The Blogs of the Round Table (BoRT) is an open-invitation, cross-blog event that got its start in August of 2005. From the beginning, the BoRT’s primary goals have been to promote community and foster intelligent discussion of games–from their stories, to their design, to their cultural impact.
Each month, a BoRT topic is put forth and bloggers submit a single post on the topic at any point during the month. By placing a small bit of HTML code at the end of their post and alerting the Round Table host (Corvus Elrod) of their submission, they become part of a larger, topic-focused discussion. Interest in the BoRT has remained strong throughout its existence and contributors have been linked to from across the web, including from major gaming sites such as Kotaku.
In January of 2009 the BoRT topic challenged contributors to take a literary approach to game design, imagining if their favorite piece of literature had been a game first. The response to this topic was overwhelmingly positive, and the BoRT received an average of one or more contributions per day. Additionally, within the first week of the year, BoRT contributors offered a multitude of additional game-design topics, each drawing upon different creative and scientific disciplines. This suggested a new focus and structure for the coming year.
First, the BoRT was rededicated specifically to examining game design in depth and from a variety of cultural perspectives. Secondly, topics would now span several months and specifically foster more collaboration and communication between bloggers. Finally, the BoRT’s mission was now officially, “to foster and promote intelligent conversation about game design by formally inviting analytic comparisons between video games and other creative and scientific disciplines.”
In order to include the community more fully in the BoRT’s new direction, a mailing list was established for the BoRT Council. The council is open to anyone who wishes to join, but its specific intent is to give contributors a forum for providing feedback and suggestions on proposed topics, ideas for increasing visibility, and new solutions for tracking and promoting the BoRT.
In January of 2009, the BoRT launched a podcast where members of the enthusiast, academic, and professional communities are brought together to discuss the month’s topic and highlight some of the month’s submissions.