Agoners is a website about gaming.
We focus currently a lot of fighting videogames and tabletop miniatures fantasy wargaming, but that’s only due to our current interests and it’s certainly not a restriction.
Agoners was originally formed around the end of 2007 from a combination of Chris Bateman (of Only A Game and International Hobo) and Nathan Dixon (Navan Daughn) encouraging Rik Newman (Remy77077) to put ‘pen to paper’ and share his thoughts amongst a wider audience after he spent a great deal of time discussing his thoughts on gaming with them.
Agoners is an attitude to gaming and our thoughts that develop from that. Agoners is for that those that find most of their fun in games as challenges and competition. It’s for those that play for and look for agon in most of their games. Agon is an ancient Greek term for a conflict, struggle or contest. and was used to relate to gaming by Roger Caillois in “Les jeux et les hommes” (Man, Play and Games, published in 1958) to classify games which were played as a competition. Agon is “a sense of struggle, or contest”. Whether we consider hockey, football, chess, sailing or videogames, it’s this aspect of gaming on which we concentrate.
Agoners has previously been described as “musings of hardcore challenge-seeking gamers” and “gaming for the fiero of it”. Fiero is a word used to describe the feeling of ‘triumph over adversity’ which is often seen as the key emotional reward from agonistic play of games.
Agoners has articles that currently fall under the following broad categories:
- Gaming Design – Including usual ‘game design’, we also look at the wider aspect of the whole gaming environment, including digital distribution systems & communications, social networking, extrinsic rewards, ranking & matchmaking systems, leaderboards, tournaments and communities. We highlight how much these things matter as much as the actual game design itself.
- Musings – Where our thoughts spread to a wider discussion than these other categories.
- E-Sport – Yes it’s a bit of a buzzword, and one that’s hated by some, but one that applies to many of our articles where we discuss various games played to a high level of competition. We treat such competitions as seriously as any sport, and so for now we’re happy to use the phrase “e-sport” to help differentiate from the highly varied common usages of the word “game”.
- Tabletop Gaming – Taken from an Agoners perspective of course, but also branching at times into the wider area of the “hobby” surrounding miniatures modelling and painting etc too. Separated out here for folks only interested in this side of our gaming interests.
- Reviews – Where we review games from an Agoners perspective and attitude, rather than the generic & unfocused reviews you get elsewhere.
Agoners has been directly contributed to by Rik Newman (Remy77077), Wale (Bleed TheBones) and Nathan Dixon (Navan Daughn, aka lordnaff).
We are very happy for more authors to get involved and contribute directly to the site or our various media feeds. If you share our attitude to gaming and would like to discuss any aspect of gaming in the same light – especially if you do not share our particular tastes in games – then do not hesitate to get in touch. 🙂
See our “Follow Agoners” sidebar for the main ways to get in touch ->
About the Authors:
Rik Newman (Remy77077):
Remy77077#2545 on Battle.net
Remy77077 (Agoners)#9048 on Discord
Wale (FightingRoadhog):
No links yet.
Nathan Dixon (Navan Daughn):
Other Contributors and Thanks:
Every website in our links for inspiring this website and many of it’s articles and continuing to expand our knowledge & interest in games.
All folks who chat in, comment on & watch our streams and youtube content!
All past members of Agoners “Team Shitty” – Shotty, -Clicky or -Hitty:
Adammk, Amez, Bart, Carl, DeeGruenEnzige, Emily, Fiery Biscuit 8, GrumpyCrumpet, Gyokushin, id0ru, ineedleladybra, Karmoon, Kelly, OtaKing, PlanetRV, Splodge, StealthFaced666, Tschesae, ups55, and Wildpaintings.
All of those who’ve played in any of Remy77077’s Tournaments for European XBL SF2 HDR or Fantasy Strike or Magic The Gathering – especially those who’ve let me know they appreciate it in some way. Thanks guys 🙂
Everyone who’s ever given us a GG over Steam, Battlenet, Discord or XBox Live. Cheers!
agoners.wordpress.com 