, Technology and Civilization. Edited by Nathan Schlanger. New York:
Berghahn Books, 2006.
6. Michel Foucault. Discipline and Punish. New York City: Vintage Books, 1975/1995.
7. Henri Lefebvre. The Critique of Everyday Life: The One-Volume Edition. New York: Verso
Books, 2014.
8. Walter Benjamin. The Arcades Project. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2002.
9. David Nasaw. Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1999.
10. Huhtamo, "From Kaleidoscomaniac to Cybernerd." Erkki Huhtamo. "Slots of Fun, Slots of
Trouble" Handbook of Computer Games Studies edited by Joost Raessens and Jeffrey Goldstein.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005, pp. 1-21. Laine Nooney, in a footnote, also offers an important
 Cocktail Cabinets: A Critique of Digital and Ludic Essentialism 177
Rather, my goal is to contribute to a critique of digital essentialism that
amends certain fixations on the digital and computational aspects of video
gaming.
This is my critique of game studies’ digital essentialism: it is too narrow,
too focused, too on the nose to account for messier contextual approaches. In
particular, I am interested in looking at how the genealogy of game tables is
also one of leisure, time killing, intoxication, and something like the playful
but non-gaming use of game technologies. In looking at how cocktail cabinets,
which could be classified as electronic games, are also other things with alternate
cultural histories and possibilities, we connect these objects to people and
practices from which they would otherwise be artificially cut off. In doing
so, we have to (get to?) critique various popular essentialisms and assumptions
about them.
Part of this shift and redefinition is an issue of names. Why not call these
cabinets “sit-down models?” The term is used from time to time, but is too
broad for my purposes here. Sit-down units could include some kind of sitting
inside or astride, common among driving, flying and riding games, likely to
feature controls alluding to some form of steering. In short, while you might sit
down to play Chase (1976) or Outrun (1986), this is a different kind of sitting,
and a different kind of playing than we see among cocktail units.
The acts of sitting and playing are tightly linked in the cocktail unit: the
way one does either is informed by the other. The posture of the player is
quite different from that of the upright cabinet or ride-game (to say nothing
of the home system.)11 Cocktail cabinets, as I approach them, are distinct from
all other game units which might feature upward-facing screens. I echo Kevin
Smith’s blog post on the subject, separating “standing around games” from the
cocktail form.12 My focus here is on sit-down, flat, glass- or plastic-topped,
screen-up cocktail cabinets. But why “cocktail”?
The designation “cocktail” connects these objects to modes of adult leisure

correction to the excavation metaphors wrapped up in media archaeology work-- see "A Pedestal, A
Table, A Love Letter: Archaeologies of Gender in Video Game History" Game Studies. 13.2 (2013).
http://gamestudies.org/1302/articles/nooney.
11. Erkki Huhtamo. "What's Victoria Got to Do with It?: Toward an Archaeology of Domestic Video
Gaming." Before the Crash: Early Video Game History. Edited by Mark J.P. Wolf. Detroit, MI: Wayne
State University Press, 2012, pp. 30-52. See also Chapter 5 ("I’d Rather Sit and Play") of Samuel
Tobin. Portable Play in Everyday Life: The Nintendo DS New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
12. Kevin Smith. "Preliminary Report - What Was the First Cocktail Table Video Game?" The
Golden Age Arcade Historian, Nov. 8, 2012. http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/2012/11/
preliminary-report-what-was-first.html. Kevin Smith’s blog is a fantastic resource for those interested in
all manner of Arcade issues, but his treatment of the cocktail unit is particularly important to this essay.
178 Analog Game Studies
distinct from the frankly over-exposed milieu of the arcade. It also reinforces
the table-like aspect of the object, crucial for its multimodal role as locus
of drinking, socializing, public leisure and related activities; this is quite
separate from a game’s digital or electronic qualities, distinct perhaps from its
ludic qualities as well. One need not have a drink, alcohol or otherwise, in
order to use these cabinets – but it does not hurt. These are not just game
tables, but drinking tables as well. That genealogy, of drinking and playing,
of playing while drinking, is a rich one worth unpacking. The connection
between play and intoxication is powerful. Indeed, we can learn much about
each phenomenon by reading it against its other. It may not matter so much
whether play is digital or analog, which may not matter any more than exactly
what sort of drink is consumed. These specifics matter to the person drinking
or playing, but matter much less in the aggregate.
Does it matter if these games were for one or two players? Yes, if we
only look at them from the perspective of a player navigating or operating a
digital game. On the other hand, the relations between people conducted in
and through a digital game are not only that of player and non-player, as James
Newman illustrates.13 The range of not-quite-players, on-lookers, co-players
and backseat drivers can be quite complicated. The play that goes on a cocktail
cabinet could be verbal as well as digital, teasing as well as offering tips. The
active, hands-on-controller player is not necessarily the only one playing.
But what if, in certain cases, the players are alone? I have been stressing
the social nature of these cabinets, but surely they are also played by solitary
individuals. Unaccompanied individuals also use cocktail cabinets without
playing them. I graded many papers on a cocktail cabinet as a graduate student
– that I do not remember what games they were is telling of my relationship
to them. What I remember instead is a scene: my work, a bar in the afternoon,
nearly empty; I recall the rhythms of everyday life and the small, pleasing
distractions of working on (top of) a game.
So yes, let us move away from fixation on the digital – but let us also try
to move away from essentializing games as an object of study. To flatten the
videogame, arcade game or cocktail cabinet into an essentially digital object is
clearly a problem – but to assume it is also essentially a game is problematic as
well. The problem is that when we cast things like cocktail cabinets as games
or game systems, we shut out all of the other things that they are, have been,

13. James Newman. "The Myth of the Ergodic Videogame." Game Studies 2.1 (2002).
http://www.gamestudies.org/0102/newman
 Cocktail Cabinets: A Critique of Digital and Ludic Essentialism 179
or could be, ignoring the ways in which people relate to games outside of the
player position.
If we bring together the object’s past and future, we open up new areas
and objects of analysis. We could look at the cabinet’s past as plans, sketches,
designs, living trees, particle board, acrylic, copper vein, and coiled wire. We
can examine its future too, perhaps as the objects of collection, preservation
and curation addressed in Raiford Guins’ book Game After.14 At a smaller time
scale, these things are different after-hours or behind the scenes. Consider
the professional and labor relations that repair people, bartenders and cleaning
crews have with the cocktail cabinet. In the even tighter context of customer
use, think of the rich and complex ways we relate to these things in their
bars, restaurants and arcades. Even in these ludically charged contexts, cocktail
cabinets go unplayed (much) more often than not. Studying them only (or even
primarily) as games or playthings looks less and less tenable when we consider
these factors. And yet, even when used as a table for drinking rather than game
play, the cocktail cabinet retains some playful qualities. How do we account for
this?
We might not play Ms. Pac-man (1981), but we still watch her run her
maze from the corner of our eye, setting our drinks on top of her screen while
talking with friends. That must matter somehow. We flick joysticks or tap
unresponsive buttons as the high scores scroll. Perhaps witnessing the screen’s
animated glow, rising through our Manhattan – part décor, part optical novelty,
part nostalgia – is its own kind of playful engagement with a cocktail cabinet.
This relationship with the cocktail unit is one in which everything but
the game matters, and yet the game is a literal foundation upon which all
other practices are enacted. This is not unique; other screen-based media have
similarly diffuse holds in space. The television’s ambient influence is most
pervasive,15 but other kinds of games and play work similarly – think of what
most people really enjoy during a baseball game.
If we look “where the action is”, to invoke Erving Goffman16 and
McKenzie Wark,17 examining the space of play rather than the space of a game,
to what degree are we really interested in games, or play, or even players
as such? Does it matter? Maybe the future of Game Studies is not just studying
games.

14. Raiford Guins. Game After: A Cultural Study of Game Afterlife. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014.
15. Anna McCarthy. Ambient Television: Visual Culture and Public Space. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2001.
16. Erving Goffman. The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books, 1959.
17. McKenzie Wark. Gamer Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
 Foursquare: Bodily Transgression in Gamified
Spaces
Maxwell Foxman

When do we stop playing? As games pervade diverse aspects of our everyday

lives, the play experience seems to never cease and this question becomes
progressively difficult to answer.
Studies of “gamification,” a concept commonly defined as “the use of
game design elements in non-game contexts,”1 tend to focus on the creation
and production of games rather than the bodily experience of their players.
These technically-minded analyses, however, are much akin to a study of soccer
pitches that ignores soccer players. Interactions between a gamified application’s
“rules” and the activities of its players provide many moments of insight that
are not apparent when focusing strictly on the game itself. Transgression is one
such moment.
The idea of “transgression” is taken from anthropology—a field concerned
with the cultural shaping of bodily activity since Marcel Mauss’ pioneering
studies of motion and movement techniques.2 However, I draw primarily from
the work of Michael Taussig.3 Transgression, in this context, is polysemic,
ranging from acts of hubris, deviations or departures, to the more traditional
definitions of misbehavior, infringement and even mutilation. In all cases, it
represents a breach, a move that makes it extraordinary. This transgression
feels inappropriate, yet verges on the transcendent or sacred. Any breaking or
bending of a rule or code may fall into this definition.
Points of transgression are multitudinous, so ingrained in daily activity
that they are difficult to discern. Taussig contends that transgression acts as a
“barrier” of “repulsion and attraction, open and closed at the same time,” found
simultaneously within the extreme and the quotidian of the interaction. Such
transgressions do not have set boundaries, but “erupt into being,”4 through

1. Sebastian Deterding, Dan Dixon, Rilla Khaled, and Lennart E. Nacke. “Gamification: Toward a
Definition” CHI 2011. (2011), p. 1.
2. Marcel Mauss. "Techniques of the Body." Techniques, Technology and Civilization. Edited by
Nathan Schlanger. New York: Berghahn Books, 2006, pp. 77-96.
3. Michael Taussig. “Transgression.” In Critical Terms for Religious Studies. Edited by Mark C.
Taylor. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998, pp. 349–364.
4. Taussig, p. 350

181
182 Analog Game Studies
our acts within the game-context. As a consequence, these minor acts of
transgression are often less intentional than spontaneous, punctuating and
shaping our mundane experiences intermittently rather than holistically.
To explore moments of transgression in all their polysemic spontaneity, a
study of game elements alone would seem to be lacking. Instead, pursuant to
anthropological and cultural methods, a phenomenological approach may add
a certain depth of description. Specifically, I explored a day of transgression
within the gamified space created by the social media application Foursquare
(2009).5 This investigation of transgression in Foursquare is based on a typical
day in 2012, reconstructed from data collected during long-term participant
observation.
Foursquare, which rose to prominence in scholarship along with the term
“gamification,” provides a “charged space”6 for transgression in our everyday
lives. At the time of this study, the program’s main transaction was the “check-
in,” in which the application verifies and broadcasts a user’s location via GPS.
Foursquare rewards the check-in with badges, points on a social leaderboard and
prizes. This game-like activity sets ambiguous rules for its “players,” who could
compete over either the virtual rewards, or their real world exploits—the types
of venues they had checked-into, the frequency of places they checked into,
etc.7
Foursquare’s user interface provides the first opportunity for transgression.
A complicit act occurs between users, with the application acting as an
intermediary. Friends are able to track the check-ins of those they follow
online. Such surveillance might be impolitic, and yet during my study I casually
monitored colleagues’ locations at least twice a day. I would never inform
them of my routine spying, but occasionally would comment online on one
of their interactions. At the same time, they were aware of their check-ins’
visibility, a kind of “active unknowing” or as Michael Taussig states, “they

5. More recently, the application has split itself in two, with the newer Swarm app focusing on check-
ins and Foursquare becoming a reviewing application. See Alyson Shontell. “How Foursquare Made The
Bold Decision To Split Its Product In Two, And How Both Apps Have Been Doing Since.” Business
Insider, October 8, 2014. http://www.businessinsider.com/the-swarm-and-foursquare-backstory-and-
progress-2014-10. Foursquare has also been the subject of protracted studies including personality types.
Jordan Frith provides a taxonomy of user types, including “social users,” “gamers,” “explorers” and
“cataloguers,” in Jordan Frith. "Communicating Through Location: The Understood Meaning of the
Foursquare Check-In." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 19.4 (2014), pp. 890–905.
6. Taussig, p. 350
7. Maxwell Foxman. "How to Win Foursquare: Body and Space in a Gamified World." In Rethinking
Gamification. Edited by Mathias Fuchs, Sonia Fizek, Paolo Ruffino and Niklas Schrape. Lüneburg, DE:
Meson Press, 2014, pp. 71 – 90.
 Foursquare: Bodily Transgression in Gamified Spaces 183
know they must not know but in fact do ‘know’ a good deal.”8 It is this
“presence of a presence,”9 as Taussig asserts, that has been coded into the
program. Everyone was aware of the act, but the transgression occurred in a
moment of “uncontrolled seeing.”10 Only by commenting within the program
could I transcend this passive secrecy. However, when I remarked on the
movements of someone I barely knew, it verged on the unseemly. To mollify
this possibility, Foursquare’s game-like interface situated my transgression
within a diffused “magic circle,” rendering it harmless and acceptable fun. As
Johan Huizinga suggests, “Inside the circle of the game the laws and customs of
ordinary life no longer count. We are different and do things differently.”11 This
act of surveillance, often criticized within the program, exemplifies a minor
transgression that occurs when being compelled to act within the rules of the
game.
How does a gamified application like Foursquare affect the everyday
experience? In my own analysis, while roaming New York City, I highlighted
a few moments when the game’s activity punctuated my life.
An obvious point of transgression that day surrounded the application’s
primary mechanic — “checking-in” to venues. Although I did not have my
phone, my primary tool for checking-in, I had learned ways to deceive the
application. In the afternoon, using my computer, I retroactively checked-in
to spots I had frequented earlier: the Murphy Institute in Midtown, along with
a brief stop in Bryant Park in search of a Wi-Fi signal. That I spent only 30
seconds in the second venue and hours at the first was unimportant to the
program in terms of point distribution. I was struck, as I am every time I “cheat”
at Foursquare, by the nature of my transgression. Huizinga writes of cheaters:

[T]he spoil-sport is not the same as the false player, the cheat; for the latter
pretends to be playing the game and, on the face of it, still acknowledges the
magic circle.12

Like “active unknowing,” a cheater must be conscious of the point of

transgression in order to transgress it, and yet his awareness is a point of
transgression in and of itself.

