Showing posts with label toys. Show all posts
Showing posts with label toys. Show all posts

Sunday, June 21, 2020

Hard Lads as an important failure



This post “spoils” what happens in my new game Hard Lads. If you care about spoilers, you should play it before reading. It takes about 5 minutes to play once, and maybe 20 minutes to play it to 100%.

In 2015, a phone video of young muscular White British men hitting each other with a chair went viral. Why make a game about this meme now? Some might characterize all my output derisively as "meme games", which is fine, but personally I’ve tried to avoid doing it on purpose. First, my games themselves should strive to be the original meme, and not merely a fan reproduction. Second, many memes are steeped in internet gamer culture, the only circle jerk I want to avoid.

However. I think British Lads Hit Each Other With Chair is one of those classic internet videos that merits special attention. It does so much in a single minute, and it's not about video games at all. So that’s why I made Hard Lads.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

PlayThings, a toys and play symposium, 23-24 Feb 2013 at Parsons

PlayThings is a symposium about structures of play, and the ways in which design can enable or resist those structures. What does it mean to play? How meaningful is the distinction between toy and game? etc.

6 East 16th St, 12th flr
in NYC (near Union Square)
February 23rd - 24th
11 am - 5pm

Day 1:
a panel discussion around the ideas of play led by:
McKenzie Wark (Lang)
Colleen Macklin (PETLab)
Zach Gage (stfj.net)
Cas Holman (RISD)
moderated by John Sharp
+
a 3hr play session with various kinds of toys and games i.e. historical toys, mechanical toys, building blocks, plushies/puppets/dolls, board games, video games and physical games to introduce participants with the variety of things and activities that constitute as play.
(led by Kyle Li and Nick Fortugno)

Day 2:
Day 2 consists of a day-long workshop and play-jam session where participants come up with their own games, toys or other forms of public play and the creations are later reviewed by the panel and other participants.
(5 hr making + 1 hr judging/playtesting)
(basic toy building materials provided)