Critical Play & Critical Game Design
Based on our reading, class discussion, and the group activity (‘ideation deck’ to support creative/critical design processes) for this production, use your own ideation deck to come up with a ‘pitch’ for a game that integrates some features of critical play / critical game design (as articulated explicitly by Flanagan – or by any other authors/readings from the course or elsewhere).
This game pitch should include:
- a conceptual overview of the ‘alternative‘ game (that might include premise, goals, win-conditions, player-relations, game mechanics and rules, narrative systems etc., player roles/avatars, etc (see the slide deck below for the game design ‘wheel’ image). (You decide what ‘alternative‘ means, though Flanagan provides a wide scope for what that might include.)
- make explicit reference to the cards you created and the specific cards you used/combined in coming up with your game pitch (with its various critical elements, mechanics, problem-spaces, and so on…).
- no more than 500 or 600 wordish.
- ensure you use this good card from Chelsea, below.
- tip: as we shift to next week’s reading, might look ahead to the next reading on resident evil 5 (as a counter-example of what not to do).