8. Taussig, p. 356
9. Taussig, p. 355
10. Taussig, p. 355
11. Johan Huizinga. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. London, UK: Routledge,
1971, p. 12.
12. Huizinga, p. 11
184 Analog Game Studies
My day was spent checking-in to a number of other venues. By the
evening and my third coffee shop, my wife Gloria arrived, smartphone in hand.
We headed to an intimate and slightly formal restaurant for dinner. Since Gloria
does not participate in Foursquare, having no inclination to publicly disclose her
location, I appropriated her phone to check-in while we waited for appetizers.
Just as we finished a romantic meal, a friend arrived who had seen my check-in
on Foursquare, breaking the spell of the moment, transgressing our privacy.
Our friend waited as we finished, and we three headed to a birthday
party. Having not been out to a bar for some time, I felt out of place as my
companions loudly conversed in crowded quarters. Many of these cohorts also
used Foursquare and I saw through the program that they had all checked-in.
I was unable to record my attendance as my wife’s phone’s reception in the
back of the bar was poor. Taussig describes the body and image as “vehicles
for the transgressive.”13 I felt my body pushing me toward the front of the
bar, where cell reception would surely be better, each time conversation stalled.
I glanced at my phone, plagued by my friend’s check-ins, their collective
presence excluding me online. Feeling disconnected, I walked away from the
group to find a signal, so I might join them online – if not in person, then
perhaps by checking-in to their venue. Transgressing my role in the social
group, I found solace online. My wife and I departed shortly after.
Arriving at the subway station, it was nearing 11:20 PM. Despite the time,
I intended to do work when I got home. However, we ran into another friend
on the subway platform, and together got delayed on the train ride. It was long
past midnight when we arrived at our stop. Since the opportunity to finish work
had passed, we went to a nearby pub.
I was presented with a final dilemma: my friends in North Brooklyn were
no doubt still partying, and I did not want them to know that I had stayed out.
But I wanted/needed to check-in, particularly as I noticed a precipitous drop in
my Foursquare rating, having been confined at home studying throughout the
week. I finally decided to check-in illicitly, using the “off the radar” function of
the program. This function blocked my friends from seeing the check-in, but
yielded fewer points on the game’s leaderboard. I recalled how I committed a
similar deceit days earlier, taking advantage of faulty GPS to check into two
places almost simultaneously to avoid suspicion that I was spending too much
time out at one location, when I told my friends I was working. In both
cases, I felt conflicted between a desire to engage with the program, to play its
game, and the potential social ramifications. The points of transgression were

13. Taussig, p. 353

 Foursquare: Bodily Transgression in Gamified Spaces 185
numerous and caused me varied levels of unease. In describing “uncontrolled
seeing,”14 Taussig mentions that “the secret (and hence the transgression that
has to break through it) has in fact to be not only concealed, but revealed as
well…in which transgression and taboo artfully play off one another in… an
endlessly discharging circuit.”15 Both serious and playful, I hid my deception,
my secret, within the workings of the game. I was simultaneously aware of
multiple transgressions: that of staying out late, and also of my desire to codify
the experience. Ultimately, these motions are enmeshed within a feeling of
dismemberment, where my own being has been transfigured by Foursquare, a
sacrifice of myself to the logic of the game.
What I hope to highlight in this brief account is the paradox that surrounds
Foursquare’s effect on my daily experience, along with the relation between a
social body and gamified socialization. The game provides new opportunities
to transgress, a set of rules I find ways to break. I subvert and challenge these
rules for greater glory within the game. The simple activity of being where
I am becomes a point of competition, punctuating my thoughts throughout
the day. Desirous of winning, I am willing to manipulate the rules of the
game as I see fit, surveilling friends and “cheating” my GPS in order to score
points. Foursquare itself, by supporting such transgressions, in turn caused me
to transgress my own quotidian practices—taking me away from friends at
their birthday party and disturbing the intimacy of a dinner with my wife.
These minor transgressions are at once cast aside, and yet perpetuate tiny
moments of anxiety. A sense of doing wrong and the zeal of beating the system
hang together in this transgressive moment. My experience of daily life offline
becomes plagued by the question of whether I can “beat” Foursquare. Or is the
game playing me? The game provides rules to live by and transgress, but never
allows escape. When will I reach game over?

14. Taussig, p. 355

15. Taussig, p. 355
 Towards a Taxonomy of Sexy Analog Play
Ashley M. L. Brown

When I describe my research interest as “sexy games”, the most frequent

response I encounter is looks of confusion and embarrassment. Whilst others
can say, “I study MMOs” or perhaps, “I study tabletop games” and receive
understanding nods or follow-up questions of interest, I frequently encounter
misunderstandings of the types of games I study. What generally transpires
next in such conversations is my long-winded and feeble attempt at explaining
what precisely a “sexy game” is and how I go about studying it. I interpret
my encounters with baffled peers and my own attempts at over-compensating
explanations as a problem with language. Whilst we have words, names, and
brands to associate with and describe forms of analog games (such as card
games, board games, and folk games), and whilst we have the language to
describe and discuss the content of those games (such as children’s, historical,
or fantasy) we lack the language and categorization—even as game scholars and
designers—to precisely name and discuss games centered on sexual content.
As a remedy for this lack of language, I endeavor here to develop a
taxonomy for describing and discussing forms of analog play which involve
sexy content. Whilst I think there is some use in keeping the umbrella term
“sexy analog play” to cover all forms of non-digital play with a flirty or sexy
connotation, it is better to investigate other, more specific words for use in
describing precisely the types of play to be discussed. Whilst undoubtedly
personally useful, the existence of such terminology has other applications as
well. Namely, it would be useful to have words besides “adult” to describe
analog games with sexual content from a marketing perspective. As a descriptor,
“adult” board games can refer to difficulty level as well as content, which
makes locating and purchasing sexual games difficult. To widen the existing
vocabulary used to discuss sexual games, I have identified four broad categories
drawn from a thematic analysis of existing literature in the fields of game
studies, folk games, and game design, as well as contributing my own terms
from my own research where I noticed a gap in the published literature.
The four categories are: sexy brink play,1 sexy board and card games, secret

1. Cindy Poremba. “Critical Potential on the Brink of the Magic Circle.” Situated Play: Proceedings of
the 2007 annual Digital Games Research Association Conference. Tokyo: University of Tokyo, 2007.
http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/07311.42117.pdf

187
188 Analog Game Studies
dress-up play,2 and erotic role-play.3 These four categories are by no means
exclusive or final, but rather represent a starting point for fleshing out categories
of sexy analog play.4 Rather than consider this taxonomy as limiting what
can or should count as sexy play, it is better to think of it as a first attempt
at collating existing research with the goal of popularizing terminology for
discussing and describing a wide variety of sexy games.

Sexy Brink Play

The first of the categories of sexy analog play to be discussed is termed “brink
play” by Cindy Poremba.5 It is worth noting that it has also occasionally been
called forbidden play or forbidden games6 in the past. Generally speaking,
brink play makes reference to types of play which occur on the brink of social
acceptability, or in some way push social norms and expectations. Although at
its surface it may seem like all types of play—or all games—which invoke sexual
themes or arousal may be considered sexy brink play, I assert that this is not
the case. Some games which invite us to transgress social norms have become
so ingrained in popular culture that they cease to invite players to the brink of
acceptability. One such example might be a garter toss at a wedding. Although
the act of a person crawling up another’s dress to retrieve an undergarment
and then throw it to a group of friends is certainly an expression of intimacy
in a demi-public setting, and thus could certainly be considered transgressive,
it is the context of a wedding which normalizes this playful behavior. Whilst
in other circumstances the individual components of a garter toss might be
considered sexy brink play, it is the context of a wedding which pushes the
activity away from the brink of social unacceptability and safely into the arms
of convention. Therefore we might say that it is not the activity or game which

2. Janine Fron, Tracy Fullerton, Jacquelyn Ford Morie, and Celia Pearce. “Playing Dress-Up:
Costumes, Roleplay and Imagination.” Proceedings of Philosophy of Computer Games Conference 2007,
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Emilia-Romagna, Italy, January 24-27, 2007; Kimberly A.
Miller. “Gender Comparisons within Reenactment Costume: Theoretical Interpretations.” Family and
Consumer Sciences Research Journal 27.1 (1998), pp. 35-61.
3. Ashley ML Brown. Sexuality in Role-Playing Games. London: Routledge, 2015.
4. For instance, while these initial four categories focus exclusively on games and games-oriented play,
future contributions to this taxonomy could be terms relating to perennial gray areas, such as toys. For
some writing on sexual toys, see Katriina Heljakka’s work.
5. Poremba, “Brink of the Magic Circle.”
6. Gonzalo Frasca. “Ephemeral Games: Is It Barbaric to Design Videogames after Auschwitz?” In
Cybertext Yearbook 2000. Eds. Markku Eskelinen and Raine Koskimaa. University of Jyvakyla: Jyvakyla,
Finland, 2000, pp. 172-180; Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play: Game Design
Fundamentals. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
 Towards a Taxonomy of Sexy Analog Play 189
qualifies as brink play, but rather the socio-cultural contexts and conditions
under which the playful behavior occurs which place it on the brink or not.
Likewise, not all brink play has a sexual component. Games which invite
the player to take a controversial stance on an issue, or to play the villain,
or to challenge racial or class definitions may be considered a type of brink
play without involving sex. One example might be the cancelled Sweet Home
Alabama Larp.
In terms of what is considered sexy brink play, the popular game Twister7 is
given as an example by Poremba in her 2007 DiGRA paper. Because the rules
of the game use the players’ bodies as game pieces to be moved around a board,
or in this case the game mat, there are plenty of opportunities to transgress
boundaries of social acceptability with regards to the body, touching, and
general flirtation. In most Northern European and European-influenced North
American cultural traditions, personal space demands that bodies of non-lovers
must be conducted in such a way as to minimize unnecessary or accidental
touching, as touching is usually reserved as a signifier of the most intimate
relationships. As a game, Twister invites players to experience the sexy brink of
social norms by encouraging the awkward positioning of bodies so that contact
with other players becomes inevitable, as evidenced in the photo below.
In addition to the example of Twister I would add traditional, folk, and
party games such as Pass the Orange, Spin the Bottle, Truth or Dare, or Seven
Minutes in Heaven to the category of sexy brink play. Each of these games
is played in flirtatious party atmospheres which encourage the transgression,
or at least testing, of social norms. Because players are often grouped together
at a social event or party during play, several inhibition-lowering factors are
likely taking place during party games. Aside from a jovial atmosphere, other
factors such as alcohol or drug consumption or social pressure may encourage
a relaxation of social norms. In the traditional folk game Pass the Orange, for
example, players hold an orange between their chin and shoulder and attempt
to pass it to another player who must accept it between their chin and shoulder.8
The rules of the game thus require players to nuzzle their faces and necks in
an intimate way normally associated with cuddling or kissing. Whilst relatively
tame, Pass the Orange provides some insight into how the rules of a game allow
for an expression of intimacy normally reserved for partners to be expressed by
acquaintances.

7. Charles F. Foley and Neil Rabens. Twister. [Physical game.] East Longmeadow, MA: Milton
Bradley, 1966.
8. Ffion Mercer. Handbook of Indoor Social Activities. Photographic Teaching Materials:
Buckingham, 1981.
190 Analog Game Studies
Sexy Board and Card Games
The term “sexy board and card games”9 refers to mass produced games with
sexual themes. Such games are usually marketed to monogamous couples as a
way to “spice up” their sex life. Although the picture below shows a popular
pair of “sexy dice,” they would not fall within the category of “sexy board and
card games” as I define it. Dice, spinners, and cards are usually included in most
analog games, even non-sexy ones, as types of randomization mechanisms. I
consider games to be more structurally complex than an isolated randomization
mechanism, and thus “sexy board and card games” would not refer to a
technique of randomizing which sexual act (verb) is paired with which body
part (noun) for the purpose of forming a type of sexy, live-action Mad Lib.
Therefore, not all board or card “games” which can be found in adult shops
necessarily qualify to be included in this category as they do not qualify as
games. They might instead be classified as toys, and therefore fall outside the
remit of this short post, as noted in the introduction.
The board and card game format of sexy games, in particular, is what
makes them an interesting avenue for study. There is something about the
format and components of adult board and card games which invert the
innocence of childhood games and become sexy, perhaps dangerously so,
through the use of familiar, but inverted, objects. For example, the game
Domin810 can be seen in my photo below. In some ways, Domin8 can be
thought of as a skin or modification of the game dominoes. Both games require
players to match like symbols by placing tiles on a tabletop. Domin8, however,
includes several sexy mini-games which involve touching other players which
relate to which symbols are placed and in which order.

The above photo of sexy board and card games serves to illustrate the similarities
in form between the games associated with children and those associated with
sexual content. Although all the familiar cards, spinners and dice from
childhood games are still there, one important point of departure is the color
scheme. Bright primaries and pastels have been replaced with a darker palate
which is perhaps indicative of the “after-dark” content within. It is interesting
that although the games are nearly indistinguishable in form and mechanics,
they differ greatly in thematic content.

9. This category is a term I coined whilst undertaking my current research project on “adult” board
games. Rather than rely on the term “adult”, which often refers to a difficulty rating rather than a content
rating, I choose instead to use the term “sexy” to highlight the fact the game has sexual content at its
core.
10. Domin8. [Physical game.] Newark, Nottinghamshire, UK: Creative Conceptions LLC, 2013.
 Towards a Taxonomy of Sexy Analog Play 191

Various sexy board games from the author’s personal collection. Image used with permission by the
author.

Secret Dress-Up Play

The next category of play to be discussed refers to costuming for the sake of
sexual pleasure or sexual activity which usually involves some aspect of role-
playing. It is important to note that the specific term of “secret dress-up play”,
as it is used by Fron, Fullerton, et. al.,11 differentiates itself from mere sexually
suggestive costuming. Whilst some costumes worn for public celebrations
such as Halloween, Carnival, or even cosplay at a fan convention may reveal
sexualized parts of the body, be titillating, or suggest sexual functionality, they
are worn in fact for the intention of social and public display. This by no means
suggests that such costumes are never used for sexual purpose, as of course
is occasionally the case with some wearers of fur-covered mascot costumes
otherwise known as “furries” (pictured below). Rather, the word secret in this
term refers to the practice of wearing costumes in private and for the explicit
use of sexual fantasy.

11. Fron, Fullerton, et. al., “Playing Dress-Up.”

192 Analog Game Studies

Post-parade photo shoot at the furry convention Further Confusion 2007. Image by Laurence
“GreenReaper” Parry, GFDL and CC BY-SA.

Outfits for secret dress-up play can usually be purchased in lingerie shops, stores
selling pornography and adult toys, or commissioned. The outfits are often
organized thematically around a type of role-playing with occupational power
relationships. For example, in the image below of an Ann Summers chain of
lingerie shops in London, a red vinyl rendition of a nurse uniform can be seen.
The nurse uniform allows for both an opportunity to role-play and introduces
a power dynamic into sexual play involving the costume. Whilst wearing the
costume, the nurse can take charge of a patient’s care regimen and/or follow a
doctor’s orders. Rather than leather and lace which lack a theme, costumes such
as the nurses outfit inspire, or at least hint at, a type of role-play with erotic
content, which is the topic of the next section.

