I asked this question at the Play by Play game development conference in Wellington this past April. It was really well received, and spurred me to start putting some past talks out for the community. My aim with most talks I give is to ask pose a question that's helped act as a lens for me when designing a game. Hopefully by asking the same question, you'll gain some inspiration on your own games.
For background - most of the games I make are either live-games (think Mega-games, street-games, pervasive games, space activations, etc) or games for social good organisations (generally learning games, whether for classrooms or distribution to families by NGOs). I also make games for the hobby market, but generally go with Print on Demand distribution just to get them out.
This first talk I'm posting is titled "Players as pieces in play." It asked, as the title indicates, "how does a player fit into the game experience?" In other words, how much of the actual human player is brought in to the 'magic circle' of play?
Have a watch, if just to see a group of game devs play "Cat on yer head" at the end.
Cheers.
I asked this question at the Play by Play game development conference in Wellington this past April. It was really well received, and spurred me to start putting some past talks out for the community. My aim with most talks I give is to ask pose a question that's helped act as a lens for me when designing a game. Hopefully by asking the same question, you'll gain some inspiration on your own games.
For background - most of the games I make are either live-games (think Mega-games, street-games, pervasive games, space activations, etc) or games for social good organisations (generally learning games, whether for classrooms or distribution to families by NGOs). I also make games for the hobby market, but generally go with Print on Demand distribution just to get them out.
This first talk I'm posting is titled "Players as pieces in play." It asked, as the title indicates, "how does a player fit into the game experience?" In other words, how much of the actual human player is brought in to the 'magic circle' of play?
Have a watch, if just to see a group of game devs play "Cat on yer head" at the end.
Cheers.
Comments
A fascinating question
An intriguing video, Rich, and a question worth asking during development. Thanks for sharing!
Really interesting
Really interesting question.
I really liked the game you used as an example as it's a game where the role of the player change constantly. At one point you can be the mouse and the next moment you are the mouse and then you're just an observer, the dynamic shifts constantly and while the player has a bit of agency the role and motivation is not rigid.
It's an interesting outlook and I wonder how can I, as a designer, use that shift between spectrums creatively.
Tangentanly, since we're talking about experience I'm interested in how terminology affects design. You used meeple and player as extremes. In product design we use user instead of player but there's a school of thought that believes that using terms like that is dehumanizing and argues that refering to users as "persons" helps the designer frame their work in a more human way, taking in consideration more of the experience of use rather than just the function. I wonder if that same viewpoint can be applied to Game design and how it would affect the end product.