We will be live at Super MAGFest 2025 with three talks!

Every Game is the Same Game
Thursday @ 8:30pm in Panels 5 (Chesapeake 7,8,9)

How often do you describe a new game as "X game crossed with Y game?" This is Dominion crossed with Chess. This is Quake crossed with Dance Dance Revolution. This is a Civilization-style game but with puzzle elements. If games are collections of mechanics, and genres are also essentially collections of mechanics, then we can dig deep into how games are described to find the deepest and most core patterns of game. In the end it's all just entertainment software!

Take Your #@*$ Turn!
Friday @ 9:00pm in Panels 6 (Chesapeake 10,11,12)

We’ve all played the "30-60 minute" board game that seems to always take exactly four hours. Your definition of "a quick game" always seems to be far from what your friends think. But it doesn’t have to be this way! Join us for a lively discussion of what factors, from game design decisions to players’ interactions, cause games to take too long. We’ll then teach you, in detail, how to take your #@*$ turn!

Metacontext: Post-Post-Modernism in Games
Saturday @ 1:30pm in Panels 4 (Chesapeake A,B,C)

This is a Rym and Emily panel! Games can be viewed through the lens of the environment in which they were made. The same as film, literature, and art in general. We commonly see parallel artistic and philosophical movements with the same name and many shared ideas. E.g., Classicism, Modernism, Post-Modernism, and… what?

What’s after Post-Modernism? Are there “Post-Post-Modernist” games? We’re going to argue yes, Join us for a lively discussion of art and human history as applied to games, where we will consider at the end of games like Slay the Princess and Disco Elysium are early examples of a new post-post-modernist movement.

The 39 Games You Must Play
Sunday @ 1:00pm in Panels 3 (Chesapeake 1,2,3)

Rym has never presented this list or this panel. These may not be the top 39 games ever designed, nor are they the top 39 influential or otherwise important games. If you aspire to really understand games, or if you have visions of designing your own, these are 39(ish) games that, if you play them, will give you the widest possible perspective on what it means to make a good game (and what "good" even means).