Erotic Role-Play
The final form of sexy analog play to be discussed is erotic role-play. Unlike the
above-described “secret dress-up play”, erotic role-play may or may not include
costuming or a live-action component, but does include taking on the role of
a character and playing out sexual themes. Perhaps a key difference between
erotic role-play and secret dress-up play is that erotic role-play happens in
games rather than during free-form play. By this I mean that erotic role-
play proceeds according to a set of rules which govern possible character
actions and reactions involving sexual content, regardless of whether or not play
happens in a field, around a table, in an online virtual world, or in a BDSM
dungeon. Additionally, whether a player undertakes erotic role-play for sexual
 Towards a Taxonomy of Sexy Analog Play 193
gratification or arousal is likewise irrelevant. As a broad term, erotic role-play
encompasses any role-playing activity which includes: erotic content, rules for
character actions, and the taking on (or playing) the role of a character.
One interesting example of erotic role-play comes from tabletop gaming,
a hobby which may seem at odds with stereotypical depictions of erotic and
romantic settings. Unlike their online role-playing counterparts which contain
beautiful vistas and fantastic worlds, offline role-playing games must rely on
books to convey not only the rules for including sexual activities in play,
but also imagination aids for sexual themes and content. The Book of Erotic
Fantasy,12 pictured below with dice accoutrement, is an example of the explicit
inclusion of rules for sexual interaction between characters and even contains
enhanced photographs of fantastical creatures. Both aspects of the book serve to
assist with the inclusion of erotic themes in role-playing games.
Whilst the other types of sexy analog play discussed in this essay encompass
physical action between players in the flesh, erotic role-play refers specifically
to sexual actions which happen between characters. But often the lines between
characters and players blur, especially in analog play where characters are
represented by players’ bodies. The types of sexual interaction between
characters which happen in the flesh then—for example in a larp using the Ars
Amandi13 set of rules for simulating sexual interactions with hands—would also
be fall under the aegis of erotic role-play.14

Conclusions
Whilst the categories presented by this paper are by no means intended to be
exhaustive, they represent a step toward creating a way to catalog and define
all the interesting and creative ways people engage with sexuality through
analog play. It is important to note that not all types of sexy analog play
will be addressed by such a taxonomy and such exceptions are welcome. One
notable exception which has arisen from writing this post is toys. An area
for further development could be a focus on toy-oriented sexy analog play.
However, important for the work at hand is the idea that current taxonomies

12. Gwendolyn F. M. Kestrel and Duncan Scott. The Book of Erotic Fantasy. China: Arthaus, Inc., 2006.
13. Emma Wieslander, E. (2004). “Rules of Engagement.” In Beyond Role and Play. Edited by Markus
Montola and Jaakko Stenros. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry, 2004.
14. Also of interest here might be Jaakko Stenros’s taxonomy of sex techniques in larps. Jaakko Stenros.
“Amorous Bodies in Play: Sexuality in Nordic Live Action Role-Playing Games.” In Screw The System –
Explorations of Spaces, Games and Politics through Sexuality and Technology. Arse Elektronika
Anthology #4. Edited by Johannes Grenzfurthner, Günther Friesinger, and Daniel Fabry. San Francisco:
RE/Search & Monochrom, 2013.
194 Analog Game Studies
in game scholarship have overlooked various types of sexy analog play as its
own phenomenon. This is important because games which feature sexy analog
play reveal that a game is not solely defined by either its form or its content,
and that it can carry vastly different meanings depending on its socio-cultural
context. This is particularly significant with sexy games, as they are sites where
the activity of play, generally associated with children, intersects with the adult
activity of sex.
 Playing with Portals: Rethinking Urban Play
with Ingress
Kyle Moore

“The world around you is not what it seems,” lures the tagline for popular
alternate-reality mobile game Ingress, which repurposes public landmarks into
contested territory in a battle between two rival in-game factions.1 Released in
2012 as an open-beta for Android devices, Ingress has now been downloaded
12 million times across both Android and Apple devices.2 The game was
developed by Niantic Labs, a former subsidiary of Google, and tasks players
with territorializing their material environment through interaction with the
mobile-based application. Using their mobile devices, players are equipped with
a map of “portals”—user-submitted locations in the real world—and gameplay
consists of engaging, capturing, and connecting these portals in order to control
territory. Portals exist not only as nodes within a digital representation of
the material space, but also as physical landmarks that bear sociocultural and
material significance prior to their incorporation into the game.3 I argue that
within this type of mobile-mediated urban gaming, play is shaped by the
player’s localized knowledge—how players learn to live within and move
through space—as well as a sociocultural knowledge—social and cultural
notions of what constitutes play within urban spaces. By focusing on portals
as in-game elements with out-of-game materiality, this paper explores how
players’ individual knowledge of the urban environment informs larger cultural
notions of what constitutes play.
This paper suggests that, through portals, players are engaging in the
practice of urban play. I adapt the term “urban play” from digital media scholars
Adriana de Souza e Silva and Larissa Hjorth’s work on historically situated
forms of urban playfulness.4 I use the term to refer to a broad category of

1. www.ingress.com, accessed November 8, 2015.

2. See the #IngressNews announcement published on Google+ on August 13,
2015: plus.google.com/+Ingress/posts/GVvbYZzWyTT.
3. Such a connection between the material and the digital is a primary characteristic of alternate/
augmented reality games. For instance, similar territorial practices take place in Ogmento’s Paranormal
Activity: Sanctuary (paranormalactivitythegame.com).
4. Adriana de Souza e Silva and Larissa Hjorth. "Playful Urban Spaces A Historical Approach to Mobile
Games." Simulation & Gaming 40.5 (2009), pp. 602–625.

195
196 Analog Game Studies
activities that utilize the material structures of the urban environment in a
playful manner. Such practices demonstrate a literacy of the urban environment
while also blurring the boundaries between functional urban mobility and
playful exploration, thus allowing for a rereading of the urban environment as
a space in which to enact new, often subversive, forms of play. When playing
Ingress, players perform prior local knowledge through their everyday practices
of urban mobility, an articulation of understanding the urban environment as
a series of navigable routes and material objects. But through the process of
gameplay, this everyday urban mobility—from wandering back streets to taking
public transport—becomes tied up in the practice of play, thus reshaping our
understanding of the urban environment from a functionally navigable space
into a series of potentially playable objects. For example, mundane forms of
urban mobility, such as daily commutes to and from work, are transformed into
playful practices by playing Ingress. I argue that by focusing on the use and
expansion of local material knowledge,5 we are able to challenge sociocultural
notions of what constitutes play within urban environments. This paper firstly
focuses on the role the material environment has in facilitating a player’s
knowledge of the urban environment, such as the role of historical landmarks
and understanding patterns of navigation and transportation. I assert that these
forms of localized knowledge form the primary basis of and situate the act of
play within the urban environment. Secondly, this paper focuses on how “urban
play” is a sociocultural construct that builds upon the player’s understanding
of the urban environment and the ways in which play challenges the social,
material, and cultural conditions that frame the urban environment as a
functional space. Finally, I conclude by tying both perspectives together in
order to show how Ingress loosens the rigidity of material environments and
transforms them into fluid, subversive spaces of play.

Entering Ingress: The Backstory

Ingress has a complex narrative that underscores the practice of playing within
material environments. The lore of the game states that in 2012, working
alongside research into the Higgs boson at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland,
a substance known as Exotic Matter (or XM) was discovered. Exotic Matter

5. Games researcher Shira Chess has also written about Ingress and argues that the game represents an
intersection of regional and global communication and knowledge. (Shira Chess. "Augmented
regionalism: Ingress as geomediated gaming narrative." Information, Communication & Society 17.9
(2014), pp. 1105–1117.) While the globalized social networks that contextualize the localized play of
Ingress are an integral aspect of the game experience, for the purposes of this paper, I will be focusing my
analysis on the specificity of local knowledge, both materially and socioculturally.
 Playing with Portals: Rethinking Urban Play with Ingress 197
is believed to be associated with an unknown group of entities known as
“Shapers”. In-game factions are divided based on their association with Shapers.
The Enlightened (Green) wish to aid the Shapers’ infiltration of Earth, in the
hopes of instigating an enlightenment. The Resistance (Blue), unsurprisingly,
work towards defending humankind from any form of infiltration. The primary
goal of the game is to form “control fields” through the linking of portals.
Portals are located at public landmarks, and are surrounded on the game map
by eight “resonators”—deployable in-game objects used to capture or upgrade
portals. Game-play entails tapping portals on the map to open a list of possible
actions and portal information. Alternatively, players can hold down on a portal
via the in-game map (scanner) to quickly engage with it. Players “hack” portals
using these modes of interaction, which give players the materials to either
attack or deploy resonators. By linking three nearby portals, players can form a
control field, which strengthens a faction’s control over that particular location
by making it harder for the other team to destroy portals and gain dominance
over specific locations.
Portals are submitted by players through the game’s interface and subjected
to Niantic Lab’s portal review criteria.6 Interestingly, portals are not just present
at large or historic landmarks. They have also been established at public murals,
unauthorized street art, and a large number of informational displays. By
placing portals at landmarks or points of public interest, players are actively
drawing on their local knowledge. Additionally, the game’s guiding players
to visible public landmarks may strengthen their knowledge of unfamiliar
locations and aid them in navigating new environments. By focusing on
players’ existing knowledge of urban environments, this paper suggests that
urban play is best understood as a situated practice. Situated practice builds on
existing sociocultural and material conditions that shape the urban environment
and urban mobility. Situated practice is thus an integral attribute of Ingress,
in which the game system is open to a range of emergent practices,7 which
are often articulations of the player’s specific localized knowledge of the
environment coupled with a sociocultural understanding of the urban as a series
of functional—or indeed subversive, as with street art—objects. This approach
to urban play as a situated practice draws from the field of human-computer

6. See support.ingress.com/hc/en-us/articles/207343987-Candidate-Portal-criteria. As of September 2,

2015, new portal submissions are closed as Niantic reevaluates their portal submission processes.
7. In the field of game studies, Mia Consalvo and Nathan Dutton have written about emergent play as
a dynamic and unexpected activity that is performed alongside the system of the game. Mia Consalvo
and Nathan Dutton. "Game Analysis: Developing a Methodological Toolkit for the Qualitative Study of
Games." Game Studies 6.1 (2009). gamestudies.org/0601/articles/consalvo_dutton.
198 Analog Game Studies
interaction and the concept of situated action—or in short, the means in which
player’s knowledge expands the system of the game itself.

A Situated Approach to Urban Play

In developing a situated approach to urban play, this paper draws primarily on
the vocabulary of Lucy Suchman and Paul Dourish. The term situated is adopted
from the work of science and technology scholar Lucy Suchman, who uses the
concept of situated action to understand the relationship between humans and
technology.8 The concept was developed as a counterpoint to the overarching
focus the field of human-computer interaction has had on the material
constraints of technology and the desired activities such constraints afford.
Suchman asserts that such “planned” activities do not reflect the actual practice
of engaging with technology. Rather, planned activities are in fact
representations of situated actions, constructed in retrospect to engagement
with the given technology. Applying Suchman’s concept to Ingress, the planned
activities would be the goals and formalized rules of the game, or even the
retrieval of data used to create Google Maps. However, the emergent behavior
of players and the material constraints of the urban environment, alongside
the unpredictability of the non-playing public, form a set of contextual
circumstance which result in unique forms of play (situated actions) that build
on the player’s subjective understanding of the urban environment and their
lived experience within said environment.
Following from the work of Suchman, computer scientist Paul Dourish
provides a detailed discourse analysis of the word “context” as it is used in
the field of human-computer interaction.9 Dourish notes that within this field,
the term has dual origins as both a technical notion and one which draws
analytic attention to certain aspects of social settings. Dourish suggests we turn
attention away from context, as a set of descriptive features of settings, and focus
instead on the idea of practice, as the forms of engagement with those settings.
Drawing from the concept of situated learning and the work of educational
theorist Etienne Wenger,10 Dourish views practice not only as experiencing the
world, but also as the means by which engagement is found to be meaningful.

8. Lucy A. Suchman. Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987, p. 35.
9. Paul Dourish. (2004). "What We Talk About when We Talk About Context." Personal and
Ubiquitous Computing 8.1 (2004), pp. 19–30.
10. See Etienne Wenger. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1998.
 Playing with Portals: Rethinking Urban Play with Ingress 199
Dourish’s use of the concept of practice is one that unites action and meaning,
a description of the world revealing itself as meaningful for particular forms
of action. Following this view, playing Ingress is not only underscored by the
material and sociocultural circumstances of the urban environment, but is also
part of an active process of creating new forms of meaning with regards to these
circumstance. As such, Ingress not only builds on the player’s local knowledge,
but also produces new forms of sociocultural knowledge through the process of
re-framing certain actions as “play” rather than as functional urban mobility.
Playing Ingress requires an understanding of localized forms of navigation
and what constitutes the urban space. The urban is made up of multiple material
elements, which gain meaning through social and cultural interaction. Within
the context of Ingress, large public landmarks, street art, informational displays,
historical plaques and so forth are no longer only functional as forms of cultural
heritage, understood primarily through a shared understanding of a locations
past and present. Rather, these objects become potential portals, as users may
submit any location for consideration to become an in-game portal. However,
because Niantic stipulates that portals must contain historical or educational
significance, players must possess a certain knowledge of local environments
in order to know what specific objects may become portals. Through portal
submissions and subsequent urban play, players of Ingress engage critically with
what constitutes the urban by gaining an understanding of material objects
and locations and their role within specific urban locations. Popular bus routes,
dense urban environments, and locations with historical value or a high number
of informational displays all become high traffic areas for playing Ingress. As
such, players are able to articulate their engagement with the material
environment and demonstrate an accumulation of local knowledge.
Certain locations become territorialized not only by the in-game map
itself, but also by a shared understanding of player traffic. For instance, a
location often visited by a group of high-ranking Resistance members quickly
becomes difficult for Enlightened players to attack and overturn the territory.
Through my own play sessions in Sydney, Australia, I observed that certain
locations, such as busy transport routes and certain suburbs, would become
continuously less contested in nature, becoming permanently constructed
territories due a high number of same-faction players moving through these
locations, as players utilized their daily commutes and proximity to everyday
locations as part of their playing strategy. Here, locations become deeply tied
to player and faction identity, with certain suburbs being tied to factions, and
certain high level players being tied to these suburbs. While this observation is
not meant to denigrate the skill of such players, it is nonetheless important to
200 Analog Game Studies
acknowledge how their embodied knowledge of such locations—that is, their
lived interactions and familiarity with these locations—plays an important role
in this process of territorial construction. With urban play, therefore, “skill” is
less about the embodied and gestural literacy of engaging with input devices or
building on existing gaming literacy from similar games or genres, and more
about an articulation of a critical engagement with the urban environment, and
a demonstration of understanding the urban environment as a series of material
objects as well as systems of movement between said objects and locations.

Sydney street art that is also an Ingress portal. Photo used with permission of the author.

