The Occupy Session: Critical Game Design

http://thatcampgames.org/2012/01/19/session-proposal-occupy-game-design/

Attendees have interest in Occupy movement, serious games, critical pedagogy

Some of the games mentioned in this session:

Monopoly Mod: http://games.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2011/07/15/monopoly-mod/

A Force More Powerful http://www.aforcemorepowerful.org/game/

Up Against the Wall… http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12246/up-against-the-wall-motherer

Grow a Game http://www.tiltfactor.org/growagame/play.html

Spent http://playspent.org/

The Curfew http://www.thecurfewgame.com/

Kabul Kaboom http://www.acmi.net.au/68A5FD6A7EC34525948645CE443F8227.htm

Phone Story http://phonestory.org/

McDonald’s Video Game: http://www.mcvideogame.com/index-eng.html

September 12th http://www.newsgaming.com/games/index12.htm

Serious game designers can’t control how players will take a game and run with it

With serious games in the classroom, is it possible to design with no agenda? To learn how to think about these issues on a meta level? (fostering critical thinking)

What about students designing their own games to learn about these topics?

Make an argument with a game? Remember that trying and failing is also a learning experience

Encouraging students to mod games

Creatively misuse what already exists

Approaching games as text, ask students to deconstruct it

Use Grow a Game to highlight specific Occupy issues

Can pull out specific mechanics or models too

Genre descriptions

Spent: “bad” game design, it’s unwinnable, but that’s the point

What makes a game critical, serious?

a “message”?

Are there commercial games with a critical/social justice component?

Sim City, Civilization

These games have an agenda, a point of view

And are they preaching to the choir?

Is knowing why/by whom the game was made affect how you feel about it? Whether we should use it in educational contexts?

Playing through Spent — what do we do in the end?

Discuss the mission asking for money

Can use problematic ending to discuss these issues with students

Not winning isn’t a problem in the context of the game, because it’s an unwinnable social problem (if you could win it would reinforce the meritocracy)

Though of course this oversimplifies things a bit

Does the agenda in these games undermine their critical component?

Frame “fun” against “agenda”

Impossible to not have an agenda, express the agenda

How could we expose a game like this to the peer review system

Factcheck or annotate a game

What would it turn into after peer review?

Take an extremely simple game like Rock Paper Scissors and add an agenda to it: how could it be an environmental game, etc.

OTOH, how do you create a game that both espouses and advances an agenda (DDOS attacks, e.g.)

Flipping/copting games: group that was vandalizing Counterstrike

If you cross the boundary into the real world is it still a game?

Some major themes:

Serious games have an argument

Probably not winnable, but that sets up a problem-posing argument

Encourages players to be critical

Also encourages player production

Articles mentioned in this session:

“Hypermediating the Game Interface” about GTA San Andreas and creative mis-use: http://bit.ly/xBXlpM

“Critical Game Pedegogy” http://bit.ly/zoEZEQ

(suggested on Twitter by @swarthmoreburke: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/owss-beef-wall-street-isnt-winning-its-cheating-20111025)

Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19A5YVcaDjT7hyRiTmhBmp6yGL5uGC40z7omqIAGdeXc/edit