At the moment, there isn’t much in terms of culture of larp critique. There is no structured reflection on how to write a critique that is analytical, constructive and well documented. There are some very good examples, but nothing systematic or with a recurring format. However, there are a lot of discussions, because organizers and players love to exchange impressions, opinions and comments on blogs, videos and social media. Larp is our passion and we can’t help but talk about it. But passion, while important, cannot sustain larp alone. To avoid stagnation and advance the discourse, there is a need not only to talk about larp, but to talk about it in a critical, informed and clear manner. There is a need for larp criticism.
This article has a double aim: it maps the state of the art and offers a practical tool to produce proper analysis and communication about larp events. The tool introduced below is an analytical method, inspired by semiotic studies, which attempts to take in account the work of the designer, the analysis of the larp itself and the role of the players.
As Thomas B. (2024) wrote, the topic of larp criticism has been the subject of good, interesting articles before. Some of the things you will read here are summaries of what they have said. The model for larp critique proposed here builds on this past work.
1. The difference between criticism and review
These are two different ways of writing larp critiques. They are both valid but are structured differently and provide different outputs for designers, players and researchers. In an ideal world, they complement each other and are equally frequent.
A review can take various forms, from pure description of the event to the description of the emotional journey undertaken by the participant. Sometimes reviews are even written in character or based on diegetic material. But all these different forms have one thing in common: at their core is the subjective experience of the writer. The style may be rational, emotional or descriptive, but it will be based on what the writer has experienced. Often reviews focus on the question: Did I like it? Would I recommend it?
Larp critique is an in-depth analysis focused on one or more aspects of a particular larp. Usually a critique presents an opinion from the author. But in this case the personal point of view has to be based on facts that the writer should be able to explain in a credible way. A critique is not directly aimed to help people decide if they should play this larp or not.
A critique usually provides historical context and stylistic analysis of a particular larp. To give an example, a review may say: “This larp is innovative!” because it’s new for the writer. A critique, on the other hand, involves a bit of research before one can say that this aspect is new, because perhaps it has already been used in other larps. This is not a bad thing and the critique is not there to say that the authors of that larp stole the idea from someone. It is there to say: if you are interested, know that there are other larps that have done similar things.
Without wanting to minimize reviews, which are very important in getting to grips with larp in emotional terms, I think we should try to strengthen our culture of larp critique because writing them is much less common.
The risk is that, in an environment based mainly on personal experiences, these are stretched to the point of becoming an ‘objective’ judgement and that the larp community, which is fortunately trust-based, takes them as more broadly considered judgements.
Personal subjective opinion being considered objective analytical truth is problematic. It is not good for those who spread what they have read, it is not good for the organizers of the larp, it is not even good for those who only wanted to express their personal opinion and now find themselves at the centre of the discourse.
An example of the limits of personal judgment is related to definitions and genres. In the current larp discourse, the concept of ‘artistic’ larp has returned to centre stage. There is a desire to understand, to organise and play larps that are art. But what is an artistic larp? What makes a larp a piece of art? One cannot base everything on personal opinion and one’s individual experiences. A far better answer can be given to us by critique, researching history, styles and designers and then disseminating information that can help players orient themselves and inspire designers to create.
Another element that we need to take in account is the possible problems of critique in a small community. The question is: as a community of respect and love, is there ground for sharp criticism?
Here some of the main issues:
- Generally, art critics and music critics are professionals. Because they earn their salary writing about art, they have the time and knowledge to write effective critiques. Moreover, they have often done studies on the subject and writing often increases their skill.
- In addition to that, they move in a professional environment that has its own rules and safety nets. When it comes to larp, however, we have to admit one thing: criticising friends hurts. It hurts them and us.
- We are a community where the boundaries between doers, judges and players are very blurred. Exposing oneself with criticism can be frightening, because those who criticise are afraid of being criticised in turn. We are a small community where everyone is recognisable. There is no anonymity of the review economy.
- The critic is only a true critic if they are authoritative. In practice, their main tool to be heard is their status. For the larp community this is a big problem, because we know that the status system brings distortions and abuses that we often fight against with safety, inclusion and respect.
- As Kangas (2022) pointed out: in larp there is no “object.” Not a sculpture, a text, a piece of material to be analyzed. Usually memory and interpretation are an integral part of a larp critique.
- If a critique has to be done by someone who took part in the larp, how can we ensure the due distance between the art object and the critic? What are the roles?
So do we really need the larp critic? Maybe things are just fine the way they are.
I think the majority of these issues can be solved, because the international larp community has already shown an incredible amount of caring, skill and dedication in achieving way more than professionals did in different fields. There are some good pieces of critique out there that are very encouraging.