Playing with Portals

For Ingress players, urban knowledge—or lack thereof—is articulated through
engagement with portals. Players mediate their material environment and
navigational practices through the use of the game’s built-in map system.
Within this system, public landmarks or points of public interest are represented
as color-coded nodes placed on a large map. Alongside this technological
intervention in navigational practices, this engagement is primarily an
articulation of embodied knowledge – the accumulation of knowledge through
lived experiences and engagements with locations. Players build on their
existing knowledge of urban environments gained through everyday
engagements with these locations. Such a practice is similar to literacy
researcher James Paul Gee’s discussion of playing video games as a form of
situated learning whereby players contextualize their knowledge within the
game itself.11 For Gee, the practice of learning through play is based on players
 Playing with Portals: Rethinking Urban Play with Ingress 201
probing and re-thinking their relationship with the game as a system. Players
engage with the game with an initial hypothesis in mind, and in the course
of gameplay respond to feedback and re-think any pre-given hypothesis based
on the game’s feedback. Such results are often then articulated through larger
communities who work to achieve and legitimize a shared understanding of
digital gaming systems and interactions with technologies. With forms of urban
play such as Ingress, the player’s hypothesis comes in the form of existing
knowledge of material environments. By creating portals at minor landmarks
such as information panels, or ephemeral landmarks like street art, players are
able to expand not only their knowledge of local environments but also add
to a shared sociocultural understanding of that location and of what constitutes
urban play within these spaces. This results in sociocultural constructions of
urban play tied to practices of being in and moving through the city, and of
everyday urban mobility and local knowledge as the primarily basis for all forms
of playful interaction with urban environments.

Social communication, both within in-game communication channels and out-

of-game social networking services, provides a platform for understanding
how the material environment shapes the practice of urban play. While many
strategies, suggestions, and large-scale in-game actions may be coordinated
through social networking platforms, the material environment itself plays an
important role in shaping the practice of urban play. The practice of playing
within urban environments has been described by de Souza e Silva and Hjorth
as simultaneously transformative and inherent.12 Transformative in that the
urban environment and the material objects within said space are repurposed,
and inherent in that such material objects come with the potential to be played.
Such a conceptualization suggests similarities between the urban environment
and a game board, where the material affordances of the game space inform and
restrict the potential movements of the players. Here, our understanding of play
is shaped by the afforded structure of the space: urban play is not only subjected
to the encoded rules of the game, but also to the sociocultural construction
of what we consider to be appropriate behavior within these public spaces.
Increasingly, urban play becomes less about energetic sports like parkour or
skateboarding, and more about the intersection between the mobile device,
software, and the material environments. Significantly, this results in urban play
becoming less conspicuous, as the gestures of players now fail to signal to non-

11. James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. 2nd ed. New
York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2007.
12. De Souza e Silva and Hjorth, 2009.
202 Analog Game Studies

Engaging with portals at the Sydney Opera House. Photo by Connie Wong, and used with
permission of the author.

players that play is taking place. This can produce moments of transgressive
play, as locations deemed as appropriate for play based on their inclusion in the
game’s intel map may be considered inappropriate within their sociocultural
contexts. Places of historical or religious value may fit the portal criteria for
Ingress, but may fail to take into account the historical specificity or cultural
significance of such locations.13

13. The most notable example of such was the approval of portals at former concentration camps across
Europe – an act former parent company Google has since apologised for. See Matt Kamen, M. "Google
Apologises for Nazi Camps in AR Game Ingress." Wired UK July 3, 2015. www.wired.co.uk/news/
archive/2015-07/03/google-ingress-apology-for-concentration-camp.
 Playing with Portals: Rethinking Urban Play with Ingress 203
Within the urban environment, as with all play, the activity is in part
afforded by the materiality of the environment. As the playground affords
certain types of playful activities, so too do the streets of the city. For play
scholar Miguel Sicart the metaphor of the playground allows for an exploration
of play as a creative activity able to move beyond the design of the material
space.14 To view the city as a playground, rather than as a game space, is to
view it as potentially open to playful activities. As the Situationist International
performed their practice of dérive to subvert the structure of the city through
aimless wandering, urban play suggests a type of subversion of urban mobility.15
This tension is generated through the perceived functionality of the city,
primarily as a site of commerce. Those who can afford leisure time are able to
play with these perceptions, establishing a link between urban play and class.
The city itself may be deemed a potentially or inherently playful site, but the
question is for whom is that the case? Game designer Mary Flanagan explores
further the practice of the dérive through her own vocabulary of wandering and
drifting.16 She compares those who wander as a form of artistic expression and
subversion of the capitalistic structures of the urban, and those who drift out
of obligation due to their social and economic disempowerment. In regards to
this, those who play Ingress are articulating their economic and social power,
their ability to engage in leisure time and freely wander the urban environment,
and the power to subvert, transform, and re-contextualize material objects for
the sake of play. With this, the notion of what constitutes urban play becomes
deeply tied to who has the ability to play within these spaces, and under what
terms.
Similar to that of a board game, players’ engagement with the space may
become emergent, dynamic, and unpredictable, and may be subject to a local
formulation of rules, similar to the “house rules” common in board games.
These are sociocultural negotiations with the player’s material environment and
the possibilities afforded to players within the proximate space in which play
is conducted. There is, to some extent, a possibility for movement, but only
movements that are physically afforded to players by the material environment.
Players may submit portals to the game’s admin, but portals require a material
anchoring. Similarly, players must perform play within physical proximity of
the portal itself. Navigating these material constraints ties directly to existing

14. Miguel Sicart. Play Matters. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014.
15. Guy Debord. "Theory of the Dérive." Les Lèvres Nues 9 (1956). www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/
theory.html.
16. Mary Flanagan. “Locating Play and Politics: Real World Games & Activism.” Proceedings of the
Digital Arts and Culture Conference. Perth, Australia, 2007.
204 Analog Game Studies
sets of local knowledge and a desire to further explore urban environments.
While the sociocultural aspects to urban play—the how and why we play in
cities—is an important element in understanding games such as Ingress, it is
possible to argue that the materiality of these play spaces has significant impact
on the reasons for and the means by which individuals and groups play. For
instance, there is a clear disparity between urban, suburban, and rural Ingress
players. The urban, with high density of potential portals and higher flows of
potential players passing through these dense areas, results in highly contested
in-game territories. Alongside this, transport infrastructure plays an import role
in facilitating highly contested zones within urban environments. Those who
travel on such routes to and from central urban locations form the basis of a
playing elite, whose flexibility in work allows for increased access to technology
and potential play time. While knowledge of material environments forms a
key basis to play, access to these material infrastructures also plays an important
role in facilitating urban play.

Conclusion
Ultimately, Ingress re-purposes objects within the urban environment, objects
which feature in players’ everyday embodied local knowledge. Situated
between regional bodies of knowledge and the creation of a global networked
map of public landmarks, players embody the practice of urban navigation
through their engagement with and navigation between key public landmarks.
By engaging with portals located at public landmarks, players participate in the
situated practice of play. That is, they participate in established sociocultural
and material practices common with navigating urban environments, while
simultaneously creating new meanings for these locations, such as the strategic
importance of certain locations and landmarks. The material environment
comes with an embedded narrative, one established by institutional or
government regulations of public places and articulated through histories of
locations, through tourism, and through lived experiences of communities.
Ingress plays with these sociocultural circumstance, as well as the material
circumstance that give shape to the material environment as a space of play.
Shared understandings of these spaces, either through online or local
communities, are then reframed through engagement with portals. The
significance of these landmarks, as local historical or cultural significance, is
recontextualized and given new significance within the context of Ingress.
While playing Ingress may indeed recontextualize this knowledge, the practice
of playing is also deeply shaped by material and sociocultural circumstance of
 Playing with Portals: Rethinking Urban Play with Ingress 205

Playing Ingress at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. Photo by Connie Wong, and
used with permission of the author.

local environments. Furthermore, what constitutes play becomes challenged

by these material conditions. Everyday forms of urban mobility—navigation,
commuting, wandering, and exploring—all become valuable forms of play and
allow for a rich and complex playful practices. What is at stake in Ingress is not
just a blurring of boundaries between play and non-play, but a more robust
understanding of what may be considered play.
The Pleasures of Adaptation in Ryan North’s To
Be or Not to Be
Emma Leigh Waldron

“Games don’t matter,” declares Miguel Sicart provocatively in his newest book,
Play Matters.1 What is more important, he claims, is play. Games are merely
one of many forms of play, but play itself is not tied to any one object or
activity. It is something much bigger; it is a way of being in the world. Of
the several attributes of play that Sicart details in the introductory chapter of
his book, the most salient for me is the fundamental connection between play
and pleasure. Connecting play with pleasure allows analysis to shift from the
cerebral, structural, and technical content of games to the heart of why we play
games to begin with. To pursue pleasure is to loosen the knots of hegemonic
discourse. In order to more deeply explore the relationship between play and
pleasure, I will theorize adaptation as a mode of play. In order to do this, I use
Ryan North’s To Be or Not To Be: A Chooseable-Path Adventure as a case study.
Locating play in the precarity of the carnivalesque, Sicart describes play
as existing in constant tension “between the rational pleasures of order and
creation and the sweeping euphoria of destruction and rebirth.”2 I believe
that such tension can be exemplified, if not epitomized, by the practice of
adaptation. As Linda Hutcheon has noted, one of the pleasures of experiencing
an “adaptation as adaptation” is the “knowing” reader’s “conceptual flipping back
and forth between the work we know and the work we are experiencing.”3
While both knowing and unknowing audiences will get pleasure out of a
(good) adaptation, there is something affectively productive that occurs in
the knowing reader’s encounter with To Be or Not To Be.4 By engaging
the particular format of ergodic—or structurally non-linear—literature, North
shows how the inherent tensions in cybertextual negotiations mimic the

1. Miguel Sicart. Play Matters. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014, p. 2.

2. Sicart, p. 9.
3. Linda Hutcheon. A Theory of Adaptation. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, [2006] 2013, p. 139.
4. My sentiments closely echo those of Julie Sanders, who also locates the pleasure in this intersection:
“It is this inherent sense of play, produced in part by the activation of our informed sense of similarity
and difference between the texts being invoked, and the connected interplay of expectation and surprise,
that for me lies at the heart of the experience of adaptation and appropriation” Julie Sanders. Adaptation
and Appropriation. London: Routledge, 2006, p. 25.

207
208 Analog Game Studies
tensions at play in adaptation. Here, North not only plays with Hamlet, but
provides a means for the reader to do so as well.

Reading the Game / Playing the Book

In the opening pages of To Be or Not To Be, North fictionally situates his own
book as historically contemporaneous with Shakespeare, and celebrates it as
“the earliest recorded example of ‘the books as game’ genre.”5 Thus, from the
beginning, North’s project clearly presents itself as more than a book; it is also a
game. The reader, then, is more than a reader; they are also a player.
Since To Be or Not To Be is a game, then playing it consists of the following
four rules:

1) Start reading from page 1.6

2) When you get to the bottom of the page, choose one of the options
provided.
3) Flip to the page that corresponds to that choice and continue reading.
4) Repeat steps 2 through 3 until you get to an ending.

All of these rules are either implicit or intuitive, but they bear saying because
failure to adhere to any of these rules will break the game, or to be more
specific, will break the narrative. For instance, following the rules in order is
important, since if a reader tries to start the book anywhere other than at the
beginning, while they may be able to follow steps 2-4 without a problem,
their story will lack a traditional expository beginning. Similarly, if the reader
skips step number 3 and simply continues reading the pages in numerical order,
or turns to a page other than the one that matches the choice they’ve made,
the story will not make any narrative sense. The reader is free to break the
rules in any way they wish to, and may indeed gain pleasure or meaning from
doing so. But such transgressions break the game as they ignore how North has
adapted Hamlet from a traditional narrative arc.
In fact, if a reader does try to ignore the rules of the game and read straight
through the book in order, they immediately receive a slap on the wrist from
the voice of North/the game:

5. Ryan North. To Be or Not To Be: A Chooseable-Path Adventure. Breadpig, 2013, p. 0. (The very
first page of the book is not numbered; pagination begins on the page following the one that this quote is
from.)
6. Or, technically, page 0. (See Note 5.)
 The Pleasures of Adaptation in Ryan North’s To Be or Not to Be 209
Whoah, whoah, slow down there, cowboy! At the end of that last bit, you
were supposed to make a choice, and then jump to the page that reflects
that choice. Instead of following those instructions, you just kept reading
what came next like this is an ordinary book! THIS BOOK IS CRAZY
INSANE; HOW ARE YOU EVEN ACTING LIKE THIS IS AN
ORDINARY BOOK??7

The reader thus immediately encounters tension between their own control of
the story and the control of the author. Although the entire premise of the book
is that the reader is permitted to make meaningful choices that will lead them
through relevant storylines, the recurrence of North’s authoritative authorial
voice reminds the reader of the futility of their choices, since North can, at
any time, divert the track the character is on if he does not approve of their
choices. This point is also evident in the game-like representation of the book,
but significantly, as an absurd and possibly broken game. North’s frequent
references to character stats and point values,8 ultimately have no significance
whatsoever, as there is not only no means of tracking such information, but
there is also no means of using such aspects during gameplay.
If rules 1-3 are important, then rule 4—playing through to an ending—is
essential. That is to say, if the reader simply stops reading at an arbitrary point,
then their story will not have an ending. This is significant in that it represents
narrative resolution as a game goal. The “win condition” thus serves as incentive
for the player to play multiple times and to make particular choices in an
effort to arrive at a particular ending. Which ending(s) is of course up to the
individual player and largely contingent upon their individual play style: do
you want your character to die? To get married? Do you want to find your
way through the labyrinthine structure in order to arrive at as many endings as
possible?9
Of course, the game blocks certain attempts at circumnavigating the
system by not providing a way to trace backwards from any page. Also, if a
reader flips directly to the last page of the book, North’s voice taunts again,
“Hah hah, nice try champ! Opening the book to the last page to see how
the story ends isn’t gonna help you out with this little volume of non-linear

7. North, p. 3.
8. The reader who encounters the above passage is then told, “your final score is ‘maybe learn to read
books better sometime’ out of 1000”. North, p. 3.
9. The book features numerous full-color illustrations by 65 artists, a feature that was one of the main
selling-points of the project. However, these illustrations only accompany endings, so it is in the reader’s
best interests to “play to the end” in order to reach the reward of one of the illustrations.
210 Analog Game Studies
branching narrative structure!!”10 This is not to say that someone can’t “cheat”
by simply flipping through the book and just looking for all of the readily
identifiable endings, but the endings themselves as end goal reward are by no
means the only incentive for the player to play the game. Rather, the pleasure of
finally arriving at one of those endings is derived from both the experience of
play as well as from reading through the full story arc that gets them there as an
adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
The negotiation that thus occurs throughout the game between the player
and North is what makes this ergodic text specifically a cybertext, by Espen
Aarseth’s definition.11 I would argue that these moments of negotiation are what
make cybertexts pleasurable, and by reflexively and deliberately exacerbating
these moments, North pumps up the volume of that pleasure. After all, the
stakes are high: “Trying to know a cybertext is an investment of personal
improvisation that can result in either intimacy or failure.”12 Since tension and
precarity are central to Sicart’s theory of play, it follows that it is precisely in
that tension—the possibility of achieving either intimacy or failure—that pleasure
is rooted. For the knowing reader of To Be or Not To Be, the pleasure is the
result of the dangling carrot of the possibility of wresting the text away from
Shakespeare and its perpetual elusivity as North takes it back again. Because
ultimately, after all is said and done, it is merely an illusion that the reader has
any control at all: this is North’s game.

