May 2017: ‘Responsibility’

Abstract image evoking bird silhouette
The division of time is almost entirely arbitrary, the calendar a human construction to give structure to what is otherwise just time passing. However, standing on the threshold of a new coming month feels like a new chance to make good on a resolution that may have fallen to disuse or catch up on work that’s gotten a little behind. Sometimes new months can introduce new things that need to be accomplished, new responsibilities to be undertaken.
This month, you are invited to submit writing on games and how they handle ‘responsibility’:

How do games interact with responsibility? Do games handle giving players responsibility responsibly, or are standards too lax? Should games have high expectations on a player, or is Animal Crossing‘s Mr. Rosetti too punitive for what pieces of entertainment media should be doing for and with their players? Or are games a way to escape the analog world’s constant barrage of requirements and duties? Use this month as an opportunity to explore the interaction between games and responsibilities.

You’ve got until the end of May to submit your finished piece, this will be your responsibility.

Please email us your submissions or tweet them to @NukeLassic or @critdistance with the #BoRT hashtag. Happy blogging!

Suggestions for the Round Table:

  • Blogs of the Round Table is not curated. If you write it, we’ll publish it, as long as it’s connected to the topic and has been written specially for BoRT or up to one month prior.
  • Think of the BoRT topic as a starting point. Connecting your piece to the topic can be as creative as you want. We’re interested in writing about play, so be playful when you approach the round table!
  • This BoRT post is the home of the discussion: as we receive new submission blogs, we’ll update the ‘BoRT Linkomatic 5000’ so new blogs are reflected on this page immediately. We’ll also use the @critdistance Twitter account to post regular updates, so follow us!
  • As a knight of the round table we encourage you to leave a comment on a blog to which you respond with a link to the response piece and give the original writer a ‘right of reply’. Keep the conversation going!
  • If your work contains potentially disturbing content, please include a suitable warning at the start.
  • You can submit as many articles as you like throughout the month, and it doesn’t matter if they are commercially published, paywalled or available for free but we will need a transcript for paywalled content to be approved.