Games as Speculative Design: Allowing Players to Consider Alternate

Presents and Plausible FuturesPaul Coulton, Dan Burnett, Adrian Gradinar

@ProfTriviality

Critical Design

Present FutureTime

PreferableProbable - likely to happen

Plausible - could happen

Possible - might happen

Preferable to who?

PREFERABLE SHOULD BE A QUESTION WE ASK OURSELVES NOT SIMPLY THE AIM

Past

“We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future”

Marshall Mcluhan

Multiple Realities

Present

History, Reality,and Fiction

Past

Future Gonzatto, R. F., van Amstel, F. M., Merkle, L. E., & Hartmann, T. (2013). The ideology of the future in design fictions. Digital creativity, 24(1), 36-45.

Speculative Design

use fiction no commercial constraints

prototype driven irreverant

Auger Coulton

Design Fiction“deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend

disbelief about change... It means you’re thinking very seriously about potential objects and services and try to get people to concentrate on those – rather than entire

worlds or geopolitical strategies. It’s not a kind of fiction. It’s a kind of design. It tells worlds rather than stories”

Bruce Sterling

The Magic Circle

‘the place dedicated to the performance of an act apart’

Huizinga

are games diegetic?

mimesis and diegesis describe ways of presenting a story. In mimesis, the story is acted out. In diegesis, the story is narrated. Mimesis is show. Diegesis is tell.

The Present is the Future MundanePresent

Future

Domestication

EmergingTechnology

Far Speculative FuturesDesign FictionsVapour Worlds

Past

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Near Speculative FuturesDesign Fictions

Vapourware

Alternate Presentsor Lost Futures

Critical Games

thus far the focus of the critical games created has primarily

been either: critiques of current events or practices; or critiques

of games themselves

Critical Games

Phone Story - Mollie Industria giant joystick - Mary Flanagan

Persuading through Games

Persuasive TechnologyProcedural Rhetoric(Gamification) VS Persuasive Games

liminal liminoid

Persuasive Technology

B.J Fogg

Captology - reduce a problem so that it can be addressed through the promotion of minor behavioural change for easily understood and uncontroversial goals.

Rhetoric

Pathos(empathy)

Ethos(credibility)

Logos(logic)

CONTEXT

Aristottle

Logos - would utilise facts, statistics, analogies, and

logical reasoning.

Ethos - would draw upon credibility, reliability, trustworthiness and

fairness.

Pathos - would appeal to our emotions and draw

upon feelings of fairness, love, pity, or even greed,

lust, or revenge.

Rhetoric of Design

Rhetor Audience

Speech

Intent

Expectations

Rhetoric

Graphic Designer Audience

Image

Inte

ntExpectations

Visual Rhetoric

Rhetoric of Design

Designer Users

Product

Inte

ntExpectations

Design as Rhetoric

Rhetoric of Design

Richard Buchanan

Game

Game Designer Player

Rule

sInteraction

Game Design as Rhetoric

Rhetoric of Designthe basic representational mode of videogames is “procedurality”, enacted through rule- based representations and interactions and, when used to reveal processes or concepts of another system, present the player with a procedural rhetoric

Ian Bogost

Interactive System

Interaction Designer User

Syst

em L

ogic Interaction

Interactive Systems as Rhetoric

Rhetoric of Design

Coulton

“code is the only language that is

executable” - Alexander Galloway

Developing In-Game Rhetoric

Mudlark

Climate and Weather

Storage and Flow

Game Play

Games as Speculative Design Should:Enable a Plurality of Futures

Be Plausible

Embrace both Mimesis and Diegesis

Be developed iteratively and interdisciplinary

Not Resort to Reductionism

Be free from commercial constraints

Questions

Banksy @ProfTriviality