Readers, I have had quite the week. I’ve just begun marking my first papers as a freshly minted grad student and let me tell you it’s a little odd to find myself accepting emails and appointments from lost students in need of guidance. It’s the first time that I’ve found myself clearly in a position of leadership, which has been a real trip. Meanwhile, many countries—including my own—are working toward an election, where new leaders may be chosen to represent and guide their constituents. So where do games fit in this discussion? How have you as a player, developer or commentator of games found ‘Leadership’ impacting what you do?
How do videogames conceptualize leadership? Have you ever found yourself thinking about how a game envisions a leader and emulating it? Or are videogame leaders an oversimplified power fantasy? And let’s not forget that games themselves are often designed by a hierarchized staff. Have you ever found yourself questioning a leader’s ill-formed decisions? Or have you been burdened with that responsibility as a developer, game-master or guild leader? Are there better modes of coordinating people than locating all decision-making in one person or is one expert mentoring a group the best model? Tell us how the idea of leadership influences the way you experiences games.
Alright, that’s enough of a diversion from marking for now. If I don’t get back to work now I’ll never get my Dead Poet’s Society moment. And, really, isn’t that what teaching is all about?
You have until October 31st to add your own submission but be sure to check back throughout the month to look at the handy Link-o-Matic 5000 below and see what writers have had to say about the topic so far.
Use this code to embed the links in your blog, if your publishing platform allows iframes:
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Please email us your submissions or tweet them to @MarkFilipowich or @critdistance with the #BoRT hashtag. Happy blogging!
Suggestions for the Round Table:
- Blogs of the Round Table is not curated. If you write it, we’ll publish it, as long as it’s connected to the topic and has been written specially for BoRT or up to one month prior.
- This BoRT post is the home of the discussion: as I receive new submission blogs, we’ll update the ‘BoRT Linkomatic’ so new blogs are reflected on this page immediately. We’ll also use the @critdistance Twitter account to post regular updates, so follow us!
- Your duty as a knight of the round table is to leave a comment on a blog to which you respond with a link to the response piece, to give them a ‘right of reply’. Keep the conversation going.
- If your work contains potentially disturbing content, please include a suitable warning at the start. Use your common sense.
- You can submit as many articles as you like throughout the month, and it doesn’t matter if they are commercially published, paywalled or available for free. We will need a transcript for paywalled content to be approved.