Judge Anime by its Cover
Spring 2016

You wouldn't judge a book by its cover, but anime is a whole different ball game. What if we reviewed anime SOLELY by their covers? Would these reviews be accurate? If so, why? Anime, moreso than other works in other media, seem truer to their marketing material, and it is our hypothesis that one truly can "review" anime to a great degree soley by their covers.

We review all of the upcoming Spring 2016 Anime Season based solely on a single image and a paragraph of text.

Presented at Anime Boston 2016!

Race Walking is Terrible

Racewalking is a terrible game/sport. An excerpt from our Bad Games lecture at PAX South 2015, we discuss herein why racewalking is a poorly designed competition that is more about cheating and randomness than athleticism.

In 2013, at Anime Boston, we reviewed all of the upcoming anime. As in, anime that had not been seen by anyone in the US. We were extremely confident in the quality of our reviews, based solely on a paragraph of text and a single image.

Now, years later, the world has seen these shows. Now, it's your turn to judge us! Were we right? Or are we just assholes? Can anime truly be reviewed by its cover alone?

PAX Prime Expo Hall LIVE!

Ever wonder what it's like to walk through a PAX Expo Hall with Rym and Scott? In a lofty experiment, GeekNights livestreams from the Penny Arcade Expo Prime 2014. But, since they're no bandwidth in the expo hall, they actually just record it and upload it later. Let's Play the Expo Hall!

This is an experiment. The audio is clipped. The camerawork is shoddy. Raw and mostly unedited (long conversations, fighting crowds, going to the bathroom redacted for obvious reasons), this is a good sense of what it's actually like to deal with us two jerks at a convention. It's also a good representation of how we actually talk to eachother outside of the show.

Luke Crane's Burning Wheel is the game that got us into tabletop roleplaying games that weren't for all intents and purposes Dungeons & Dragons. It exemplifies role playing games as idiogames. It is a system of conflict resolution that facilitates collaborative storytelling. It makes drama happen whether you want it to or not. Burning Wheel isn't for every gamer, nor for every game. But, if you want to play out a gritty, dramatic, medieval story, there are few games that serve the purpose so well.

Jared Sorensen's Action Castle is a modern take on old computer adventure games like Zork. Distributed turns, many players controlling one character, multiple endings: one would be hard pressed to say that this is not, in some sense, a "role playing game." It is an idiogame in a classic sense.

There are now many more games in the Parsely Games series. Action Castle was just the beginning.

Lady Blackbird is on the run from an arranged marriage to Count Carlowe. She hired a smuggler skyship, The Owl, to take her from her palace on the Imperial world of Ilysium to the far reaches of the Remnants, so she could be with her once secret lover: the pirate king Uriah Flint.

HOWEVER, just before reaching the halfway point of Haven, The Owl was pursued and captured by the Imperial cruiser Hand of Sorrow, under charges of flying a false flag.

EVEN NOW, Lady Blackbird, her bodyguard, and the crew of The Owl are detained in the brig, while the Imperial commander runs the smuggler ship's registry over the wireless. It's only a matter of time before they discover the outstanding warrants and learn that The Owl is owned by none other than the infamous outcast, Cyrus Vance.

How will Lady Blackbird and the others escape the Hand of Sorrow?
What dangers lie in their path?

Will they be able to find the secret lair of the pirate king? if they do, will Uriah Flint accept Lady Blackbird as his bride? By the time they get there, will she want him to?

This is a game where backstory is written in play. it starts (and often ends) in media res. Star Wars Firefly, with a touch of steampunk.