Whose story is it?

Significantly, North does not shy away from his authorial power. Rather, he
revels in it.
In the first sentence of the book North outs Shakespeare as a plagiarist,
and suggests that “the famed play William Shakespeare Presents: Hamlet! was
lifted wholesale from the volume you are about to enjoy, To Be or Not To Be.”
Following from this point, North lays bare the fact that the player’s interactivity
with the text is inherently impotent, and actually provides the choice to not
choose your own narrative path and follow instead “the choices Shakespeare
himself made when he plagiarized this book back in olden times.”13 This path
is designated by “tiny Yorick skulls” near the bottom of the page where the

10. North, p. 740.

11. Espen J. Aarseth. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
UP, 1997, pp. 126-127.
12. Aarseth, p. 4.
13. North, p. 1.
 The Pleasures of Adaptation in Ryan North’s To Be or Not to Be 211
choice is offered. After selecting a character, interested players can read straight
through the book on autopilot. This results in a “straightforward” adaptation of
Hamlet, as written by Ryan North, with minimal interactivity on the part of the
reader. But of course, even these storylines are by no means straightforward.
Ophelia and “Hamlet Sr.”, for example, do not get very far.
If a reader attempts to play this way as Ophelia, they will find the choices
presented are far from neutral; after Laertes and Polonius offer her
condescending advice about her relationship with Hamlet and call her slutty
and dumb,14 Ophelia is eventually offered the choice to either “Slap [Polonius]
across his face and tell him you’re not dumb and you can recognize sincere
emotion in a sexual partner when you see it”, or to:

Tell him – you’ll obey? And then call him your lord. And…follow him
meekly out of the room? Agree with everything he and Laertes have said,
because all that stuff I wrote earlier about you being an independent woman
in charge of her own destiny sounds PRETTY DUMB ACTUALLY, and
you’d better do whatever someone else tells you to, because anyone other
than you probably knows better about your own life than you do, right?
Look, I am now trying to think of the dumbest thing you can do. Please, I
beg you, do not choose this option.15

If the reader follows the second option (the one with the Yorick skull), they
are told that they are no longer allowed to be Ophelia, and are given only one
option: to continue playing as Hamlet.
But Hamlet is by no means immune to criticism from North either.
Although Ophelia and Hamlet Sr. may not have particularly long lifespans in
the “Shakespearean” choice tree, Hamlet is constantly berated for following the
“original” choices.16 For example, after the infamous “get thee to a nunnery”
scene, Ophelia asks Hamlet why he is making such cruel and sexist comments,
and North chimes in to say he thinks it is a pretty good question. If Hamlet then

14. North’s contemporary, colloquial, and irreverent language leaves no room for nuanced
interpretations of Shakespeare’s dialogue here.
15. North, p. 550.
16. The majority of the book, of course, is open-ended options leading to an incredibly large array of
possible plotlines and endings. Ophelia is given the option to disobey her father, express her
independence, and study science, and Hamlet is given the option to be less emotionally manipulative
with those he loves and to take decisive action. Hamlet Sr., unfortunately, is really the only one who gets
the short end of the stick as he does not get the option to avoid being murdered by Claudius, and if he
becomes a ghost, he isn’t even given the option to haunt Hamlet as happens in the original play.
212 Analog Game Studies
proceeds to make the “Shakespearean” choice to “Say ‘Women are idiots who
just want to get a sexing,’”17 on the following page North almost audibly sighs
and shakes his head as he remarks, “Sometimes I wonder why I give you these
choices.”18
North at no point pretends to be invisible, and in doing so, highlights
the frustrating moments of negotiation in his cybertext. Here, the process of
storytelling is clearly understood to be collaborative, but in tension as such.
The tension between North and the reader intersects with the tension between
North and Shakespeare. That is to say, adaptation, as a mode of play, is
carnivalesque in that it epitomizes “a dance between creation and destruction,
between creativity and nihilism.”19 Alongside North, the reader participates in a
tug-of-war between destroying Shakespeare and building something new.

Pleasurable Precarity
For the “knowing” Shakespeare enthusiast, the pleasure of To Be or Not To Be
resides in the remaking of Hamlet in a mode that expresses criticism of its sexist
themes, obnoxiously immature protagonist, unrealistic plot points,20 and plain
boringness.21 The cultural icon of Shakespeare, so often held up as sacred and
untouchable, may be examined and critiqued through play. Here, adaptation (as
a mode of play) “takes control of the [“work”] and gives it to the [player] for
them to explore, challenge, or subvert.”22 The gamebook structure draws the
reader into a collaborative and participatory mode of adaptation that emphasizes
that Shakespeare is not beyond all criticism.
But, of course, neither is North. In fact, To Be or Not To Be is a prime
example of the impossibility of “truly” interactive text, since the finite options
from which the reader/player has to choose are still designed by the author/
designer. For instance, in the scene quoted above where Ophelia is chided
for letting her father and brother make her life choices for her, although
it ostensibly offers a feminist reclaiming of Ophelia, is not completely free
of problematic elements. Not all women are equally empowered to make
choices such as this, and it is therefore unethical and harmful to place blame
on the victim. But on the other hand, in this space North speaks to the reader,

17. North, p. 90.

18. North, p. 333.
19. Sicart, p. 3.
20. The possibility that poison administered through the ear could really kill someone is frequently
called into question throughout the book.
21. Hamlet is often teased for his failure to take action.
22. Sicart, p. 4.
 The Pleasures of Adaptation in Ryan North’s To Be or Not to Be 213
rather than to Ophelia, emphasizing, at the very least, that making the choices
that Ophelia was originally given by Shakespeare do not lead to a particularly
thrilling storyline for Ophelia.23
But what North does particularly well, and what is unique about this text,
is his deliberate and irreverent engagement with those tensions. Incidentally,
it is precisely this tension that serves to reify the original “work” that is
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, according to Shakespearean scholar Margaret Jane
Kidnie. For her, authenticity is not an essential and inherent trait in the author’s
mind or a singular text, but is rather defined by a networked group of users
through the process of designating all those things that are adaptations.24 These
two designations are flexible, therefore, and contingent upon temporal,
geographical, and social contexts. Playing through adaptation allows us to
straddle this pleasurable line between “work” and “adapation”, and to resist
a bourgeois ideology of taste that insists that only certain works count as
legitimate.

23. To be fair, it should also be noted that Hamlet, too, is forced to play as Ophelia for a while when
his storyline gets too boring.
24. Margaret Jane Kidnie. Shakespeare and the Problem of Adaptation. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Interviews
 Currency: An Interview with Chris Wille and
Brian Patrick Franklin
James A. Hodges

Currency (2014), by Chris Wille and Brian Patrick Franklin, uses an antique
Burroughs adding machine to control player movement on a constantly-
printing roll of receipt paper. Players traverse levels generated by real-time
Bitcoin exchange rates. Developer Chris Wille describes the project as “an
ASCII generated 8 BIT game”1 modeled after Atari’s classic Defender
(1981). But Currency throws players into a map generated by live financial
information, not by some developer’s omnipotent hand. Everything about
Currency challenges our commonsense classification of games as either “digital”
or “analog,” from its paper display to its antique controller.
Linking analog computing technology (the adding machine) with digital
networks (global financial systems), Currency places old and new technology in
conversation with the player’s physical body. The tactile pleasures of cranking
commands through a Burroughs machine remind us that lines between digital
and analog gaming are socially constructed, historically contingent, and never
completely stable. We are reminded that analog networks of mail, radio, and
telephone communication linked global financial systems together long before
digitization and information theory took command. The distinctions between
computer, electronic, digital, and tabletop gaming become uncertain,
emphasizing the need for more specific language in our classification of various
games.
In keeping with the theme of pushing game studies beyond the analog/
digital divide, I asked Chris and Brian a few questions about their work. Since
Currency pushes the notion of an 8-bit game beyond our typical computer-
controller-display conventions, I wanted to ask the developers for a deeper sense
of their understanding of gaming beyond the digital.
James A. Hodges: Currency uses economic machinery from a variety of
eras – an adding machine from the early 20th century, a more contemporary
receipt printer, and a digital link with cryptocurrency exchanges. The game
brings together artifacts from before the Gold Standard, from

1. http://chriswille.com/currency.html

217
218 Analog Game Studies
material currency to relational currency. What do you see Currency telling us
about the relationship between analog and digital machinery?
Brian Patrick Franklin and Chris Wille: We find the analog-to-digital
relationship particularly interesting because it directly relates to the way in
which we all use money today. We trust that the numbers we see on our banks’
websites have value, just like we have trust in the bills we hand someone, and
just like we have trust in a bar of gold sitting in a reserve. While there is a
nostalgic or emotional response to the physical pieces of paper and metal we
hold in our hand, there is little difference between that and the 1’s and 0’s that
automatically pay our gas bills each month.
Value exists in these items because we have collectively decided that it does,
not due to a notion of intrinsic worth. While this is certainly not a new idea and
far from a revolutionary statement, we’re fascinated by the way the existence
of Bitcoin itself so plainly calls out this construct of worth. The very premise
of the currency is that it will have value if enough people agree that it should;
a conversation that occurs every time something new is used to barter, be it
Bitcoins, paper money, Disney Dollars, or gold.
The digital extensions applied to the analog machinery in Currency are
meant to call up these relationships between analog and digital currency and
how we apply a sense of value to each.

Currency, viewed from the side. Photo from developers’ websites.

 Currency: An Interview with Chris Wille and Brian Patrick
Franklin 219
JH: You mention on your website that Currency‘s use of receipt printing
references the early stock exchange, and that Bitcoin-generated visual output
is used as a “foil” to this decidedly analog technology. Can you elaborate a bit
more on what qualities are accentuated by the foil-like relationship between old
and new economic technologies?
BPF & CW: In our eyes, the most intriguing quality that is highlighted
is the perspective of an economy as built by the modern DIY culture. Bitcoin
stands in stark contrast to any official stock exchange with its crowd-regulated
structure. While stock exchanges are centralized, often deriving their name
from their location (i.e., New York Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange,
Hong Kong Stock Exchange, SIX Swiss Exchange, etc.), Bitcoin is completely
decentralized. This decentralization – combined with a 24-hour trading
window – makes Bitcoin a truly global endeavor, ignoring borders and cultural
delineations. It is an equalizer. Authority is taken out of the hands of a
government and relies on its users for regulation.
JH: Currency‘s combination of analog and digital computing techniques
brings financial systems from multiple eras together in a kind of playful
anachronism. Steampunk aesthetics that make similar kinds of connection have
been growing in popularity over the past few years as well. How do you see
currency relating with themes of anachronism and steampunk?
BPF & CW: Anachronistic themes permeate Currency. An adding machine
feeds player input to an Arduino microcontroller. The Arduino is reconciling
mechanical input with the digital information it gathers from its network.
And, most playful, the complex calculations and processes within the modern
Arduino chip are visualized as simple abstract shapes reminiscent of 8-bit tiles
on a physical strip of paper.
In blending these eras, we don’t try to hide the contemporary technology
at use in Currency. Instead we are quite honest with where one technology
ends and another begins, letting each take ownership of their purpose within
the overall functionality of the system. The mechanical parts are blatantly
mechanical and the digital parts are blatantly digital. It’s the intersections of
these elements that we find to be one of the most engaging aspects of the work.
While the extreme mechanical complexity of the adding machine leads
people toward steampunk parallels, the comparison breaks down with the overt
plastic structure and electronic inclusions of a microcontroller, sensors, and the
wires that run between them.

JH: All of our talk about Currency’s commentary on computing and finance
would be meaningless if the game didn’t receive input from a human player,
220 Analog Game Studies

Currency, viewed from the rear. Photo from developers’ websites.

with a physical body in physical space. How do players relate with the physical
elements of Currency? How is Currency’s relation with physical space similar or
different from other games you’ve worked on?
BPF & CW: Part of Currency‘s draw to players is the wonderful tactile
sensation of the game console. The mechanical buttons respond to the player’s
finger with a click that is unique to such a heavy mechanism. The arm that
the player pulls down at the end of each turn produces an immensely satisfying
ratcheting “ka-chunk.”
The receipt paper that provides the visual feedback is also a vital piece
of the game’s physical experience. At the end of each game, the players tear
off and take with them the length of receipt paper that holds their gameplay.
Not only does this action leave players with a physical document of their
experience, a receipt of their transaction with the game, but it points toward
the external aspects of the systems behind the game. The same numbers that
were influencing a specific round of this game are influencing the purchase of
countless and unknowable items. This abstract Bitcoin data turns into physical
property that affects the lives of people all across the globe.
JH: How does Currency fit within the classification schemes that we
commonly use for games? Categories like “digital” and “analog” seem too
narrow for a game like this. Talk of “electronic” games could sidestep this
 Currency: An Interview with Chris Wille and Brian Patrick
Franklin 221
issue, but some of Currency‘s most pleasing elements come from its decidedly
mechanical components. Since this issue of Analog Game Studies is all about
breaking down the analog/digital division, what are your thoughts on the
topic?
BPF & CW: Currency is a tough game to categorize. It’s not played on a
screen or monitor. It has elements that are controlled by mechanical gears and
levers and elements that are controlled circuit boards. Up to this point we’ve
definitely had the luxury of skirting the issue by calling it whatever seemed
appropriate at the time, usually “video game” or “electronic game.” Video game,
however, is probably the most accurate classification for it, although it is a video
game with no traditional video or screen.
Currency shares a lot with the old Tiger handheld video games from the late
1980s. While they are thought of as video games, the monitors on these game
systems were, in fact, simple LCD screens that displayed the action very slowly.
The receipt paper that holds the gameplay for Currency could be considered an
even slower video display, updating but not overwriting its frame once every
few seconds. Yet, if sped up like a flipbook, it would display fluid animation of
the level imagery.
222 Analog Game Studies
 Currency: An Interview with Chris Wille and Brian Patrick
Franklin 223

Currency, viewed from the rear. Photo from developers’ websites.

Inspiration and RPG Design: An Interview with
Nathan D. Paoletta
Evan Torner

“Try to play with people outside your usual circles and pay attention to
when the game is pushing them to do things that are “in-genre” whether
they knew about it beforehand or not.”

