CMW IV: How Monsters Work Panel Video

[Jubal]

In this panel, we invited three specialists from game development and academia to introduce us to some particular specific monsters and discuss why they work in their particular formats, settings, and narratives. What effects different sorts of monster are there to produce, how both medieval and modern creators worked them into those settings, and how we can use those techniques to present or re-imagine monsters when representing medieval worlds were all part of the discussion.


This panel featured the following people:

Hannah Bayat is a QA analyst at Microbird Games in Vienna, where she has worked on the upcoming title Dungeons of Hinterberg, a modern-fantasy alpine adventure mixing dungeon crawling and puzzle gameplay. Her work more widely has included a range of areas around software development, especially visual computing in which she holds a master's degree - this has included development of health and food security applications, and publishing academic work on medical imaging technologies.

Sven Gins is a doctoral researcher at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, working on the core project Homo Imperfectus: Animals, Machines, and the Quest for Humanity in Late Mediaeval France. He is also the lead for design and development on the public engagement project Monstrum: The Medieval Cooperative Board Game, and works on how medieval heritage finds its way into modern fantasy and sci-fi games as one of his sidequests.

Tamara de Bruin (intotheferns) is a research Master's student in Medieval Literature at the University of Groningen. Her research focuses on treason and literary propaganda around the Wars of Scottish Independence, and the way that popular medieval narratives use animalistic natures or characteristics as strategies to create effective dehumanisation of their subjects. She is also currently involved in the design and development of Monstrum.

The panel was chaired by James Baillie (Jubal). The convenor of Coding Medieval Worlds and current chair of Exilian, James is a historian focusing on digital approaches to the history of the medieval Caucasus and has written and taught on the topic of games in history as well as being an active writer and game developer.



Links
Monstrum: https://svengins.weebly.com/monstrum.html
Dungeons of Hinterberg: https://www.dungeonsofhinterberg.com/