July Roundtable: Games Imagining Better Futures

July Roundtable: Games Imagining Better Futures

Who doesn’t want a better world? Games have the power to let us see, build, and imagine something different than we currently inhabit; in other words, how can games imagine better futures? In this month’s roundtable, the Sidequest team asks what games are doing that, what games are failing, and the pitfalls to consider. (more…)

Bloc by Bloc: The Insurrection Game Turns Players into Protesters

Bloc by Bloc: The Insurrection Game Turns Players into Protesters

“The force of the insurrection is social, not military. But no revolution is possible without a violent break with habit, without choosing sides, and without nerding out with your buds.” At Daggers Drawn with the Existent, with additions by Io Ascarium

Bloc by Bloc is a semi-cooperative game about people of a city joining together to fight the police and overthrow the government before the army is sent in to crush the insurrection. Bloc by Bloc is one of the only games I can imagine that tries to gamify riots, which is bonkers because riots are incredibly dynamic group exercises in thinking tactically and also so, so much fun. Or so I have been told. (more…)