Volume 10, Issue 2, 2023
Articles
- Studying Gamebooks: A Framework for Analysis
This article attempts to classify the fundamental traits of the gamebook and to present a useful framework for the understanding of the gamebook as a technology for interaction and sense-making drawing on gamebooks of the 1980s and early 1990s. The article will look at the unique affordances, limitations, and creative opportunities that the gamebook derives from its materiality and medium specificity.
- Climate Larps: Environmental Design in Nordic Larp
This essay close reads three sets of environmental or climate larps: first, there are those that simulate political or diplomatic summits: Pig Grove, Tree of Life, Fortitude, Forecasters, Baltic Warriors; second are larps as pseudo-fictional workshops: Cyborg Gaia Allies, A Ceremony for Hope; and third are blackbox larps, which make use of lighting, audio, props, and other means of stagecraft to create spaces for collaborative storytelling: The Ark, Spillover, From the Ashes, Leviathan. The essay hopes to stimulate a productive, creative discussion about game design, cultural expression, politics, and the affordances and limitations of climate larps.
- Towards a Transpacific Future: A History of Board Games in Taiwan
This paper explores the current market of Taiwanese board games to interrogate how these games present a conflicted image of Taiwan. Many designers in Taiwan strive to create "Taiwanese board games" but often replicate Western models and ideologies. Is there a different way to interpret this predicament when the history of Taiwan was predominantly formed in the maneuvers of colonial power? How can Taiwanese games counter the imperial influence when its presence seems to hold dominance in the creation and consumption of these games? Looking at games like Uncle Wang's Richman, this paper addresses the ways Taiwanese game appropriate figures of Western empire, yet the more organic and original scenes of Taiwan tend to be poorly depicted.