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Kris Hall: Game Related Activities
I was looking at Yehuda’s latest essays and Shannon Appelcline’s Mathematics and Game Design essay of a couple of weeks ago, and I started thinking that a lot of the Gone Gaming blogs seem to written more for game designers than casual game players. Nothing wrong with that; casual gamers with intellectual curiosity could be nearly as interested in these kind of essays as aspiring game designers.
And this started me thinking about how many members of my local gaming group are more than just casual gamers. On an average night no more than seven or eight gamers will gather at Ted Cheatham’s house for the weekly session of the Appalachian Gamers, but almost all of us have been a playtester on at least one professionally produced game. With the publication of Silk Road, Ted himself has become a game designer, and there seems to be a good chance that one or more of his other designs will be published in the next year or two. One of our members, Travis Reynolds, is a founding father of a gaming convention: CharCon. Yours truly writes a gaming blog. And this month, some of our group members will be putting in time at local libraries demoing games for the public.
To me this seems like a lot of Advanced Game-Related Activities (AGRA) for such a small group. And that makes me wonder about how our group compares with others. Was I exceptionally lucky to stumble upon an elite group of gamers when I moved to West Virginia two years ago? Or are most gaming groups full of folks who indulge in AGRAs when they have the time? I know that there is a huge group of Long Island gamers who have their own magazine, but it might be that the percent of AGRA-active gamers in that group is quite small compared to the size of the group as a whole.
Post a reply here and let me know about your group. I’m curious what other exotic game-related activities are out there. As anybody with a nodding knowledge of statistics will know, this won’t be a scientific sample because it will be self-selecting. Gamers who belong to groups with members who do nothing but play games probably won’t bother to respond. But so what. This is for our amusement, not for a sociological journal.
Let me know—
…what’s the most unusual game-related activity you’ve witnessed.
…the silliest.
…the most work for no reward.
…the most intellectual.
When I start to add up the hours that I’ve spent on AGRAs this year, and when I consider that a lot of members of the Appalachian Gamers devote considerably more time than I do, I start to realize just how emotionally engaging this hobby is. And I suspect that the devotion that the hobby inspires has led to some strange and wondrous tales.
Tell me yours.
© 2006 Kris Hall
