Plumbing Game Studies

Board game designer Amabel Holland joins me to discuss her recent board game The City of Six Moons. [https://hollandspiele.com/products/city-of-six-moons] City of Six Moons isn't an ordinary game - the game is presented as an alien object, and the rules are in an unknown language. Amabel joins me to talk about what this means for games, rules, systems, communication, and knowledge itself. Along the way we also discuss one of her key design influences: the filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Checkout Amabel's video essay on rules as play: https://youtu.be/VDjK1jX93yM?si=RAWLAFzETNJpw7cM [https://youtu.be/VDjK1jX93yM?si=RAWLAFzETNJpw7cM] You can see Amabel's games at her company's website, Hollandspiele: https://hollandspiele.com/ [https://hollandspiele.com/] You can read the New Yorker profile of her here: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-personal-political-art-of-board-game-design [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-personal-political-art-of-board-game-design] And you can browse the Criterion Channel's collection of Fassbinder films here: https://www.criterionchannel.com/directed-by-rainer-werner-fassbinder [https://www.criterionchannel.com/directed-by-rainer-werner-fassbinder]

This episode is co-hosted by David Hall, PhD Candidate in ECL at UNC. David and I are joined by Morgan Pitelka [https://morganpitelka.info/], Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and of History at UNC - Chapel Hill, joins us to discuss representations of the early modern period in Japan, video games and otherwise. Over a discussion ranging from 8th century historiography through responses to the 3/11 disaster, we chart a broad historical outline of Japanese cultural production practices as the context out of which video games emerge in the latter part of the 20th century.

Aris Politopoulos [https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/aris-politopoulos#tab-1] joins me to discuss David Graeber's essay "What's the Point if We Can't Have Fun? [https://thebaffler.com/salvos/whats-the-point-if-we-cant-have-fun]" We also discuss Aaron Trammel [https://aarontrammell.com/]'s recent book Repairing Play, which you can find here: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262545273/repairing-play/ [https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262545273/repairing-play/] For more from Aris and to learn about his work at Leiden University, you can check out his appearance on my other podcast: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/23e2e876-b682-4df1-906e-77d15129dbe2/ [https://player.captivate.fm/episode/23e2e876-b682-4df1-906e-77d15129dbe2/]

Martin Roth [https://ritsumei.academia.edu/MartinRoth], of the Ritsumeikan Center for Game Studies [https://en.ritsumei.ac.jp/research/organizations/ritsumeikan-center-game-studies/] at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, joins me to discuss Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga's 1938 study of play and culture. Martin and I discuss the way that Homo Ludens can be considered the first "game studies" book, but also all of the ways that it is more complicated and surprising than its reputation as a game studies classic attests.

Historian David Potter joins me to discuss the concept of agon, or competitive play, and how it animated everything in ancient Greek society from sports to education to politics to art. And Plato's The Republic, often considered the foundation of Western philosophy, was an attempt to end the agonistic nature of society.