Games festivals this weekend

[chris]

It's a big weekend for games on both sides of the Atlantic. The weekend one year ago was just as big, so there may be more than a few similarities between this post and its counterpart last year.

New York sees the fifth annual Come Out And Play festival taking place this weekend. Every annual event that lasts year after year should be proud of its success. The constituency is real-world, street and augmented reality games. There does not seem to have been the explosion in augmented reality games that once I thought there might be, because the barriers to creation are considerable; I'm not sure to what extent there exist generic tools which can assist devisors. However, the barriers to creation of new sports, blown-up party games and the flourishing sideline of live-action video games are relatively light. It would be interesting to see which devisors have returned from year to year and whether some genres (media?) are more promising than others for inspiring repeat device. Ooh, they even have live radio coverage for those of us who can't be there! Hurrah. Sadly there never seems to be quite as much blogging about the games there as I'd like there to be.

I particularly like the way that the event has inspired local groups like Obscure Games of Pittsburgh, who are bringing their best game to New York - and very good Silverball looks, too. It's effectively human pinball; break out the old croquet multiball joke. Good work, Pittsburgh! Pittsburgh is set to host its own festival at the end of August, which I hope is also a success.

The closest counterpart we have to this in the UK is the Hide and Seek Weekender, taking place in London at the National Theatre from 9th to 11th July. No games have yet been announced. bateleur ran a game here last year; I wonder whether he will be doing so again this year. Will anyone here be going - jvvw, hawkida, perhaps? It's five weeks away so theoretically I would be off work that weekend. Hide and Seek also run "Sandpit" playtest sessions from time to time; later this month, they're heading up to Warwick.

The Come Out And Play brand gave its title to an event in Amsterdam in 2007; I've wondered whether a British town might ever be able to host an event worthy of the title. I think it's relevant that the New York-based COaPs have been able to generate significant local partnerships. That's not to say that, say, Hide and Seek does badly; it has quality support from the art world, but maybe not the same quantity. I have a gut feeling that the sorts of companies that can afford sponsorship budgets in the UK are fairly conservative, especially these days, but it may just be that the best sponsorship-finders haven't come our way yet.

Staying in the UK but returning to this weekend, Birmingham hosts the fourth annual UK Games Expo, which I sadly will not be attending. Once again I'm very impressed that they've managed to get as far as year four. I'm a little less impressed with their web site, though, and am not sure how organically organised the whole event is. (I think highly of the people who I know that are involved; if they rate their peers then that's good enough for me.) The event caters to fans of board games, trading card games, RPGs and miniatures war games, with the board gmaes side of things seeming to have three or four separate prongs which might or might not be as well-connected as they could be. Extra points go to the event for widening the scope of the event to feature costumed groups and some workshops, with games-related authors and personalities I'd like to get to meet.

I'm a big fan of the UK Games Expo in general because of its overt attempts to attempt as many genres of gaming as possible. Last year, the UK Games Expo claimed to include some LAN computer gaming (I may be years behind with my vocabulary here) and the Living Dungeon; I am not clear whether they are happening this year or not. One page suggests there'll be another Living Dungeon, but I'm not sure how authoritative that page is because I'm not sure if it's linked elsewhere on the site.

There is a great deal more that I want to say on this topic, but I realise that this is essentially a topical post about this weekend, and this weekend is somehow already mostly over. I shall save the second installment for another time.

Comments

[julietteculver]

For the third year running, the Hide and Seek Festival/Weekender has managed to clash with a holiday that we've already booked so yet again won't be going alas :-(

[(Anonymous)]

I'm going to be at a (you guess it) larp event that weekend, so a no from this corner.

[alice-and-lain.livejournal.com]

Wow, that play weekend in New York looks neat! I wish more cities would do something like that.

[chris]

Ooh ooh ooh, I saw some silly jokes recently and thought of you. (Well, I also thought of my boss's boss, but I thought of you.) They come from Lembit Opik, who used to be a rather distinctive MP in this country until he was deselected at the last general election as the result of a huge personal swing against him. His post-political career has started with an unlikely stand-up turn, which was widely reviewed as "unexpectedly good for a beginner, though far from great overall".

* Heard the one about the anarchist who was killed in a condemned toilet? He was crushed by the cistern.

* What is the best cheese to use to conceal a horse? Mascarpone.

* What is the best cheese to use to coax a bear out of a tree? Camembert.

[chris]

A very enjoyable blog about one player's experiences.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

No, sadly the festival clashed awkwardly with other stuff this year. I was hoping to see more of it this time and actually ended up not going at all.

(I look forward to your second installment, though. You are my favourite writer about games in general. One day I hope you'll have a regular column on some widely read website - maybe a newspaper - so the whole world can share in the enthusiasm!)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Entirely agree! One of the things I'm most pleased with from my time at Flagship is persuading the senior editors to give Chris a column. To start with (20 years ago?) he was just writing about a narrow niche (wrestling games) of a narrow branch of gaming (PBM), but the zest and the ability to communicate what was interesting, fun and worth-looking-into was already very much in place.

If things had worked out differently with the MSO and so on, I'm sure he would have found a fitting stage for his writing talent well before now.