Indie role-playing game design, or the self-publication of RPGs by creators

who retain rights to their own work, has become an integral part of the
contemporary role-playing landscape. Games such as Breaking the Ice (2005),
Fate (2003, 2013), and Dungeon World (2012) are now regular staples at
conventions and around the dinner table. And whereas the indie board game
community has gathered around sites such as Board Game Geek and Board
Game Jam, the indie RPG design community has congregated
on platforms including Story Games, Gaming as Women, Google+, and the
now-dormant Forge website.
A self-proclaimed Forge alumnus and “game, graphics and objects designer
and fabricator,” Nathan D. Paoletta has been resolutely pushing the boundaries
of indie RPG design into barely charted territory for the last nine
years. Hailing from New Mexico and currently based out of Chicago, Paoletta
creates artisanal RPGs that, on an aesthetic level, are remarkably in tune
with the feel of the original source material. His work stands out in an
increasingly well-populated field of RPG designs, including his recent
release World Wide Wrestling (2015).
Here I wanted to talk a little bit more about the different forms of fiction
and design that inspire him, and how that affects RPG design. Given a post-
Forge environment, I actually wish to preserve some of the jargon from that
forum that still structures the conversation around RPG design, for which we
have provided links, references and definitions.
Evan Torner: In recent years, tabletop RPGs have become increasingly
diverse tools of expression, with sources of inspiration that reach beyond
standard fantasy, horror and science-fiction tropes. Your games in particular
draw on fairly unconventional subject material: Vietnam war narratives in carry
(2006), Gothic horror novels in Annalise (2008), art nouveau in The Death of

225
226 Analog Game Studies
the Gilded Age (2014), to name a few. Tell us a little more about your sources
of creative inspiration and that moment when you say: “This could be a role-
playing game!”
Nathan D. Paoletta: Designing games is my medium, so I don’t think
there’s a specific switch in my head for “this could be a role-playing game” as
opposed to some other kind of artistic output I could be doing. That said, my
sources of inspiration are pretty banal, and are often in service to constraints
of some kind. I see a movie or read a book or something and have some
thoughts about how that might turn into a game, and then sometimes it’s a
sufficiently grabby idea and I try it out, or it ends up matching another project
I’m working on better than what I already had in mind. For example, carry
was originally a game design contest entry, with the constraints of
something “historical,” and I wasn’t aware of any good Vietnam games. I
actually literally flipped a coin between Vietnam and delving into the little
I knew of Aztec history. The Death of the Gilded Age, on the other hand, was
a theme that I then applied to a long-standing design idea I’d had that had
never gelled. The final product was actually designed almost from a “graphics-
out” as opposed to “mechanics-out” perspective.1
All of my games have a story like that behind them. I think there is this
idea that when someone designs a game in a genre, it’s because they are in some
way obsessed with or an expert in that genre, and in my case it’s almost the
opposite. I feel like I become more expert in a genre by designing a game.
Annalise is probably the only exception, in that I’ve always been fascinated by
vampire stories and gothic horror, but I definitely read more during and after
that process than I had before.
ET: Your latest game – World Wide Wrestling – manipulates the constraints
of the pro wrestling world. The game’s subtitle is, interestingly enough: “The
Professional Wrestling RPG of Narrative Action.” After having read it, I am
under the impression that it is one of the most self-reflexive RPGs – that
is, a role-playing about the act of role-playing – since Meguey Baker’s 1,001
Nights (2006, 2012). How is narrative treated in the RPG, and how does that
correspond with narrative conventions of pro wrestling?
NDP: This is a bit of a long answer, but there’s a lot here to talk about!
One key insight for me was that both pro wrestling and role-playing are “live”
media: watching a wrestling match in a vacuum is like listening to a recording
of someone else play. You can see what’s going on, but you don’t feel it unless

1. “Graphics-out” refers to much of the initial design efforts being focused on the game's visual design,
as opposed to “mechanics-out” which would focus most initial energy on the game's mechanics.
 Inspiration and RPG Design: An Interview with Nathan D.
Paoletta 227
you’re part of it. For pro wrestling, it’s the relationship between the performers,
the audience and the backstage storyline decisions (the “booking”) that makes
it its own art form. I try to reflect that in the game by keeping those three
stakeholders distinct and mapping them to the role-playing group.
First, one of the key conceits in the game is the “Imaginary
Viewing Audience,” the idea that the SIS2 is being performed in front of a
fictional crowd, and that the feedback from that fictional crowd – governed by
some of the games mechanics – has an impact on the ongoing narrative. Of
course, the Imaginary Viewing Audience is in fact the group itself, at the table,
playing the game. In the same way that a player is simultaneously themselves as
an actual person and their performative role, the actual group itself is assigned a
performative role as the audience to their own play.
Second, players play professional wrestlers as professionals, in that the
player’s characters are the ones who take on fictional wrestling characters to
perform in front of the Imaginary Viewing Audience, and those characters can
change, be abandoned or evolve over time just as the player’s character gets
new stats and mechanical choices and improves their ability to perform through
extended play. You play a character playing a character, essentially.
Finally, the GM role (called the “Creative” in this game) is much like
the one in 1,001 Nights in that it’s a largely fiat-based3 position that takes some
classic GM duties that have historically opened the door into socially abusive or
toxic behaviors and moves them front and center where they can be part of the
game, and not hover over it unspoken. In particular, the Creative basically plans
out each session in advance, down to who’s going to win what match. In a way,
this is a classic railroad4 or “let’s play through my story” mode, but the game uses
wrestling tropes in order to hand in-play power to the individual players to
choose to go with, or try and change (“swerve”) what the Creative has planned
during play itself. One of Creative’s primary duties is to take these swerves and
“make it look like it was planned that way all along” to the Imaginary Viewing
Audience, which is both an key aspect of pro wrestling (i.e., not letting the real
changes break the audience’s suspension of disbelief), and also of improv-heavy
GM and facilitation styles that are part of my personal play culture.
All of this meta-ness is (I hope) mostly embedded in the game itself. When

2. Forge abbreviation of “shared imaginary space,” which the Forge Glossary defines as “The fictional
content of play as it is established among participants through role-playing interactions.”
3. In RPG theory, “fiat” means that a gamemaster has power to make arbitrary decisions that affect the
lives of players with little to no justification.
4. “Railroading” means to force the narrative down a specific, often-predetermined path, usually by the
GM.
228 Analog Game Studies
you play it, you can just play, and if you want to pay attention to the meta
factors you can, but – unlike, say, Paranoia (1984, 2009) or The Extraordinary
Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1998) – the meta-ness of what you’re doing is
key to the play experience.
ET: Indeed, your RPGs do well at accommodating multiple play agendas:
I can play to win, play to lose, or play for some other reason, and the game still
responds to my needs. In many ways, the designs respond to older debates about
what the players apparently want from the fiction at the table and how that
fiction is produced. How does adapting material from other media contribute to
our theories about how role-playing works?
NDP: I subscribe to a pretty conservative version of the Big Model5 in
terms of my theory background and how I think about games as I construct
them. So, in that context, the inspiration I draw from another media tends to
start with Color6 (and sometimes Setting), and I try to build systems that will
reliably generate the Color that I’m aiming for. This may sound weird because
many of my games (especially my older work, like carry and Annalise) have a
dimension of emotional engagement, which tends to be cast as the opposite of
“mere” Color. To me, though, color (in the colloquial sense) is the entry point
into the narrative style or into the emotional engagement: when I play a game
I usually need something very obvious around which to build my experience ,
either on the character level or something out there in the game world.
Again, in the pursuit of reliably generating Color, I usually end up having
to deconstruct the moving parts of the genre in which I’m working, or at
least the ones that are important to me for the purposes of the game. World
Wide Wrestling is the clearest example of that, as it literally maps “things you
see wrestlers do in real life” to “things your characters do in the game” on a
pretty granular level. However, since my goal is to give the players tools to
build their own worlds – essentially – inside these genres, I’m not interested
in replicating those parts so that they are manipulated in play. I think that’s
how many of the proto-games I see (like contest entries) tend to work, where
the designer has made some observations about how the genre they’re

5. Ron Edwards’ definition of the Big Model: “A description of role-playing procedures as embedded
in the social interactions and creative priorities of the participants.” Effectively, a designer's creative
agenda runs through everything from the social contract that permits the game to even happen right
down to the ephemera produced in the fiction. http://indierpgs.com/_articles/glossary.html
6. Color in Forge terminology refers to all the imagined details surrounding a fictional setting,
character, situation and/or system. See http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/166 and
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=5172 for more discussion.
 Inspiration and RPG Design: An Interview with Nathan D.
Paoletta 229
interested works, and so they turn those things into what the players do in the
game. In carry, there’s no rules for fighting enemies, just rules for how much
damage your unit takes in engagements and who’s to blame. Vietnam narratives
have lots of firefights but they’re (to me) about taking or missing opportunities
and the guilt and blame that goes with those decisions.
To bring this back to how role-playing works: I think role-playing works
best when you co-create something new together. I think it’s the creation of
a fiction that you would have never imagined by yourself that makes role-
playing so unique, and slavishly aping genre tropes gets you… those genre
tropes. Using game mechanics to direct a game towards the feelings that you
get when you experience the inspirational genre is what interests me the most.
ET: So what you’re saying, if I understand correctly, is that
intuiting emotional effects of genre tropes is more important than simply citing
those tropes through mechanics. What advice do you have for RPG designers
for reading their own emotional state while they experience other media, and
then putting game mechanics on those emotions?
NDP: Well, it’s more important to me. I think there are plenty of folks who
want to replicate genre tropes in their games, and that’s fine. There are some
very well-designed games that deliver that, as well. In terms of giving advice
to people who want to design similar games to mine, however, I think there’s
a certain moment or sequence of moments in the fiction as you experience
it that’s “the thing” you want to have come out of the game. It’s not always
conscious, but if you’re having trouble with your design on paper or your
playtests falling flat, it’s probably because you’re not hitting “the thing” yet.
So it may not be a specific emotion, but you have a certain
emotional response to “the thing,” and it’s that response that’s important.
When I watch Platoon (1986), what stands out to me is the iconic moment
where Willem Dafoe rises to his knees for the last time before he finally dies,
and the chopper with his fellow soldiers flies overhead. That moment
encapsulates all the futility and tragedy of war, but casts it as a human drama, a
result of decisions made by the men around him, not abstracted out to the level
of political or military strategy. It is sad, but also deeply understandable at the
same time. When I play carry, I do not want to necessarily replicate that moment
in the fiction we create, but that mix of emotions and responses is what I want
to get out of the game.
I do a lot of my design reflexively: by trying out an idea and then deciding
if it works or not, so that internal yes/no measure one builds up by experience
and paying attention to what you want out of the game on the emotional level.
But identifying “the thing” targeted by your game design and analyzing, as an
230 Analog Game Studies
audience member, the source media for how it was delivered may be a useful
strategy to try out. I wish I was methodical enough to do it myself – maybe I’d
get more done!
Also, it’s worth pointing out that people who are already enthusiastic fans
of the genre in question tend to more naturally or automatically “get it” than
those who aren’t, and that can paper over some flaws in your design if you
aren’t paying close attention. One of my goals is to share my love of a genre
with other people. With World Wide Wrestling, I did my best to playtest with
folks who were not active wrestling fans, and that was really helpful in giving
me feedback about my assumptions and what worked to build wrestling stories
and was did not. So, in terms of actionable advice, try to play with people
outside your usual circles and pay attention to when the game is pushing them
to do things that are “in-genre” whether they knew about it beforehand or not.
That’s the good stuff right there.
 Nørwegian Surreal: An Interview with Ole
Peder Giæver
Evan Torner

Trying to get rich in this indie RPG game is kind of a hopeless project
anyway. I think we all have “day jobs?”

Ole Peder Ekelund Giæver can be said to be a regular border-crosser in terms

of the role-playing medium.1 Originally from Tromsø, Norway, he spent his
formative years in Ytre Enebakk, and moved to Oslo as a teenager. He went
on to earn his bachelor’s degrees in history, philosophy, and journalism. He
currently works as a reporter for the online publication ABC Nyheter, helps
run the weekly Norwegian larp podcast Live om laiv and contributes regularly
to the Norwegian gaming zine Imagonem. A self-described “apolitical agnostic
[with] culturally anarchist leanings,” Giæver has only recently come to the
attention of role-playing gamers across the Atlantic as the co-author
(with Martin Bull Gudmundsen) of surreal role-playing game Itras
By (2012). The game takes place in a bizarre 1920s-era city belonging to the
sleeping goddess Itra, whose dreams lurk behind both the city’s creation and its
decay.
What marks Giæver’s work is a strong communicative framework for a
fairly minuscule set of actual procedures that players must follow. In this respect,
he champions the role that careful prose plays in delivering the content of
a given role-playing game system and setting.2 Here we talk about Giæver’s
experiences with the development of tabletop and live-action role-playing

1. Here is Giæver’s self-proclaimed bibliography: Itras By (Norwegian tabletop RPG, self-published

2008, with Martin Bull Gudmundsen and others), Nørwegian Style (Norwegian RPG anthology 2009,
with the Itras By-cards by Ole Peder Giæver, Martin Bull Gudmundsen and Matthijs Holter), Larps from
the Factory (Norwegian shortlarp scripts 2013. “The Hirelings” with Håken Lid), Faktaløve: Rollespill
(Fact book for kids, Cappelen Damm 2014), Birth of Larp in the Arab World (anthology 2015. Brief blog
text contribution), Imagonem.org (Norwegian gaming zine. Regular contributor 1995-present), Live om
laiv (weekly Norwegian larp podcast. Part of the editorial group. Jan 2015.
2. The emphasis on tight prose and delivery is also evident in the 200 Word RPG Challenge run by
David Schirduan in April 2015 and the on-going “nano-games” movement in the indie RPG community
since 2013.

231
232 Analog Game Studies
games in Norway, as well as the design and distribution factors surrounding the
cult success of Itras By.
Evan Torner: Tell us a little bit about the evolution of the Nørwegian
Style movement in role-playing design and your involvement in it.
Ole Peder Giæver: We had this web forum for Norwegian role-players
running between 2003-2012. It’s still there, but no one uses it. We’re all on
Facebook and everywhere else. Anyway, a hard core of 13-20 people were
interested in game design, such that in 2004 Michael Stensen Sollien initiated
a Game Chef-inspired competition that ran for several years. It did not have all
the strictures with themes and ingredients, but the games were also supposed to
be finished in a week. Over the years, the competition produced sketches and
fairly half-assed results—some of which were mine—but also some pretty decent
short games. Some were later polished and developed further.
Around 2007, I think, there was an initiative to collect some of them
(and games that hadn’t been part of the competition) in an English-language
anthology, Nørwegian Style. It was published in 2009, and the blog by the same
name was set up. The blog was also in English, and “Norwegian role-playing
games in English” is the subtitle. The idea was to showcase some of our stuff to
the international community. I’m not sure about sales, but I think it got a bit of
buzz.
Matthijs Holter is, for all practical purposes, the main editor and
contributor to the blog. But there have been others too over the years. It’s still
a fairly eclectic mix of game sketches, blog-style meditations on various RPG-
related subjects, some pretty complete games like Archipelago (2007, 2009),
“role-playing poems,” playsets, scenarios and more. It is hard to say what is
typical of these games. They are usually rules-light, and in communication with
each other, “Nordic freeform” and the Anglo-American indie RPGs. Whilst
doing their own thing. Whatever that is.
Matthijs had a blog post on this entitled “Stealing Like Ravens,” talking
about that time when we basically agreed that we should feel free to use
whatever cool concepts we all came up with:

“Back when I was designing Draug, and Ole Peder and Martin were
designing Itras By, we were a bit worried for a while that since we were
playtesting each others’ games and pitching ideas, we might end up having
our brilliant designs stolen by the other party. What if I came up with
something great for Draug, and they published my ideas in their game
– before I could publish mine? We talked about it, and quickly reached
the agreement ‘fuck it, let’s steal from each other, good luck to whoever
 Nørwegian Surreal: An Interview with Ole Peder Giæver 233
publishes first’**. I think that little talk was an important step for our
part of the Norwegian design community – we’re very open-source, and
share our ideas and games freely. Itras By incorporates elements from many
different writers, and continues to do so on the Itras By wiki.”

