Games 101 — forty games as texts

Today

You are not starting from zero. You are colliding with prior art — centuries of it.

Treat games as assigned texts: play attentively, take notes, argue with evidence. Today’s three are the session; the canon index is the forty.

Attentive play protocol

For each assigned game:

1. Describe before you judge (10 facts a stranger could check).
2. Diagram the core loop on one page.
3. Name one failure state and one feeling produced by structure (not theme alone).
4. Locate the work: who made it, when, where, for whom?

Write (60–90 min session)

Produce ~1,000 words that:

• advances a claim (not a review score)
• cites moments from play as evidence
• positions against at least one other work on the canon list
• ends with a question you do not already know how to answer (E12 seed)

Critique survival

When you share: listeners describe first. Designer listens without defending for three minutes. Intent and effect are different objects.