An Intro to Sandro

WHO ARE YOU? Well my name is Alessandro, but most people find that a mouth full and then try to call me Al or Alex and I frankly find those nicknames repulsive SO you can call me Sandro! If you're looking for my pronouns I tend to use He/They but frankly feel comfortable with just about anything. I do also identify as both queer (bi/pan/w/e) and neuro-divergent (insert chronic depression joke I can't think of right now but will surely edit in later). This is information you should have. Not to form some sympathetic parasocial bond but rather because context matters. And the context of this author should be taken into account when reading my critique here.

If you're looking for the best way to contact me, you should shoot me a message over at @sandromaycry in the feverish nightmare that is Twitter OR drop a comment somewhere here!

WHAT DO YOU DO? I make games and tell stories! Maybe that distinction is a little blurry, but it feels meaningful. I also try to play lots of video games and consume various medias between my long shifts through the work-weekend. I work full time at a retro-type arcade-museum-mini-golf-hybrid thing... It's a lot of fun and provides plenty of time to reflect on what games are, have been and can be!

NO LIKE WHAT DO YOU DO HERE? Oh! I'm here to talk about TTRPGs of course! The industry, the medium, specific games, etc. I'm frankly most interested in the medium side of things, though it all plays into each other. Often the best way to push the medium forward and really see what games are capable of is to pick apart what's working and what isn't (Just as one might do in playtesting).

WHAT IS YOUR EXPERIENCE? Firstly I have a prestigious/preposterous Bachelors Degree in the Art of Narrative Design. 

OH, SO YOU STUDIED GAMES? Not just games! Narratives of all kinds. Hong Kong Cinema. Italian Comics. Indigenous Oral Histories. You name it and I probably had at least passing exposure to it! My goal was to thread the needle between what we call "Narrative" and it's most recent (and simultaneously most ancient) form which is Games! Namely Tabletop Games. (And yes, I'd assert from my experience that games are narrative and an artform)

CONTINUE ABOUT THE EXPEREINCES. Sure thing! I also have done a lot of work in the video game industry as an indie dev (and whew the way video game indie devs are seen in critique vs tabletop devs is a truly fascinating can of worms that I hope we'll talk about and I can link in here at some point). I've done a bootleg booth at PAX East and chatted extensively with people who make games for a living. I'm also constantly surrounded by video games at my work and largely help maintain and introduce people to the more retro side of the medium.

WAIT WHAT ARE WE DEFINING AS WORK? Work, yknow? Clicky clacky on the keyboard. Labors of love. Exhaustion. Anything that takes up your time and energy. It doesn't necessitate getting paid, but it does necessitate effort. I'd define writing these articles as a kind of work. Maybe that definition feels off to you, but it's the best way I can describe it.

WE'RE GETTING SIDE-TRACKED. My bad! Back to the experiences: I've written on the subject of art both from an academic stand-point (in essays for graduate classes I took) as well as from a journalistic stand-point (in countless interviews I've done for the journalism classes I took). So you can chalk up both forms of analysis and writing on there.

It's also worth noting that I both make and sell games, and often buy the games of fellow game devs who I end up talking to now and then! This creates a technical conflict of interest, however I make very little money off of my games and try to make sure everything I release can be downloaded for free. All those proceeds go towards helping counter balance all the money I've dumped into commissioning art for said games. (Currently said balance weighs heavily on the side of the money I've spent on art, but this is something I gleefully accept). However, you should know that by choosing to both sell and critique games none of what I write here can be considered "Objective" as I can potentially monetarily benefit from you agreeing with some points that I make. I can assure you personally that what I post here comes from a place of love for the medium, but you should make your own decisions on how Objective you find that. That said, we don't really care about being "Objective" here anyways. Which begs the question...

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS? This blog here is an answer to the call for more "rigorous critique"  (analysis, deep-dive, literature) in the TTRPG space. Currently the space seems rather nascent (and in the blogosphere I'm nascent to it), and I figured I'd throw my two-cents in with the rest of the critics. So (as with all my art) I'm filling the void I see. This will mostly be a repository for really long-form ideas that require editing and sourcing but I want to do casual stuff here as well! If you're looking for stuff you can listen to you should peek at my YouTube channel. However I'd like to quickly address some stuff: namely that this is not going to be an academically written space for game critique. I wrote so much in academia for so long and frankly am skeptical of the whole "formatting as a basis for critical legitimacy" thing. I'd like to take the critical eye I've learned from academia, synthesize a thesis then vomit out, for your pleasure (and my own sanity) a more conversational, personal and (heretically) openly Subjective critique. Think of it as a kind of Gonzo Academia.

WHAT THE FUCK IS GONZO ACADEMIA? Gonzo is a style in Journalism that embraces the idea that it's incredibly difficult to be Objective when pursuing the Truth, to the point where it may be more productive and honest to be Subjective, but openly so and to be self-aware about it. This helps create a distinction in the readers mind. I am not asserting some holy moral Objective authority on to my critiques. I am, as myself, critiquing it and pulling in my own experiences, knowledge and view points to do so, with the hopes of getting someone's gears turning and helping push this medium forward. Thus I'm not going be too preoccupied in formatting sources from other scholars (I can link those to you via Hypertext as you're reading) and even less preoccupied with the academic tradition of "Trying not to say anything that hasn't been said in a published work that can be quoted, lest it be cast off as illegitimate". If we want to evolve as a medium, I'm of the opinion that we need people calling it as they see it, and having an open discussion from there.

Also I'm sure there's a few of you whose eyes are rolling back into your heads when you hear the phrase "Gonzo" and I don't entirely blame you given the culture around it. You probably either think I'm too far up my own ass to warrant hearing out or am some freakish hybrid of a breadtuber and that loud white girl you knew who had a Ralph Steadman print in above her fridge full of white claws. But hopefully my writing style thus far has sufficiently intrigued you to hear me out further, or sufficiently pissed you off to make you want to read my work out of spite.

WHY AM I YELLING? Maybe you are yelling, maybe you aren't. I had this feeling like if I capitalized all the questions it'd make it sound like you yelling in your head and it'd be funny. Let me know if it worked! More specifically I wanted to address the fact that I am expressly writing to you, the reader and may often use the term we as in both you and I. This is because I'm of the opinion that there's little value in dancing around the quasi-parasocial effects of reading the inner thoughts of an author. I'm in your head. You're the one who let me in. If it makes you uncomfortable you can stop reading. If you'd also like to come inside my head feel free to leave a comment and I'll try to get back to you!