Game Changing Games

The complexity of global challenges is constantly rising.

Can we change the game with games?

Taking this question as a starting point, in this short advanced program our goal is to understand how game designers can address these complexities to incite change, fostering the sustainable co-existence of humans and the ecological systems. Creating games that motivate people to engage with these topics in a playful way could be one way of making critical issues intelligible and experienceable.

 

To be able to better discuss this topic, a set of specific details needs to be understood, namely:

– Game Cultures

– Dimensions of sustainability

– Best practices for project presentations

– Playful methods in future design (e.g. speculative design)

– Formal and dramatic elements of games

– Games as systems, economics of games

– Approaches to and methods of game design (playcentric approach)

– Community-Centered Design

– Designing digital games, urban games, social impact games, serious games, mixed reality games, alternate reality games

– Interaction design in games

– Design and implementation of social interaction in games

– Game content and design considerations to evoke motivation

– Creation of playful elements in immersive environments and affective infrastructures (e.g. for exhibitions and/or in the museum context)

– Motivation to play vs. motivation to change beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors

– Storytelling, dramaturgy and visual design of games