Schlagwort-Archive: unusability

The Breaking of the Circle

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Playing with, through, against medial boundaries.

This article is based on the presentation on September 29th 2011,
„Designs on eLearning DoeL – Future Spaces for Learning“, Helsinki

Picture: DoeL 2011: „Circles within circles“

Abstract

Digital-networked games are created to foster a desired pattern of behaviour in their users, beyond the mere delivery of content; this is a trait shared with many innovative digital media developments.

This can be seen as an opportunity for creating better learning – or rather teaching – media, but there will also be ideological, propagandistic or commercial (mis)use. What is necessary is a broad approach in arts, ethics and aesthetics to target and tackle the permeating structures behind the obvious content, and hint on playing with medial borders – named here higher order gaming – as an anarchistic, radical counterpart in contrast to rule-conforming, more conservative gaming and game design.

Game design may follow two roads. The classic path of first order game design would be to deliver the content as challenging and as balanced as can be, to draw the player smoothly into the confines and safety of the ‚magic circle‘ of play. Alternatively it may point to the ‚magic circle‘ as a place of manipulation and the player’s power over this manipulation as player/designer. Weiterlesen →

Spiel: Das Namenlose Uni-Hamburg-Spiel (CC)

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Link zum Bild mit höherer Auflösung.

Spielplan und Spielregeln sind hier als PDF (CC) BY-NC-SA) herunter ladbar.

Ein Blick auf den Spielplan genügt: Figuren aufstellen; versuchen, mit allen Figuren einmal ungeschlagen um den Parcours zu gelangen („Wie ungerecht, die Studis müssen fünf Pöppel nach Hause bringen und die Profs nur drei!“). Sich diebisch freuen, wenn man jemanden rausschmeißen kann und sich ärgern, wenn dies mit einem selbst passiert.
Nach den Sparrunden der letzten Jahre und den tiefen Einschnitten an der Fakultät EPB, bedingt durch den Wegfall der Studiengebühren, hier das Spiel zu dieser Entwicklung. Weiterlesen →

Unusability: You don’t want to play it again!

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“Unusable games“ sound like a contradiction: Who would want to play a game that doesn’t work? And why are there designers – educators, of all the people with already a reputation for bad game design – that create these unusable games?

If in a game we regret acting like we did, usable games give us a chance to do better next time.
Unusable games force us to repeat the same regrettable action over and over, until we regret playing the game as it is, without alterations of its rules or its narratives to do better.
Its a game-genre about awareness: Stop playing by the given rules, laugh at them – or change them.

Games demand from the player blind trust that they, as a medium, behave in a stable, foreseeable and conventional way. For example a game is usually accompanied by the exciting suspense of who may win in the end; a game that ‘cheats’, by subtly sabotaging this balance in favour of the game, of one player or a group of players, may turn gameplay into a frustrating experience.

So, if given a game the player expects it to be balanced, to be fun, to contain a coherent contextualisation. She expects it to be either culturally and traditionally tethered and proven like chess, or, with contemporary games, created en bloc by a competent and benevolent game designer for her entertainment.

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