Welcome!
Welcome to Ludology, an analytical discussion of the hows and whys of the world of board games. Rather than news and reviews, Ludology explores a variety of topics about games from a wider lens, as well as discuss game history, game design and game players.
We post a new Ludology episode every other week. In these episodes, hosts Erica Bouyouris and Sen-Foong Lim deep-dive into a single topic within game design, often with a well-regarded guest from the game industry. We generally focus on tabletop game design (mainly board games and RPGs), but we often pull in experts from all forms of games, from video games to escape rooms to slot machines.
On weeks where there is no flagship Ludology episode, we will alternate between two smaller mini-sodes. Erica and Sen are happy to announce that Sarah Shipp of Shippboard Games and Stephanie Campbell of TTRPGKids will be joining us for the next year, providing additional content between our longer episodes.
Sarah's segment, Thinking Beyond Mechanisms, is a monthly feature that dives deeper into the other aspects of games beyond the dice and cards we're all familiar with.
Stephanie's segment, TTRPGKids, explores how parents and teachers can use role playing games with children in the home and in the classroom.
We hope you enjoy the additional content!
Our History
We aim for most Ludology episodes to be timeless, so you are welcome to explore our entire catalog. Most of it should age quite well. The podcast was started in 2011 by Geoff Engelstein and Ryan Sturm, with Mike Fitzgerald taking over for Ryan in 2015. Gil and Scott joined the show in 2017 when Mike stepped aside, and Emma joined in 2019 when Geoff ended his tenure as host. Emma left in 2021, and Erica and Sen joined us. Since then, Scott stepped down in 2022 and Gil will be hanging up his mic in 2023, leaving Erica and Sen to carry on this amazing legacy.
Erica and Sen are working to bring new voices to Ludology and have some great things to announce as gaming expands to include even more people!
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Jul 26, 2020
Emma and Gil invite award-winning game designer, teacher, and not-scholar Sharang Biswas to the show to discuss verbs in games. What actions do we actually perform when we play a game, what actions do they represent, and how does that impact the game experience?
You can find Sharang on Twitter or on the web. Here is his itch.io store.
CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains references to sex and sexuality.
Show Notes
2h31m: Sharang teaches at The
International Center of Photography (Bard College), and at
Fordham
University.
3m05s: We had Dr. Mary Flanagan on the show for
Ludology 226 - Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo
Buffalo Buffalo
3m26s: Playcrafting is an
organization that holds game design events, mainly for digital
games, in New York City, San Francisco, and Boston.
5m04s: Anna Anthropy
is an influential game designer, and current designer-in-residence
at DePaul College in Chicago.
5m15s: Ian Bogost's Persuasive
Games.
10m08s: Android:
Netrunner
11m33s: We discussed ludonarrative dissonance, especially in board
games, in
Ludology 190 - Diabolus in Ludica.
12m05s: The uselessness of 1:1 scale maps came up in our
conversation with Volko Ruhnke for Ludology
178 - COIN-Operated.
12m29s: If you haven't heard us discuss at length what a "game" is,
check out Ludology
151 - High Definition.
12m35s: More information about the word autotelic, which is
extremely useful when discussing games and play.
13m35s: Frank Lanz is a
game designer and director of the NYU Game Center.
16m35s: Great
Western Trail, Food
Chain Magnate
17m10s: Ryan and Geoff discussed the magic circle with game
designer and professor Eric Zimmerman in Ludology
79 - The Magic Circle.
17m29s: You can find more about Honey & Hot Wax, edited by Sharang
and Lucian Kahn,
here.
18m25s: The phrase "turtles
all the way down" is one of Gil's favorites.
20m54s: Hungry
Hungry Hippos, Mouse
Trap, Pretty
Pretty Princess, Electronic
Dream Phone
21m30s: MegaCity
Oceania
21m54s: Mountains
of Madness
23m10s:
Pandemic Legacy: Season One
24m11s: Sharang's game with Max Seidman,
Mad Science Foundation
26m35s: The RPG Sign.
28m10s: More information about the larp Sarabande.
