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…)

April Roundtable: Games and Social Connection

April Roundtable: Games and Social Connection

Since we’re all in social isolation/distancing/shelter-in-place mode, the Sidequest team decided to reminisce about games and social connection: how we’ve used games to foster and grow friendships and relationships in general. (Some of us discuss how we even do that now, all while staying safe!) (more…)

November Roundtable: Gamifying Our Games

November Roundtable: Gamifying Our Games

It’s no surprise that a site full of writers has a fair number of folks participating in National Novel Writing Month, but that got us—more specifically, it got Tia Kalla and Zainabb Hull—thinking about gamification and setting our own challenges.

Gaming is comprised of challenges big and small, from individual enemy encounters to executing the perfect raid in an MMORPG to finally getting your D&D group together. But what about the challenges we make for ourselves? Can we gamify gaming itself?

Turns out, we can. (more…)

September Roundtable: Politics and Games

September Roundtable: Politics and Games

We talk a lot about politics in games. We’re not of the opinion that anything can be truly apolitical; people create games, and people have beliefs and ideologies that inform what they create. This often causes friction, as sometimes a game we enjoy may rub up uncomfortably against our own beliefs, or a game may attempt itself to brand itself as apolitical when it’s clearly anything but.

But some games embrace politics, leaning hard into exploring a tricky idea, a creator’s identity, or other elements that encourage the player to think more deeply about whatever issue the game is tackling. The Sidequest crew sat down to talk about what these games are doing well, and how games that play with politics can be both interesting and fun. (more…)

August Roundtable: Love Indies Week

August Roundtable: Love Indies Week

In light of July’s first-ever Love Indies Week, kicked off by Failbetter Games, we chatted this month about our relationships with indie games, the games we love, and what the industry could stand to improve on. (more…)