“Cold War Gone Hot, Again” panel: Friday, May 21, 2030-2130 EDT
May 18, 2021 1 Comment
The Bradley Tabletop Games Symposium is a two-day participatory online event that brings together game industry practitioners, scholars, and anyone else interested in the design and study of tabletop games. The symposium is a product of collaboration between the Interactive Media Department (https://www.bradley.edu/academic/departments/im/) of Bradley University and the Games and Simulation Arts & Sciences Program (https://hass.rpi.edu/games-and-simulation-arts-and-sciences) of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, managed by Double Exposure, Inc. (https://www.dexposure.com).
I’m doing a panel on the evening of Friday May 21st (well, generally evening, in North America): (event description)
In the 1980s a number of serious wargames on a hypothetical Third World War were published, exciting some interest at the time. Over the last 10 years or so there has been a second wave of newly designed wargames that study that same subject – the Soviet invasion of Europe in the mid-1980s that never happened. Nostalgia for an actual past that one remembers imperfectly is one thing. But nostalgic game design to commemorate a then-hypothetical future war that is now a fictional past is a strange inversion of historiography indeed, and an additional twist beyond the approach taken by the designers of Twilight Struggle. What kind of retrofuturism is it? Is it even retrofuturism at all?
Hopefully it will be a true rambling conversation because I have more questions than answers on this.
Here is the event link, we will be talking on Discord but it will be broadcast on twitch.tv:
If you want to take part, you must register as a member of the Gateway. There is no cost (besides time subtracted from your mortal coil listening to me/us). There are many other interesting panels and games running; you can view the whole calendar as a list of events at this link, which also has a link to register:
https://dexposure.com/zoc2021sched.html
One event I plan to attend is on Saturday May 22, by the three guys behind the Eurowargames anthology I have written about (and for): Jan Heinemann, Riccardo Masini, Fred Serval.
Coming from different cultural and national backgrounds, content creators Jan Heinemann (Germany), Riccardo Masini (Italy) and Fred Serval (France) have recently joined their common knowledge to coordinate a collection of essays about wargaming in Europe and its many new design trends all over the world. But what about their different experiences as wargaming content creators on YouTube and other social media, with different approaches and different groups of viewers? Together with other prominent international content creators, this roundtable aims at highlighting the peculiar features of speaking about wargames also to non-English speaking viewers: the related difficulties caused by the language barrier and the different historical heritages, the perks granted by cultural diversity and the related criticalities, the needs of the different publics, the choice of media and style, the most requested contents and the games that prove harder to introduce, sometimes for lack of interest on the topic and sometimes even for their controversial nature in other nations. An engaging and rarely seen comparison and mutual confrontation about what it means to speak about board wargaming, a hobby born in the United States in the 1950s, also to non-US players by non-US content creators in the 2020s. Showing once again how gaming can prove to be an important bridge and connection between different cultures.
Broadcast on: http://twitch.tv/dexconcord
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