For Games Unplayed and Unknown
“What’s it like to be a jealous god?” That’s the advice you’re given on how to play Despair, a nihilistic software toy by Lloyd Burchill meant to “[help] you vent some steam.” Basically, you kill a bunch of people using weird, supernatural powers.
As grim as that sounds, Despair is surprisingly mellow, maybe even bored by the violence. It feels like a product of 90s cynicism, where everything sucked but in a cool, fun way you could rebel against. » Read more about Despair
Stuffin the Briefcase makes a game out of an everyday activity – packing a bag.
Epyx included this game as part of the Getaway Entertainment 6 Pack, a collection of games for laptops in the early 90s. The Getaway pack has six small, simple games, like a dominoes game and a variation of Mastermind; they’re little timewasters intended for someone to play while traveling, something they’d kill time with on a train ride, the mobile games of their time. Stuffin the Briefcase, the most creative of the pack, is the only one that sticks with the travel theme. » Read more about Stuffin the Briefcase
When a solar flare hits the space station ICARUS, the entire place shakes. Your screen rattles back and forth. Alarms go off. Over the loudspeakers, a voice dispatches orders for the medical team. This disturbance repeats periodically in the background as the station careens closer to destruction. The crashing noises are a constant reminder: this disaster will continue to unfurl, no matter what else is going on.
Something is always happening in Sentient. The ICARUS has a full crew running around doing their jobs, and as part of your mission to save the space station, you can go anywhere in the facility and talk to any character about basically anything. It’s dizzying, and it can be hard to understand what you’re supposed to do with that radical freedom. » Read more about Sentient
“True Weird Stories from Video Game History” at Super MAGFest 2019. (from left to right: me, Frank Cifaldi, Rachel Simone Weil, Kelsey Lewin) Photo credit: AtariSpot
It’s been a few days since Super MAGFest 2019. While I’d usually wait to talk about the event until panel videos are available, I want to recap the weekend while it’s still fresh.
This year was incredible. The video game history panel track was a huge success. We put on 11 unique, insightful panels on a wide range of topics, and they brought in big audiences. (Three panels, including our midnight panel on weird game history, were standing room only!) Our panelists represented a variety of perspectives, experiences, and interests, and I’m proud of the voices we showcased.
I was amazed by the synchronicity between the panels. They were in dialogue with each other – referencing shared ideas like “evocative objects,” preservation through play, and, surprisingly, the Nancy Drew games. They made a strong case for the importance of archives. They challenged the social and cultural assumptions behind how we tell the story of video games and questioned the value of nostalgia. One of our panelists literally challenged the audience to a fight. And the history topics fit neatly into the rest of the MAGES educational panel section; they felt right at home alongside psych research, musicology, and art history.
One goal with the panel track was to foster a gaming history community, where historians, archivists, and fans could interact and learn from each other. This was just one panel track over three days, but it felt like we started something. The response from both the panelists and audiences has been outstanding.
Thank you so much to everyone who attended, and thanks to all our panelists – Carly Kocurek, Kelsey Lewin, Anne Ladyem McDivitt, Kevin Bunch, Florencia Pierri, Michael Hughes, Rachel Simone Weil, Jeremy Parish, Bob Mackey, Chris Sims, Andrew Borman, Beth Lathrop, Campbell Parker, and Frank Cifaldi. It was a pleasure and an honor to meet and to work with all of you. Just typing out everyone’s names like that is ridiculous. This was an amazing event.
Videos of every panel should be available in the next few months as MAGFest gradually uploads everything.
UPDATE: The videos are up! I’ve embedded the playlist below, starting with Carly Kocurek’s panel.