Not everyone in the scene necessarily agrees 100% with this open source
philosophy. But that was our opinion back then. There had been Norwegian
game designs prior to the competition, but few and far between. What had
happened on the web forum was sort of an explosion, with people of similar
interests finding each other and being inspired by each other, some doing
various projects together. It was fun. Martin Bull Gudmundsen and I had started
work on Itras By in 2001, finally publishing it in Norwegian in 2008. Tomas
H.V. Mørkrid was avant-garde before any of us, of course, publishing weird
little indie games as far back as 1989 and all through the 1990s, while the rest of
us were still thinking Vampire: The Masquerade was ground-breaking stuff.
Some of the most interesting or artsy larp stuff coming out of Norway
happened in parallel with this. There is a lot of overlap between the
communities. For example, I have attended many larps, but have organized
close to zero. Typical for Norway, the tabletop and live-action creators and
creations have remained fairly separate. That seems to be different in Denmark,
where Bifrost organizes both larpers and pen-and-paper group, and the huge
Facebook-group “Danske Rollespillere” covers both formats and has over 4000+
members. These days, events and coordination seem to be coalescing a bit, with
people finding each other and talking across borders. Obviously, I am a fan.
But I do not think it’s meaningful to talk about a “Nørwegian Style”
movement/brand/scene in the singular. At least not in the sense that “jeepform”
is a fairly organized “brand” where you know exactly which creators are in it
and which games are canon because they put up a website that tells you that.
Norwegian role-playing game designers are a small group— probably no more
than 30, tops—who have done many things. Some—like my ever-productive
friend Matthijs—still do, some might return to it, some have said their piece.
ET: What are, as you see it, the current trends in Norwegian game design,
and how do you keep track of what is happening in the community?
OPG: There seems to be an interest in old school stuff and rules-light
fantasy. On the Facebook-forum I help run, there were some recent initiatives
to finally finish some games that have been in the works for years. One
is Wanderer, a rules-light fantasy game. Some elements from the game were
showcased in the Nørwegian Style-book. It’s fairly old school stuff. There’s also
a project going on to translate the OSR game Basic Fantasy to Norwegian. I
234 Analog Game Studies
think it is good that people are talking again, creating stuff together, and that
is partially thanks to the Facebook group creating a space for people to meet.
Interesting, unforeseeable stuff will necessarily come of out of that.
Matthijs still does a game for the blog now and then. I was contacted
out of the blue by the National Museum of Arts to write a short collaborative
storytelling game for an exposition they’re doing (about Lord of the Rings
and Norse Sagas/Mythology). Last year, Matthijs and I published Rollespill,
a book for kids about role-playing games, sort of an introductory factbook,
via a traditional publishing house. It was purchased by all the libraries in the
country. Who knows? Maybe it will recruit some souls.
Tomas has announced he will finish the second edition of Fabula, the
fantasy game he initially released in 1999. He has often had interesting
approaches to method and techniques, so I will check that out. Since 2013, I
have been very interested in Nordic freeform, and especially the Fastaval scene
in Denmark. I feel very at home there. It has tabletop roots, but with avant-
garde and larpy sentiments. I’m hugely impressed with their scenario tradition,
how seriously they take it and their will to experiment. But I don’t buy into it
wholesale. I still want to do my own thing.
I plan to do a couple of larps, a long-form with Thomas Tollefsen, some
esoteric-pervasive-personal-mindfuckery weirdness with the working title
Carnevale. And a short larp with Ola Læhren that’s basically just for fun, about
regional prejudice in Norway, where you have to play a character with a
different dialect than your own and all the characters are regional stereotypes.
ET: Some describe Itras By as a “surreal” role-playing game, others as
“urban fantasy.” How would you describe the game and its relationship to
various genres and media?
OPG: Well, as Shakespeare said: “An ass by any other name would smell
as sweet.”
I was 20 when we started working on Itras By. I’m not an artist, and haven’t
studied art history. I read up on Breton’s manifesto, liked the commercial
artist Dalí, and enjoyed some of the core ideas of the movement as far as I
understood them: the language games, the focus on dreams, madness, and the
“subconscious.” We tried to build something that would be sort of “intuitive”
role-playing.
We mention several sources you could look into for further inspiration
at the back of the book. Some of them are “intellectual ancestors.”3 Some of

3. Several of these ancestors include the films Delicatessen (1990) and Chronopolis (1982), TV series
such as Riget (The Kingdom, 1994) and authors such as Franz Kafka and Roald Dahl.
 Nørwegian Surreal: An Interview with Ole Peder Giæver 235
it stuff we’ve read and enjoyed. Some of it I haven’t—truth to be told—really
seen. I never really got into Pratchett, for instance. I enjoyed Junkie, where
Burroughs is writing in a realistic fashion about his experience as a drug addict,
but couldn’t really grok Naked Lunch.
There are a lot of pop-cultural references in the game. Some are quite
subtle, some are concepts lifted outright from other sources. There’s also a lot
of my own and Martin’s subconscious shit and neuroses, I think we could
say. Some of the dream-texts in the book—like the clowns staring at you
through the restaurant windows or the woman with insects pouring out of her
stomach—are actual dreams I’ve had. The core concepts, vibe of the game and
the name of the city is from the automatic text in the back of the book that I
wrote in Fall 2001.
The blog “Age of Ravens” had a very thorough review of the game where
the author looked into how to label it with respect to others. The reviewer
knows a whole lot more about the art movement and such terminology than
myself. He suggests it could be termed “surrealism-light,” “new weird,” or
“magical realism.” I think all of those sound cool, too.
ET: As a journalist, you take acts of communication very seriously. How
did you communicate your expectations for player performance in Itras By?
OPG: I like the Forge maxim “System does matter,” but I’ve also always
cared deeply for what is sometimes condescendingly referred to as “fluff text.”4
Player advice, setting descriptions, those kinds of things. There’s a lot of that
in Itras By, and it takes up most of the text. We tried to be fairly pedagogic
in explaining how to run the game, to make it approachable both for newbies
and veterans who are used to other types of games. Some of it is in the form of
“rules,” but most is framed as suggestions:

“Here are some ideas and effects you can try out (…)”
“Let the players add and describe elements from the popular culture of the
city.”
“Give the players limited authority over chance (“we happen to meet on
the street”).”

4. RPG.net defines “fluff” as: “Slang for the parts of a RPG book other than the rules—such as setting
details, game fiction, history, et cetera. Usually contrasted with Crunch, which is the actual rules.”
http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/RPG_Lexica:DEF. Read Emily Care Boss's rebuttal to the false fluff/crunch
dichotomy in the article “Skin Deep.” WyrdCon Companion Book 2012, Eds. Sarah Lynne Bowman
and Aaron Vanek. Mountain View, CA: WyrdCon, 2012, pp. 49-54.
236 Analog Game Studies
“Give the players whose characters are not present in the scene control over
secondary characters who are.”

Of course, the game’s cards themselves actively distribute authorship in various

specific ways. They help players get into the mindset of the game, gradually
liberating them a bit from the structure of more traditional games. That was
a big element to many of the earlier games from The Forge scene as well,
redistributing GM-power through various formal rules and procedures. We’re
doing some of the same, but in a less formalized fashion.
Martin came up with those small boxes admonishing the reader to “make
the city her own” by making actual physical changes to the book: crossing out
paragraphs you dislike, stapling in your own passages, taking notes in the book
and things like that. Everyone seems to like those boxes, because they have this
punk-rock kind of ethos. But I’ve rarely, if ever, heard of anyone who actually
did it to their book. It’s too darn pretty.
When GMing, I usually try to follow our own advice in the book, I hope.
But we all develop our idiosyncratic style over the years. I’ll point at players,
instructing them to play secondary characters (NPC) so-and-so for the duration
of the scene, cut scenes abruptly, leave them to talk amongst themselves if
they’re in a good groove, try to “say yes,” and give most player initiatives a
chance. All of that good improv stuff. Letting loose, y’know? Trying to get
away from that awful luggage of “the GM as God” who is somehow supposed
to have planned everything about the background or even plotline in advance.
Just accept it’s impossible, and try to work with the players instead of competing
with them in some weird way. That’s how I like to play, anyway.
ET: Itras By has become something of a cult favorite on the global
convention circuit. Once the game was ready for a national and international
release, what did you do to keep it in the public eye?
OPG: Nationally: The book release was covered by around 15 different
media outlets, everything from student radio to a big commercial radio station,
anarchist rag to one of the largest online tabloids. The trick is to a) consider
what kind of pitch will give meaning to the media given their profile and target
audience, b) approach the right person, like journalists who’ve been friendly to
this kind of material previously, or at least go to the culture section and not the
news section. I also asked colleagues in various media for tips on to whom I
should pitch it.
In the press release, I sold newsworthy elements such as Martin being kind
of a reality documentary TV star at the time, Thore Hansen being a well-
known illustrator—Martin and I grew up with fantasy and children’s books he’d
 Nørwegian Surreal: An Interview with Ole Peder Giæver 237
illustrated—our receiving a fair amount of public and private grant money for
the project, it being the first such release in a few years, etc.
Håken Lid helped us to set up a pretty decent Norwegian website, with
some scenarios, a gallery, a section with press clippings, a wiki etc. A local
gaming festival in Oslo agreed to feature the game as their “main theme” the
year of the release (2008). We had some posters and flyers at hipster joints
around town, there was a release at a bar frequented by bohemians. I toured all
the three biggest conventions in the country that year to promote the game…
I wouldn’t really say all that publicity translated very directly to sales,
though. At the time of writing, I think there are 425 copies of the physical
Norwegian book in circulation (in 7 years). But that’s actually quite fair for
being a sort of niche, Norwegian, self-published RPG. By comparison, the fact
book Matthijs and I published professionally last year has sold at least 2,000
copies in just a year, but that’s mostly due to the library-thing I mentioned
earlier.
Internationally speaking, I contacted a list of blogs and a few podcasts
asking whether they wanted to review the game, sent out the PDFs or even
bought them a physical copy of the book if they demanded that. It got a fair
amount of reviews, article mentions and play reports, something like a dozen
which I’m aware of.
But what has really boosted sales, more than doubled it, was the recent
Indie RPG bundle. Prior to that, we’d sold 399 English books (print+PDF) since
the English release in December 2012. With the bundle, we sold an additional
416 PDFs! It won’t make you rich, but such bundle deals are a great way of
getting your book out there. Trying to get rich in this indie RPG game is kind
of a hopeless project anyway. I think we all have “day jobs?”
I don’t speak Finnish (it’s a different language group altogether), so I
haven’t done anything with promotion over there. I do believe it got a positive
review in Helsingin Sanomat, which is one of the biggest newspapers. And an
extremely negative review of the Finnish book, but in English on a blog.
It will soon be out in French with some additional material and new
illustrations, German and Catalan. I think that’s pretty neat, that someone likes
it enough to translate it. I was responsible for most of the English tradition,
stupid errors, wordiness and all.
It’s also very cool that it actually gets played, as you mention. I Google it
now and then, and I’m happy to see it’s still alive and kicking. That was a big
part of the point of doing the project in the first place. To have people play it,
hopefully have fun with it, and maybe even teach them about how role-playing
can be done.
 Appendix

When the Settlers arrive on Catan, they quickly encounter the First Nations of Catan,
a semi-nomadic people who begin competing with them for the resources that, until the
Settlers’ arrival, had been their undisputed right…

First Nations of Catan

• These rules allow one player in Settlers of Catan to play as the First
Nations of Catan. Thus, this game supports up to 4 players (1, 2, or 3
Settler players and 1 First Nations player). This game has not been
tested with the 5-6 player expansion set.
• Use the basic Settlers of Catan game set, plus one playing piece in the
color chosen by the First Nations player (see section B).
• The following instructions address the First Nations player. Only a
few changes affect the Settler players. These changes can be found in
sections B, D, and E.

A. Setup

• You place your settlement first, in the CENTER of any 1 tile. For the
duration of the game, you will be playing on the center of the tiles,
not on the edges as Settler players do.
• The Settler player to your left starts the usual settlement placing
process, with this modification: All Settler-player settlements must be
adjacent to a tile that borders the water. This represents the Settlers’
arrival on Catan, while you have had the island to yourself since time
immemorial.
• Settler players place their first and second settlements as the basic
rules describe. You place your second settlement after all Settler
players have placed their settlements, again in the middle of any tile.
This is the only time you may build on a tile that has Settler objects
on its edges. See section E.
• Once all settlements are on the board, find a marker in your color to
indicate the Tribe. (Roads will be used for another purpose later. A
City on its side will do in a pinch, or a ship or knight token from
“Seafarers” or “Cities & Knights”, or any colored object that will fit
on a tile). Place the Tribe at either of your settlements.

239
240 Analog Game Studies
B. On Your Turn: Moving the Tribe
In addition to settling villages and building cities, the First Nations of Catan are
nomadic, traveling to gather the resources they require.

• On your turn, roll the die. You, and all other players, gather
resources on the number rolled. Then, move the Tribe (see below),
and finally, build or trade (if you wish).
• You must move the Tribe every turn following this formula:
Number on the dice / 4, rounded down. Thus, on a dice roll of 1-3,
the tribe cannot move. On 4-7, they move one. On 8-11, they move
two. On 12, they move three. The Tribe MUST move the full
number of allowed movements. It may double-back over a tile
multiple times, but it may not end on the tile where it started unless
1-3 was rolled.
• The Tribe takes one resource card for every tile it moves through or
lands on, not counting the tile where it began. If the Tribe does not
move, it gathers the resource where it remains.
• The Tribe does not move or gather resources on other players’ turns.
• You may only build on the tile where the Tribe ends up (see section
E).
• Settler-players may NOT build on any side or corner of the tile that
the Tribe occupies.

C. On Your Turn: Combat

Distressed at the rapidity of the Settlers’ incursions, the First Nations rally their forces
and attempt to drive these invaders out by force.

