Our third workshop is now confirmed:

There Must Be 50 Ways to Play A Video Game: How To Make A Let’s Play Of Your Very Own!
Friday, May 24, 3:30-5:00 PM
Solon Scott

The players of games have revolutionized the way we understand consuming game media by recording themselves playing games and uploading these segmented playthroughs to Youtube with their own commentary dubbing over the game. This genre of online media is known as ‘Let’s Plays’ as in – The Player AND The Viewer play together. Thousands of ‘gamers’ have come together to host their own productions that document, analyze, and emotionalize games in a radically new way! Solon has been putting together Let’s Plays on Youtube for the last two years and has hundreds of videos online spanning every game genre ranging from Triple-A production sizes to covering small Indie games. His series of Let’s Plays focus on analyzing a game in a very thorough way from the design to the aesthetic, the score, and beyond. For this workshop, Solon would like to extend the tools of the trade and examine the constantly asked question: “Why would someone want to watch another person play a video game?”

Solon Scott is an undergraduate in his last quarter at the Comparative History of Ideas at the University of Washington where he studies games and play in critical spaces.  As a part of these studies he critically analyzes games using the Youtube subgenre known as “Let’s Plays” to dig deep into a wide range of video games.  Sometimes they are AAA studio releases, and other times they are small independently developed games.  Solon also designs his own games ranging from text adventures to theater games and even a few video games.

Take a look at a “Let’s Play” of Bioshock: Infinite by Solon and Rainy Day Let’s Play: