User:Thijshijsijsjss/Gossamery/Playing Your Cards Right

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• Read on 2025-07-10

An essay by Thomas Martin about subtext in videogames, exploring the dialogue systems of two narrative card games (Signs of the Sojourner and Griftlands). I think the biggest contribution here isn't the (correct) observation that 'true dialogic experimentation is still in its infancy', or the meticulous mapping of video game dialogue to Stanislavskian technique, or the take aways from the case studies. Rather, for me, the big merit is in the mere suggestion and affirmation that we can look at video games as sites for performance.

After the gradshow, I was left wondering how I could've bettered my projects presence there. Explicit performance is one way for that -- the game is already providing performance aplenty. This essay makes me look deeper at my project, the opportunity that was (is) there, and presents another way of looking at the friction I'm exploring: my inhibiting the players' ability to create subtext, and demanding them to navigate, the desire for subtext is exposed. We tend to find ourself both in the subtext we create, and also in the subtext we receive. But in a mismatch of that subtext, in an asymmetry in and misunderstanding of that what's left unspoken, we find the friction of the performative self that is part of dissociation.

(The author started following me on itch.io, which was the curious way of finding their website and this essay. They appear to have organized 'Beta Public', a London based event bringing together theater and video games. Very neat.)