2. The importance of larp critique
Critique is crucial for larp development and improvement because it offers us a different, more structured way of documenting larp. Documentation is the only way for larps to survive, to live longer than our bodies, our aesthetics, our flaws, ourselves. Critique is the set of theoretical and practical tools, of studies that can give judgements and explanations, regarding the evaluation of a work of art, in this case the larp. A critique is a text that talks about larp from a more objective and analytic point of view.
As Stark and Roberts (2017) pointed out, we need larp analysis because it’s an experience multiplier that allows us to know what happened at a larp we did not attend. Through analysis, every larp becomes an opportunity to learn and grow. It’s also a chance to establish a common language that, for different reasons, is beneficial for players, designers, academics and even people outside of the larp bubble.
At the moment, the only places to find larp critique are among the articles in the Knutepunkt books, on nordiclarp.org and some other more incidental venues. These spaces are precious and their efforts very important, but we need more.
If we treat larp as an art form, then its critique could have much to learn from the historically more developed and structured criticism of the arts. Humanity has always discussed art, from Plato to Aristotle’s Poetics, from Giorgio Vasari to Diderot and Roland Barthes. Artistic technique has been discussed, as well as ethical implications and social and educational impact. In different eras, art has been seen as a tool for social advancement, and in the larp milieu it often still is.
It is often said that we must not reinvent the wheel when it comes to larp design. So why should we do so when it comes to writing critique? Is there anything we can adapt to larp? Later in this article, we will go through one specific analytic model that seems very suitable for larp.
3. Practical tools for writing larp criticism
An effective critique should take into consideration the different aspects of the larp (or focus on just a few) and try to understand what worked and why. Elements should not just be listed or described, but should be explained and proven with demonstrable reasoning. It would also be interesting to construct reasoning on history and aesthetics, so as to show the elements of continuity and those of rupture. Critique focuses more on finding the ‘why’ than on describing the ‘what’. The author of a critique should write analytically, precisely and always putting the focus on analysis instead of personal taste.
A larp has many aspects (theme, setting, design, narrative, techniques, participants etc.), and it is not easy to organise a discourse that encapsulates them into categories that avoid treating them individually, which would lead to fragmentation.
My proposal is to adopt a three-part system that divides the larp into three macro-categories containing the different elements that make the larp. It’s based on the work of French-Canadian musicologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez, who structures it from the ideas of the semiologist Jean Molino.The three levels into which the system is divided are: poietic stage, neutral stage and esthesic stage. The central idea is based on the concept of exchange, and on roles that are related but not interchangeable, as Molino (1990) said: “Every symbolic object presupposes an exchange, in which producer and consumer, transmitter and receiver, are not interchangeable and do not have the same point of view on the object, which they do not constitute in the same way at all”. The tripartion model, then, accounts for the significance of the object as well as the inherently differing interpretations of the communicator and the receiver, granting equal weight to all three of these coinciding meanings.
The aim of the model is to create a three-dimensional critique that does not take only the authors (poietic level), only the larp (neutral level) or only the results on the players (esthesic level) into consideration.
3.1 Poietic level
Generally speaking, the poietic level concerns production strategies and the author role. In other words, the poietic level corresponds to the processes involved in the genesis of the work. The poietic level is concerned, strictly speaking, with the creation of the larp, the author’s intentions, the nature of the materials, and techniques used.
The questions that should be asked at this level are:
- Who is the author or the authors?
- Why did they make such a larp? What purposes did they have?
- What background do they come from?
- What are their poetics, their style?
- Is it positioned in a particular larp scene?
- What new elements does it have compared to other authors and what does it not?
- Are there any useful biographical elements to clarify their organiser choices?
Feel free to add to the poietic stage anything about the author and the production of the larp, this way you will make it clear to the reader who organised the larp, how and why.
3.2 Neutral level
This level is the one that analyses the larp itself, its shape and proportions. A good neutral analysis should exclude, in principle, any external element. At this level we don’t care about who made the larp, and how it was received. The specific task is to study intrinsic structures.
In the broadest sense, the analysis of the neutral level occurs when we exclude or, we should say, try to exclude the factors of production and reception as much as possible. If we were studying a poem, for example, our analysis should be based specifically on the metre, rhythms, stanzas, rhymes and sonorities, morphosyntax, figures, lexicon and semantics.
The questions that should be asked at this level are:
- What was the design?
- How are interactions managed?
- How did the characters work?
- Were there rules or meta techniques?
- How was the game space managed?
- How was time managed? (Acts, continuous play, flashforward or flashback.)
- How was the narrative?
- What kind of agency was planned for the participants?
