At the end of August, Brandon Boyer and I flew to Australia to give the international keynote talks at the Freeplay independent games festival in Melbourne. We both prepped new talks on new topics, and it was kind of nerve-wracking. I ended up talking about the socio-cultural-historical background of play and games in human society, which is a super interesting facet of what games are and why we like them. Brandon gave an updated version of his talk at IndieCade just yesterday or the day before I think, and I just got permission to post the slides and audio from my talk this morning, so here they are!
[NOTE: You may have to crank the volume up on the slide player, it defaults to like 20% or something!]