ROMchip Presents: Cameron Kunzelman on his book Everything Is Permitted: On Assassin's Creed

**Tickets serve as calendar reminders for the event; they are not required to attend. Head to https://www.twitch.tv/romchipjournal to join the talk on January 23**

Join us Friday, January 23, as ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories hosts scholar and journalist Cameron Kunzelman for a talk about his recent book Everything Is Permitted: On Assassin's Creed. The event will be at 2PM ET on the ROMchip Twitch channel, https://www.twitch.tv/romchipjournal. Sign up for our newsletter to never miss an update.

This event supports our annual fundraising season. Explore our full line-up of speakers and streamers, including our 12-hour Twitch fundraiser on Saturday, February 21st, at https://donate.romchip.org/.

About the Book
Released in fall 2007, Assassin’s Creed transformed video gaming. Across more than a dozen franchise entries, players engage with the eternal conflict between the Order of Assassins and the nefarious Templar Order, carrying out missions in a series of painstakingly rendered historical settings, from the Holy Lands during the Third Crusade to Renaissance Italy, the Age of Piracy, the French Revolution, and Victorian London. Everything is Permitted is an analysis of the development, evolution, gameplay, and world-building of this sprawling and distinctive franchise.

Cameron Kunzelman examines key themes and concepts that connect the games in the series. Combining close readings of the games themselves with discussion of the broader landscape of video game franchises since its initial release, he uncovers what it means for a game to be part of the Assassin’s Creed franchise. Kunzelman maps the elements that contribute to the immersiveness and continual playability of the games, showing how historically inflected conspiracies and science fictional premises ground the fantastical stories the games tell on a massive scale.

Diving into the real-world histories and ideas that the game designers used for inspiration, Kunzelman argues that the virtual conflicts between the franchise’s opposing sides offer intriguing insights into actual reality, from ethical dilemmas to the roles of freedom and fate. He demonstrates how, by incorporating themes of means and ends, control and freedom into its gameplay, the franchise engages with profound questions in a sustained, long-form way that is unique among video games. As the Assassins say, “Nothing is true, everything is permitted.”

About the Speaker
Cameron Kunzelman is an academic and critic whose work revolves around science fiction,  games, and the broader philosophical impacts that they have on our lives. His work has appeared in outlets including Waypoint, Polygon, and many others. He is currently working on a new book project tentatively titled Cumulative Upkeep, which is an analysis of Magic: The Gathering‘s cultural legacy and impact over the past 30 years.

Upcoming Events this Fundraiser Season!
February 6 @ 2PM ET: ROMchip Presents: Raiford Guins on King Pong: How Atari Bounced Across Markets to Make Millions

February 13 @ 2PM ET: ROMchip Presents: Carlin Wing on Bounce: Balls, Walls, and Bodies in Games and Play

February 21 @ 11AM-11PM ET: ROMchip Twitch Fundraiser Stream, ft Marie Foulston, Jason Scott, Naomi Clark, Chad Toprak, Kendra Albert and more! Come through for 12 hours of games, prizes, and historical hijinks. Learn more HERE.

About ROMchip
ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories is a free, online scholarly journal for game history. ROMchip develops, edits, and publishes ad-free, open access game history research for a range of audiences. It supports any discipline of work enlivening the history of games in local and global contexts, and embraces diversity in how game history is studied, documented, collected, preserved, and practiced. ROMchip is a donation-based organization fiscally sponsored by The Hack Foundation (d.b.a. Hack Club), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (EIN: 81-2908499).