Feel free to add to the neutral stage anything about the larp itself and how it was made, all the elements regardless of the author’s intentions (maybe they wanted to do something else than the actual larp, maybe not). It’s also important to not include players’ reactions or personal evaluations in this stage. The larp has its own affordances and internal forces. How were they combined?
3.3 Esthesic level
The esthesic level corresponds to ‘reception strategies’. The word ‘esthesic’ is a neologism that refers to the faculty of perceiving a sensation. Specifically, the esthesic level includes all the processes of perception from the participants, and in general from the larp community (e.g. what impact the larp had in the community or society at the time)
Nattiez states that the esthesic level is not just the perception of specialists, but rather a description of the behaviours and reactions of a given group or community. It’s an active stage in which a person receives the neutral stage and interprets the larp through the lens of their own understanding and background. At the esthesic level interpretations are always varied due to the infinite nature of human experience. Each differing interpretation is of equal value, as no one person’s interpretation can ever truly be wrong.
The questions that should be asked at this level are:
- How did the players react to the game? (Were they happy, disappointed, surprised?)
- How did they play the game? (They participated, they reinvented part of the larp.)
- Were there any particular incidents that involved them? (An accident, something nice or unexpected.)
- What were the reactions after the game?
- How was the larp received when it was publicised?
- Did it influence other larps?
- Was it influenced by other previous larps?
- How do participants talk about it?
- Has anyone talked about it? (Blogs, youtube channels, podcasts, mainstream media.)
Feel free to add to the esthesic stage anything about how the larp impacted the actual participants, and also how it was received by the audience that did not take part in the actual event but talked about it, read materials and expressed their opinions.
These three levels can be imagined as a mixing desk, where they can be set to different values. Let’s take a simple example. Sometimes we talk about an ‘innovative larp’. The proposed analytical model has as its main purpose ease of writing for the authors of the critique, but also wants to be clear for the reader. A larp can be innovative because it responds to a novel need of the author (poietic level), because of a particular technique (neutral level) or because it has shocked the audience (esthesic level). Or it could be a combination of all these elements.
The hope is that with this model you will be able to more clearly back up your opinions with facts and above all understand what a larp looks like in its complexity. It is a way to express informed and verifiable opinions. Of course it is only a starting point: feel free to take this model, expand it, hack it and apply it as you like.
4. Conclusion
Critique is a form of documentation and documentation is crucial. Documentation is also complicated to achieve; it requires effort, commitment and skills. It forces us to step out of our comfort zone and show others who we are, what we think, how we work and how we fail. Keeping documentation alive requires patience and resources. It’s also messy, and a lot of work.
But documentation can inspire, create new larps, improve them. So write articles, reviews, conferences. Create a blog or a podcast, or support existing ones. But above all, as long as we are the ones writing our history and preserving it, making it available to others, no one will be able to come and tell us that things were different, no one will be able to come and tell us how we were or how we should be. Because we were there and, if we weren’t, someone left a trace for us. Memory is the best antidote to totalitarianism and one-track thinking. But we need to feed our memories. We need facts, and we need to support our memories with a precise and deep understanding of what happened. We need to protect and enlarge our heritage. Because there is a wealth of knowledge that belongs to us all. Because great stories are written together.
Bibliography
Ahlroth, Jussi. 2008. “Leave the Cat in the Box: Some Remarks on the Possibilities of Role-Playing Game Criticism.” In Playground Worlds, edited by Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola. Jyvaskyla, Finland: Ropecon ry.
B., Thomas. 2024. “This Larp Sucked – and Everyone Should Get to Read About It”. Nordiclarp.org February 6.
Kangas, Kaisa. 2022. “Possible, Impossible Larp Critique.” In Distance of Touch: The Knutpunkt 2022 Magazine, edited by Juhana Pettersson, 124-128. Knutpunkt 2022 and Pohjoismaisen roolipelaamisen seura.
Molino, J., Underwood, J. A., & Ayrey, C. 1990 “Musical fact and the semiology of music” Music Analysis, 9(2)
Roberts, Alex, and Lizzie Stark. 2017a. “Notes Toward Larp Critique: Exploring Critique, Criticism, and Review.” Leaving Mundania, April 19.
Roberts, Alex, and Lizzie Stark. 2017b. “Why Larp Critique Is Awesome.” Leaving Mundania, May 30.
Roberts, Alex, and Lizzie Stark. 2017c “How to Write Good Larp Critique.” Leaving Mundania, July 16.
Roberts, Alex, and Lizzie Stark. 2017d. “Practical Tips for Writing Larp Critique.” Leaving Mundania, July 31.
Cover image: Photo by Kai Simon Fredriksen, from the larp Redemption: Salvation through Sin