29m42s: Geoff and Gil discussed "soft incentives" in Ludology
185 - Soft Boiled.
30m38s:
Jiangshi, an RPG about Chinese immigrants juggling running a
haunted restaurant, by Banana Chan and Sen-Foong Lim. We had Banana
on the show a few weeks ago, for Ludology
228 - The Roles We Play.
31m10s:
Some of the discussion about "Press F To Pay Respects" in Call
of Duty: Advanced Warfare.
31m31s: Untitled Goose Game
35m53s: Sharang compares Chaos
in the Old World to Assault
of the Giants. Chaos was designed by the incomparable Eric
Lang, who we had on the show for
Ludology 175 - Auld Lang Design.
37m13s: Sagrada
38m19s:
DC Comics Deck-Building Game
40m00s: John Cage's 4'33",
which instructs the performer to play no notes for the duration of
the piece.
40m27s: Positive examples of ludonarrative dissonance: Typing of
the Dead, Unspeakable
Words
40m58s: Brenda Romero's well-known art game
Train.
41m16s: Sharang's game Feast, inspired
by Felix Gonzalez-Torres' original art piece
Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.).
41m45s: The RPG With Great
Power…
42m31s: Team
Fun's interview with Sharang, featuring the phrase "Jump,
Decapitate, Kill."
43m44s: Journalist, larp designer, and game writer Lizzie Stark.
45m00s: The 2001 video game Black
& White.
45m17s: French literary critic Roland Barthes proposed the idea of
the Death of
the Author in a 1967 essay, suggesting that critics don't need
to understand an author to contextualize their work.
45m24s: The Effing Foundation for
Sex Positivity.
47m16s: Thumb
Wars (or thumb wrestling)
51m45s: The games A Guide
to Casting Phantoms In The Revolution, and
Can You Hear Me?
52m34s: Sharang's game Several
Miles from Heaven.
53m36s: The Jenga-implementing RPGs Dread
and Star
Crossed, and the apocalyptic RPG Ten Candles.
54m45s: Metatopia is a game
designer convention based in the northeastern US that specializes
in tests of board games, TTRPG, and larp.
56m41s: Sharang's solo food-based RPG Verdure.
57m52s: We had Jenn Sandercock on in
Ludology 210 - The Way to a Gamer's Heart to discuss her edible
games.
58m41s: The 200-word RPG
Stardust.
1h00m00s: The bizarre Hellcouch (taking the idea of the
"couch co-op to the next level), amd Mattie Brice's empathy
machine.
1h00m45s: Marina Abramović's seminal performance art piece Rhythm 0, in which she
allowed visitors to do whatever they wanted to her body for 6
hours. Visitors were gentle at first, but became more cruel as the
piece went on, several times aiming a loaded gun in her head. The
most powerful part of the performance emerged at the end; once the
6 hours ended, Abramović stood up and approached the audience, who
promptly left, unable to face her as a person who had regained her
bodily autonomy.
1h06m08s: Alex Roberts' Pop! is part of Sharang's project Honey and
Hot Wax, co-edited by Lucian Kahn.
1h06m37s: Emma's degree is in Product Design.
1h08m45s: Sharang has
written a couple of articles for Killscreen.
1h10m38s: Wingspan.
We had the pleasure of chatting with designer Elizabeth Hargrave
for Ludology
203 - Winging It.
1h12m15s: The
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire was a horrifying tragedy in
which 146 sweatshop workers in New York City were killed by a fire.
The workers were locked into their working space, so they could not
exit on foot; many leapt to their deaths. The fire resulted in
legislation that improved factory safety standards and strengthened
union powers.
1h14m42s: Clio Yun-Su Davis' RPG Pass the Sugar Please was run by
theater company Intramersive.
1h16m44s: Sharang is referencing Kat Jones' game Glitzy
Nails.
1h17m43s: The RPG
Flatpack
1h19m34s: The productivity games Habitica, SuperBetter, Chore Wars, and Zombies Run.
1h20m58s: Sharang's game A
Shroud for the Seneschal.