Author: Kars Alfrink

Getting your head around Netrunner is like trying to grab a fish in a river. It slips always just out of your reach, lets you seize it only for a moment. And just when you think you’ve really got it, brand-new cards are released, making new mechanics possible. It is not about the climb to dominance. It is not about getting better and better until you’re impervious. It’s not about winning, but about growing, laterally, like you’re sketching a map of a world that will never be finished being born.

Defamiliarisation isn’t the same thing as obtuseness or cryptic designs etc. Rather, it’s about working against expectation, and this can be done in all kinds of entirely accessible ways.

When you get together to play games with friends, the space you’re in becomes a ritual space, like the stage at a concert or the altar at a wedding. It’s a space where you can trash-talk your friends or howl in defeat, where you can trick people, where you can laugh at their expense and dance on their grave. It’s a space where you have permission to look foolish in front of your family members. Importantly, it’s a space where you can look up at your opponent’s face, lock eyes and dare them to make the first move before your split-second counter-attack. The best local games aren’t just offline versions of online games — they are designed to intensify these social dimensions of gameplay.

Playing Hohokum and watching others play really helps you understand his point about play being more important than the game itself. The game itself is not a magical, fun generator; instead it’s a tool and a toy that, like Katamari Damacy, encourages the players to simply try things, to experiment.

I am firmly in the present,” she said as she headed toward the exit. “But, sometimes, I want to drag the future here and see if we want it.

Games are powerful and important partly because they help us test out the limits of ordinary life. That’s why we play. And these free-to-play games allow us to feel the edges of the unholy reality of our current winner-take-all neo-Gilded Age.