Ludology 239 - Words at Play

Emma and Gil welcome Kathryn Hymes and Hakan Seyalıoğlu to the show to discuss the impact of language on play, and how to design games that revolve around the building, modification, and demise of a language. SHOW NOTES 2m52s: Here's the Kickstarter for Thorny's new game Xenolanguage. 6m45s: Among Us is a social deduction digital game that, after a quiet two years on the market, suddenly blew up on Twitch and is now extremely popular. US congressional representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made headlines when she played the game live on Twitch with several popular streamers (and fellow representative Ilhan Omar, who turned out to be very good at the game).  9m09s: Myst 9m36s: Here's our episode on the Incan Gold experiment, run by Dr. Stephen Blessing of the University of Tampa. 15m43s: Dialect (Watch a playthrough with Hakan here) 20m33s: The earliest instance that the OED has found of the singular "they" is from 1375. 38m47s: Gil, Geoff, and Scott dug deep into party game design in Ludology 190 - The Life of the Party. 45m15s: Sign 49m47s: More info about the fascinating instrument known as the theremin. 52m54s: The instrument called the ondes Martenot (Gil apologies profusely to all French listeners for his poor pronunciation skills!). You can see its inner workings discussed here (video in French with English subtitles). You can hear it as one of the instruments in this absolutely wild Edgard Varése composition. 55m18s: More info on Code Talkers and how they helped transmit encoded messages in wartime. 56m01s: Here's a thread with Magic fans playing the translation game on Jace. 56m35s: Kathryn's GDC talk on artifacts of play. 58m07s: A Fake Artist Goes to New York 58m48s: Fall of Magic 59m15s: Qwixx 1h08m18s: A Buzzfeed article (forgive me) on how red Solo cups are viewed outside the US as a uniquely American symbol.  1h08m38s: Thorny Games on the web and Instagram. Also, you can find Kathryn and Hakan on Twitter.