SQL Statements, amusing ourselves til death do us part, working from home, turn-based roadtrips and ice cream! That’s more than enough parameters to understand Angus’ state of mind for this month.
Where do you want to go today? I’ll work from home today and that is just a-okay!
Last game you played? Keep Driving, this turn-based RPG, nougthies roadtrip game made by two friends over a period of five years is a stellar example of a game that you didn’t know you needed and could love dearly.
Quote from a reading you’d recommend? “Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.” Neil Postman (1985), Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 3-4
Something the team is working on? I suspect we’re all individually prepping a submission to The Interactive Past Conference 4, which has a call for contributions out now.
What’s a great bad movie you’d recommend? Starship Troopers by Paul Verhoeven is just kind of a bad movie. Yet you can make it ‘great(er)’ when you join a viewing to some of the solid academic critiques of this movie. It holds a ton of insight into the type of society we find ourselves again [insert deep sigh here] today. It is also a good primer if you ever feel like you want to play Helldivers 2.
Something you’d write another dissertation about? Playing Fasicsm. Why? See question above.
Quote from something you’ve written?
SELECT Game.name, Tags.tag, Tags.vote
FROM Game
JOIN Tags ON Game.appID = Tags.appID
WHERE Game.appID IN (
SELECT Game.appID
FROM Game
JOIN Tags AS HistoricalTag ON Game.appID = HistoricalTag.appID
JOIN Tags AS AlternateHistoryTag ON Game.appID = AlternateHistoryTag.appID
WHERE HistoricalTag.tag = 'Historical'
AND HistoricalTag.vote >= 10
AND AlternateHistoryTag.tag = 'Alternate History'
AND AlternateHistoryTag.vote >= 10
GROUP BY Game.appID
)
ORDER BY Game.name, Tags.tag;
What’s something you used to be good at but can’t do now? SQL statements, such as the one in the answer above. I’ll confess that the script between parentheses is not all my own writing.
What question should be swapped out for another?
I think I’ve written enough dissertations for a lifetime, so let’s switch out Something you’d write another dissertation about? with something silly like What is an ice cream flavor you haven’t ever had yet but want to try?
From ancient boardgames to the hopeful future of fun, Angus Mol has been blending past and play since at least 10,000 BCE. A completely healthy childhood fervour for Nintendo and, later, PlayStation and PC gaming was discontinued in favour of a career in Caribbean archaeology, a decision that still left plenty of need for game-based escapism. Some entanglement studies at Stanford and a stint at the Prince Claus Fund for development and culture later, Angus has found his way to play as a co-founder of the VALUE foundation, director of the LUCDH, and as the Principal Investigator of PlayTime where he combines heritage and game studies with Digital Humanities tools — talk about lucking out in the long game.
