The reason why people, I think, like designing games that have character sheets, dice, a manual,

is it does create a level of familiar culture, right, like familiar vocabulary and behaviors.

There is a literal manual for how to pick them up.

Welcome back to Working. I'm your host, June Thomas.

And I'm your other host, Karen Han.

Karen, whose voice did we hear at the top of the show?

That was Gian Shim. She is a game maker and multimedia artist whose work includes

games such as The Snow Queen and Field Guide to Memory, for which she and co-creator Shane

won the Indicate Best Live Action Game Award.

Wow. So for those people who like me aren't terribly informed about the world of games,

what kind of games does she make? Are they video games? Are they tabletop games like Manopoli?

Something else altogether?

I guess I would categorize them as tabletop games in a very kind of broad sense of the word,

but I feel like a lot of the work that she's done almost, it could be described as like

journaling assignments or it's a little more thoughtful than you would think of

than a game like Manopoli. It's a little closer to I guess like Dungeons & Dragons or something like

that where you are a little more involved in the story, you have to kind of put a little more

thought and effort into what's going on. Wow.

So why did you want to speak to Gian? Are you a gamer?

Yeah, I am a gamer. I love games. And especially I think there's so much interesting work being

done in the indie game space, both in terms of video games and tabletop games like this.

There's just so much happening that's kind of breaking the format in some way or trying to do

...