Aries birthdays, playful bodies, and Japanese Breakfast feature in this month’s roundup.
Last game you played? I’ve been really getting into Bracket City on my commute, and the Cinenerdle variants have gotten delightfully convoluted since I last played regularly, so I’m picking that back up, too.
A task you’ll finally get around to this week? Coordinating focus groups for my pilot study, and, coincidentally, teaching about focus groups in Game Analysis.
Quote from a reading you’d recommend? Brendan Keogh discussing his play of Tearaway: “My embodiment straddles worlds where I am partially Iota and partially “me.” If film experience is, as Sobchack says, a “play of images” that flickers between incorporated and resisted, looked at and looking, then videogame experience is a play of bodies that flickers between present and absent, corporeal and incorporeal, immanent and transcendent, actual and virtual, “me” and “not me.”” (A Play of Bodies (2018), p. 13)
Something the team is working on? Revisiting the PlayTime farm this Friday!
What’s one of your favorite albums? The new Japanese Breakfast release has been getting a lot of mileage in my queue lately, but it’s also reminded me just how good Soft Sounds from Another Planet is. All hail stellar sophomore records.
What gadget would you like to try or already have and can recommend? I’m not sure if I can outright recommend a 3D printer as a casual purchase, but it’s been about 4 months of having problems I didn’t know were problems be solved with polylactic acid and a dream, so…two thumbs up.
What is the best thing about spring? In general, watching the sun rise and set from home, instead of through a train window. This week in particular: getting to wish my brother and my mom a happy birthday, today and Wednesday respectively–வாழ்த்துக்கள், அன்பர்களே! Aries season has its perks.
What’s something you used to be good at but can’t do now? Play piano!
What question should be swapped out for another? Let’s say goodbye to “Something the team is working on” and go with “What’s something you’ve done, written, or helped create that you’re proud of?“
Keerthi Sridharan is a PhD candidate in the Playful Time Machines project. Their research is centered around games and play as spaces that facilitate and complicate processes of identification, identity construction, and relationality. Previous work has examined emotional play in TTRPGs, perspective in player-character interaction, and language as a playful resource in conversational interaction. They are a sociolinguist by trade, and a gamer by choice. Their spare time is spent stress-baking, making music, and drafting Twine games.
