games are great at feeling (medievalists design games)

i want to use this last blog post of mine to reflect a bit on the first day of the medievalists design games symposium: what i heard, what i learned, and what i thought. because i love when articles include them, i’m going to do this in the form of a numbered list.

#1: medievalists are weird (and that’s good!)

i haven’t spent a lot of time, if any time at all, around medievalists, but based off of the people that i talked to and listened to yesterday, i feel like i can confidently say that medievalists are a strange bunch. there’s so much included in the medieval that i hadn’t even considered or thought about that is being studied and raked over with a fine-toothed comb. when i think about it, that makes perfect sense! that is how academic disciplines usually happen and function, but it doesn’t feel obvious about the discipline that you’re not in. and even when you think you don’t have that much in common with a discipline, or the people who study it, you can find that wargamers and medieval re-enacters are just roleplayers and LARPers.

#2: game designers are also weird (and that’s also good!)

guys, mary flanagan is a HOOT. if you missed on her talk, and you have another chance to hear her speak, PLEASE take it. not only is she one of the innovators of studying and making digital games, she also has so much knowledge about so many different things. it really goes to show how interdisciplinary this entire field is! listening to her speak about her experience making games was really inspiring and insightful (especially her thoughts on speculative game design and the conversation about speculative inclusion and LARPs). there was also a brief conversation about fiction, adaptation, and experience-taking that i personally found very helpful for my thesis work and i got to talk to her after the discussion for a bit.

#3: i know a LOT about games

can i be real and say that going into this discussion was SUPER intimidating. not just because huge names in board gaming like ben rosset and cole wehrle were in attendance, but also because there were dozens of medievalists who were all REAL adults that knew a lot about the medieval period. that’s scary as an undergraduate! but despite the fear, i went in and i took a lot of notes and i learned a ton… but, i also talked a ton of people about my thesis and got a lot of feedback and recommendations (both for pleasure and for work). i won’t say don’t be scared to go to these kinds of events, because you will be, but i will say to go to them scared: be intimidated, but do it anyway.

#4: games are everywhere, dude

i was honestly impressed with the speed at which all of the medievalists (many of whom did not have a familiarity with games) started applying what little game knowledge they had to their areas of expertise. it was really a sight to behold! it was that experience that made me realize how games really are everywhere, but not in a gamification sense; rather, games, like religion, or music, or clothing, or food, are one of those quintessentially human things. it’s an aspect of culture, something that’s literally everywhere and has been for a really long time. so when you think about why games have this unserious air about them, it really doesn’t make sense if you think about it for more than 30 seconds. this is the cliffnotes of a conversation that happened during patrick’s presentation, but i think it bears repeating: play is a part of the human spirit. play is political. play is serious. and just because something isn’t serious doesn’t mean it’s not important!