One of the most fundamental tropes of digital game design is state-tracking: The player picks up the Blue Key, so they are now able to open the Blue Door. This is endemic to games’ emphasis on Progress, of a colonialist mastery of the world and mastery of game systems. How does digital storytelling transform when you take away or limit the author’s ability to track state, as with a tool like Twine or Bitsy? What other models of stateless interactive literature exist? What does this all have to do with queerness and nonlinear time? Let’s dismantle the state as a tool for hegemonic game design. Anna Anthropy is a game designer, educator, and thirty-something teen witch. She is the Game Designer in Residence at DePaul University and the author of Make Your Own Twine Games! and Make Your Own Scratch Games! She lives in Chicago with her familiar, a little black cat named Encyclopedia Frown.

Thursday, August 22, 2019
11am-12:30pm
RKC 103