(You can stop blushing now, Chris ;-)

The equivalent of today's "morning pages"

[chris]

Thank you! You (pl.) are very kind. I was very dissatisfied with this piece because it really should have been a topical "here's what's happening this weekend" piece and it was just far too late to be of use; this is the rare circumstance where I could have said "here's what's happening; as I wrote about it last year, I can just link to my post last year for context", but somehow that's not so much fun to write. It's only satisfying to write if I can try to give some context and try to give some details of how things have developed. (This came from some very benign and friendly criticism I once received that, back in the days when I wrote a postal games subzine, I didn't provide enough context and was baffling to people who didn't know what I was on about. The criticism struck me as being relevant and I have tried to err on the side of providing too much context and background ever since, simply because it's a kind thing to do. Thank you, Ian Willey [sp? It has been years], and that is not sarcastic.) The fact that I haven't been writing for a couple of months though indicates that, well, (a) lots of things are going on and (b) I'm just not quite enjoying it in the same way that I once was. Argle blargle first world problems ANGST WOE AARGH. Ignore me, I slept really badly last night.

My favourite games writer of all time is probably Mike Siggins, whose magazine Sumo more or less brought German-style games to the UK in the '90s; he writes - wrote? - in considerable depth but with tremendous clarity of expression and such a broad base of knowledge that his reviews were masterpieces even, remarkably, despite habitually erring on the underside of the "considered and reasonable"-to-"hyperbolic and exaggerated" spectrum. Its spiritual successor, Counter, has many very good pieces from people who have learned his style. In the US, Peter Sarrett and his old Game Report was consistently at least good and frequently hit the heights. Additionally, the old Mindzine on the MSO web site had an awful lot of cute, unusual and well-written pieces, though house style was generally to stick fairly clearly to the point.

The connection between these are that they're all years old and I am pining for nostalgia. There is no logical reason why the standard of games writing should have got any worse; I suspect the truth is somewhere between "the great writing is out there and I'm not finding it", "the great writing is out there and I'm not idolising it as once I was" and "the great writing is out there but I'm not recognising it as great because it's not as novel to me as once it was".

Mig Greengard's Daily Dirt chess blog can still be very good, and even more so his Mig on Chess pieces; his tone is frequently catty and bitchy, but with great talent and style, and he clearly has a great deal of love for what he does. I always tread a little carefully because there are (well, were) times when I'm (or, perhaps, I was) inclined not to take his side of whatever argument was ongoing at the time and it isn't fun to be on the other side of the argument from him.

There are, are-not-were, great poker writers in a game that lends itself to good writing very easily; Vicky Coren (yes, the Vicky Coren) is a really accomplished writer and often does a great deal with the - guessing - 150 or so words that she's permitted weekly in the Guardian. A lot of players with great chutzpah (not quite the same thing as the greatest players, but there's a positive correlation) can bring it to press. The Tao of Poker is very much in what I imagine to be the Hunter S. Thompson gonzo journalism time and could not unreasonably be called "gritty", where "gritty" is the accepted code for "occasionally deliberately unpleasant". (Commentator Jesse May bounces from place to place and pops up with ramblin', gamblin' tales in a style that's a wonderfully evocative advertisement for the poker-boho degen lifestyle.) Among British players who also write, I always enjoy Neil Channing who is frequently lyrical and understated but accomplishes enough to have really interesting things to write about.

There are several of my Friends, on various services, who are also among the best (or, at least, the most to my taste) at what they do by way of games writing, but if I start plugging them - quite possibly you - then I'll forget someone and be annoyed with myself. Iiiiiiit's a cop-out!

Re: The equivalent of today's "morning pages"

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mike Siggins took a bit of a break from gaming (or at least from writing about it) I believe, but he is around these days, at Funagain Games (http://www.funagain.com/control/viewblog?contentBlogId=1&fromrd=14607). And on BGG (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/user/sumo) of course.

Re: The equivalent of today's "morning pages"

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Oh, I was expecting those to come out as links. Hmm, sorry, not sure what went wrong there.

Re: The equivalent of today's "morning pages"

[chris]

Didn't know that about Mike, which shows you how far behind the times I am. Heck of a shout; thank you for sharing!

I guess that the links are being spam-trapped because you have an OpenID account, which is understandable but over-zealous. Dreamwidth invitations are available on request.

[kay-taylor.livejournal.com]

Hi Chris,

Wow, Dreamwidth is WHITE! ;)

Just popping in to let you know that if you choose to come to the 9th-11th July event, you're always welcome to stay at mine.

K

[chris]

Thanks, Kay! That's very kind of you and highly appreciated. As discussed at the time (Friends-locked), part of the appeal of the event is having people to go with, so that's more of a stumbling-block at this point in time.

[azurelunatic]

The points are a prize, of sorts, in honor of the rather incredible spam you've been getting. >_<

[chris]

What a pleasant surprise! Thank you. (Any obvious reason why exactly one post has been targeted?)

[azurelunatic]

A common spamming pattern seems to be that spammers will find a location that is, for whatever reason, known to them, and then hit it like it's going out of style, but my guess is possibly as good as yours as to why. Some assorted hypotheses:

They know that they can spam that location, but they're not sufficiently familiar with DW/LJ to know that anonymous OK in one place in the journal applies to the whole journal for the most part.
Searching out multiple targets for a single journal is effort.
(oh, here's an ugly thought) They mean to lay their spammy little eggs in the entry, and then link to it from other spam campaigns, so it makes sense to have one place targeted.