• After you have moved the Tribe, you may attack the Settler-player
pieces adjacent to the tile where the Tribe ends its movement.
Whenever you attack, you must attack ALL pieces adjacent to that
tile.
• Discard the cost of a Development card (sheep, wheat, stone). For
each Settler-player’s piece (road, settlement, or city), roll a single die.
If you roll 4-6, you destroy that piece. Remove it from the board and
return it to the appropriate player. If you roll 1-3, you may not
remove that piece this turn.
• A Settler-player may play a Knight card AFTER you have declared
your attack, BEFORE you roll, in order to defend any piece. That
player should indicate which piece, if there are multiple, that they are
defending. A Knight may defend a Settler-player piece of ANY
color. If a Knight is defending a piece, you must roll a 6 to remove it.
 Appendix 241
You may play your own Knight to neutralize a Settler-player’s
Knight. Both Knights cancel one another out, but still count toward
each player’s total number of Knights for the Largest Army tile.
• If you successfully remove ALL Settler-player pieces from the tile
where the Tribe is (or if there were none there to begin with), you
may build there. If you successfully remove 2 or more Settler-player
pieces, you have defended your territory! Place a road piece in your
color on the center of the tile. This is not a road, but a Defended
Territory marker. It is worth 1 VP at the end of the game.
• Whenever a Settler-player builds on a tile that has a defended
territory marker, remove that marker. If you reclaim that tile by
defending territory at a later time, replace the marker.
• Destroying only 1 Settler-player piece does not earn you a Defended
Territory marker, though it will allow you to build on that tile.

D. On Your Turn: Building & Trading

• You may, on your turn, build settlements or cities, or buy

development cards. You may not build roads.
• You may only build in the center of a hex, not on its edges as the
Settler players do.
• You may only build a new settlement on the tile where the Tribe
marker is. Remember: move first, then build.
• You may upgrade an existing settlement to a city without the Tribe
being present.
• You may not build a new settlement on a hex that has Settler-player
objects (roads, settlements, cities) adjacent to it.
• You may buy development cards.
• You may trade with any player(s) AFTER you have moved the
Tribe.
• You may trade 4:1 with the bank on your turn. You may not use
ports to trade.
• Settler-players MAY build on tiles that have your Settlements/Cities
on them. They MAY NOT build on the tile where the Tribe is.

E. On Every Turn

• Your settlements yield the resource they are on whenever the

number is rolled.
• Your cities yield 2 of the resource they are on whenever the number
is rolled.
242 Analog Game Studies
• You may trade with any player on their turn as long as they initiate
the trade.

F. Winning
You win in the same way that the other players win: by accruing 10 Victory
Points. You may accrue Victory points as follows:

• By playing Development Cards that have Victory Points on them.

• By building settlements (1VP) and cities (2VP).
• By defending territory (1VP).
• By acquiring the Largest Army tile.
• You may not acquire the Longest Road tile, as you do not build
roads.

G. Robber & Other Rules

• If a rule’s change is not mentioned here, assume that basic Settlers of

Catan rules apply to you. The hand limit, the rules about playing
Development cards, etc. all apply.
• If the Robber occupies the same hex as one of your settlements, it
takes effect as if it were a normal Robber, and you may use Knights
in the usual way to dislodge the Robber. The Robber does not affect
the Tribe.
 About the Authors

Kelvin Autenrieth, M.A. is a Ph.D. researcher (media informatics, Technische

Universität Chemnitz) investigating the concept of abductive inferences and
what it means for HCI software design. His 2011 master’s thesis on rules and
mechanics in classical games received an award from the German Association
for Simulation and Gaming (SAGSAGA).
Sarah Lynne Bowman, Ph.D. is a role-playing games scholar, designer,
and organizer. She teaches as adjunct faculty in English, Communication, and
Humanities for several institutions including Austin Community College. She
received her B.S. from the University of Texas at Austin in Radio-TV-Film
in 1998 and her M.A. from the same department in 2003. Bowman graduated
with her Ph.D. in Arts and Humanities from the University of Texas at Dallas
in 2008. McFarland Press published her dissertation in 2010 as The Functions
of Role-playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems, and
Explore Identity. Bowman has edited several volumes of the The Wyrd Con
Companion Book and a special edition of the International Journal of Role-playing.
In 2016, she served as the lead organizer for Living Games, a conference
devoted to the academic and practical study of larp in all its forms, as well as co-
organizing the Role-playing and Simulation in Education Conference at Texas
State University.
Ashley ML Brown is a researcher of sex and games and an assistant
professor in game design at EAE at the University of Utah. She completed her
PhD at the University of Manchester in autumn 2013 before going on to teach
at Brunel University London. She is the author of the book Sexuality in Role-
Playing Games (Routledge 2015) and an editor of The Dark Side of Game Play
(Routledge 2015). In her spare time she enjoys role-playing and eating food.
Maury Elizabeth Brown is the co-founder of Learn Larp, LLC, a games
design and educational consulting company. She is also an assistant professor of
English at Germanna Community College and a PhD Candidate in Rhetoric &
Cultural Studies at Old Dominion University, where her dissertation focuses on
agency in larps, particularly with respect to gender.
Jason Cox is an Assistant Professor of Art Education and the head of the
Art Education concentration at the University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio.
He completed his PhD at The Ohio State University in Arts Administration,
Education, and Policy with a specialization in Art Education, and contributes
to academic publications on both Art Education and analog games. He has

243
244 Analog Game Studies
written three American freeform games, What to do About Michael?, Troupe,
and Extinction Party, which explore points of intersection between individuals,
ideals, and communities.
Bruno Faidutti, Ph.D. wrote a dissertation about the unicorn in
Renaissance art, science and literature. He is better known as a boardgame
designer. With about 70 published games so far, his best known and best selling
game is Citadels, though many more are to come.
Maxwell Foxman is a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University, where he
studies the playful practices involved in the development and adoption of virtual
reality technologies. His previous work has examined how people play in non-
game contexts, including journalism, social media and politics.
Elsa S. Henry resides in New Jersey. She has a Masters Degree in
Women’s History from Sarah Lawrence College, and is a freelance game
designer and developer. She works for Storium as their community manager,
and in her spare time throws dice with her friends and walks her superdog Julep.
Upcoming publications include: Dead Scare from Exploding Rogue Studios, a
chapter in Wraith 20th ed, and a secret project through Phoenix Outlaw.
James A. Hodges is a Ph.D. candidate at Rutgers University. His
dissertation will address the material cultures of technological innovation as seen
in post-literary culture during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s.
Jonathan Rey Lee is a comparatist currently researching toys and analog
games, especially as performative sites for transmedia, narrative, and
philosophical engagement. He received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature
from UC Riverside and currently resides in Seattle. He has written (and is
still writing) on LEGO and his paper “The Plastic Art of LEGO: An Essay
into Material Culture” is available in the Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman
anthology. Jonathan can be contacted at https://ucriverside.academia.edu/
JonathanLee.
Greg Loring-Albright makes and writes about tabletop and real-world
immersive games at gregisonthego.wordpress.com. He holds a bachelor’s
degree in Film and Media Studies from Swarthmore College. He lives, works,
and makes games in Harrisburg, PA.
Kyle Moore is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Sydney in the
department of Media and Communications. His doctoral research explores
how forms of urban mobile gaming are situated within urban environments,
focusing on the sociocultural and material circumstance which frame our
understanding of play. Kyle has previously published research on mobile,
 About the Authors 245
portable, and location-based games in journals such as M/C Journal and Games
& Culture.
Benjamin A. Morrow is the co-founder of Learn Larp, LLC, a games
design and educational consulting company dedicated to showcasing the power
of live action role play to engage the imagination, cultivate empathy, and
change hearts and minds in meaningful ways. He is also an independent games
designer who has presented at Intercon and Metatopia.
Amber Muller is a wayward Canuck. After graduating from the
University of Alberta with a BA (Honors) in Drama she played at theatre
making before moving to Europe to pursue a double Masters in International
Performance Research at the University of Amsterdam and the University of
Warwick. Currently engaged in PhD in Performance Studies, Amber is also
working towards designated emphases in Feminist Theory and Research and
Critical Theory. Her research focus lies at the intersection of performance and
sexuality with a special interest in sexual economies, erotic capital, collisions of
praxis in pop culture feminism, gender politics, creative protest, and embodied
resistance. She enjoys popular media, mixing “high” theory with “low” culture,
troubling currents of power, and being a feminist killjoy.
Felan Parker, Ph.D. is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Concordia
University’s Technoculture, Art and Games Research Centre, where he is
studying the production, distribution, and reception of independent or “indie”
games. He has a PhD in Communication & Culture from York University. His
research interests include indie media, media industries, cultural intermediaries,
processes of legitimation and canon formation, discourses of authorship and
genre, transmedia franchises, and tabletop roleplaying games.
Lisa Quoresimo is a music and theater artist, currently researching
construction of gender in the voice. She is doctoral candidate in the
Performance Studies Graduate Group at UC Davis.
Jaakko Stenros, Ph.D. is a game and play researcher at the Game Research
Lab (University of Tampere). He has published five books and over 50 articles
and reports and has taught game studies and Internet studies
for almost a decade. He is currently working on understanding and
documenting adult play and uncovering the aesthetics of social play, but his
research interests include norm-defying play, role-playing games, pervasive
games, and playfulness. He has also collaborated with artists and designers to
create ludic experiences. He lives in Helsinki, Finland.
Tanja Sihvonen, Ph.D. is a researcher specializing in digital media and
games. She is interested in participatory culture, digital labour and the creative
industries. She gained a PhD at the University of Turku, Finland, with a
246 Analog Game Studies
dissertation that was positioned at the intersection of Game Studies, Internet
Studies and (Media) Cultural Studies. In her book Players Unleashed! Modding
The Sims and the Culture of Gaming (Amsterdam University Press, 2011) she
focused on player activities and the cultural appropriation of computer games.
She has also been studying social games and the transformations of the game
industry. After spending many years in the Netherlands, she is currently
working as Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Vaasa in
Finland.
Samuel Tobin is an assistant professor of game design and
communications media at Fitchburg State University. His book Portable Play in
Everyday Life: The Nintendo DS is available from Palgrave Pilot.
Evan Torner (Ph.D. University of Massachusetts Amherst), is Co-Editor-
in-Chief of Analog Game Studies and Assistant Professor of German Studies
at the University of Cincinnati. His research explores East German genre
cinema, German film history, critical race theory, and science fiction. His
secondary fields of expertise include role-playing game studies, Nordic larp,
cultural criticism, electronic music and second-language pedagogy. Torner has
contributed to the field of game studies by way of his co-edited volume (with
William J. White) entitled Immersive Gameplay: Essays on Role-Playing and
Participatory Media (McFarland, 2012). He can be reached at evan.torner <at>
gmail.com.
Aaron Trammell is an Assistant Professor of Interactive Media and Digital
Games at UC Irvine. He was a Provost’s Postdoctoral Scholar for Faculty
Diversity in Informatics and Digital Knowledge at the Annenberg School for
Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, and
he earned his doctorate from the Rutgers University School of Communication
and Information in 2015. Aaron’s research reveals historical connections
between games, play, identity, and the United States military-industrial
complex. He is interested in how military ideologies become integrated into
game design and how these perspectives are negotiated within the imaginations
of players.
He is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Analog Game Studies
(analoggamestudies.org) and the Multimedia Editor and Co-Founder of
Sounding Out! (soundstudiesblog.com). In 2014, Aaron co-edited a volume of
Games and Culture with Anne Gilbert entitled “Extending Play to Critical
Media Studies,” and in 2016 Aaron co-edited a volume of Journal of Games
Criticism with Zack Lischer-Katz entitled “Considering the Sequel to Game
 About the Authors 247
Studies…” He and Zack Lischer-Katz have a special issue of First Monday on
media infrastructures forthcoming in early 2017.
Moyra Turkington is an award winning Canadian larpwright with a
background in Cultural Studies and Theatre. She is the creator of the War
Birds series of historical larp and freeform games about women in WWII
published with Unruly Designs (www.unrulydesigns.com). She is interested in
immersive, transformative and political games, and particularly in creating a
multiplicity of media, design, representation and play.
Emma Leigh Waldron, is a Doctoral Student at UC Davis in the
department of Performance Studies and a graduate of the MA Performance
Research program at the University of Bristol, where her thesis was entitled:
“Beyond Binaries: Questioning Authentic Identity in Hedwig and the Angry
Inch“. Previously, Emma studied Performance Studies at New York University,
and earned her BA at Rutgers University where she studied English, Art
History, and Theater Arts.
Emma is a theater artist, larp organizer, and researcher who is interested in
exploring performances of intimacy and the intimacy of performance. Emma’s
research focuses on the affective power of performance, the intersection of
sex/gender and performance/play, and in exploring where the boundaries of
performance (and the perceived “inauthentic”) begin to dissolve. Through her
work about what it means for the body to perform and be performed upon,
she attempts to explore the reciprocal relationship between performance and
affect and how, why, and if we can perform intimacy. Emma sees performance
as a particularly powerful tool for feminist and queer activism. Her research
interests revolve around the exploration of identity, sexuality, immersivity, and
embodied knowledge, and she is particularly interested in the ways in which
these issues are challenged and played with through the practices of larp, porn,
and drag. www.emmaleighwaldron.com
Devin Wilson is doctoral student in the Digital Media program at the
Georgia Institute of Technology. His research interests include game studies,
Buddhist philosophy, reader-response theory, ecofeminism, and critical animal
studies. He holds a B.A. and M.F.A. from the University at Buffalo’s
Department of Media Study, and his M.F.A. thesis paper, “The Three Marks
of Existence in Buddhism and Games”, compares the formal qualities of games
with a core component of Buddhist philosophy.
Peter Wonica is a developer, educator, and tinkerer interested in exploring
design as a means to be understand complex systems. His research focuses on
providing non-developers with tools to explore identity, culture, and social
issues as a reflective, investigative process. In addition to his research, Peter
248 Analog Game Studies
develops games, both digital and analog, and both serious and occasionally
absurd.
 About the ETC Press

ETC Press is a publishing imprint with a twist. We publish books, but we’re
also interested in the participatory future of content creation across multiple
media. We are an academic, open source, multimedia, publishing imprint
affiliated with the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie
Mellon University (CMU) and in partnership with Lulu.com. ETC Press has an
affiliation with the Institute for the Future of the Book and MediaCommons,
sharing in the exploration of the evolution of discourse. ETC Press also has
an agreement with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to place
ETC Press publications in the ACM Digital Library.
ETC Press publications will focus on issues revolving around
entertainment technologies as they are applied across a variety of fields. We are
looking to develop a range of texts and media that are innovative and insightful.
We are interested in creating projects with Sophie and with In Media Res, and
we will accept submissions and publish work in a variety of media (textual,
electronic, digital, etc.), and we work with The Game Crafter to produce
tabletop games.
Authors publishing with ETC Press retain ownership of their intellectual
property. ETC Press publishes a version of the text with author permission and
ETC Press publications will be released under one of two Creative Commons
licenses:

• Attribution-NoDerivativeWorks-NonCommercial: This license

allows for published works to remain intact, but versions can be
created.
• Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: This license allows for
authors to retain editorial control of their creations while also
encouraging readers to collaboratively rewrite content.

Every text is available for free download, and we price our titles as inexpensively
as possible, because we want people to have access to them. We’re most
interested in the sharing and spreading of ideas.
This is definitely an experiment in the notion of publishing, and we
invite people to participate. We are exploring what it means to “publish”
across multiple media and multiple versions. We believe this is the future
of publication, bridging virtual and physical media with fluid versions of

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250 Analog Game Studies
publications as well as enabling the creative blurring of what constitutes reading
and writing.
http://press.etc.cmu.edu/