MINDFUL PLAY

THE POLITICS OF DESIGNING FOR THE OTHER

by:mohinidutta

@freyadutta

@freyadutta

What does it mean to design for the OTHER?

Who is the OTHER? @freyadutta

This is me

Who is the OTHER? @freyadutta

These are some cute pandas

Who is the OTHER? @freyadutta

NOT A PANDA !_!

@freyadutta

...not all pandas are alike!

Narcissistic Red Pandas!

Playground Panda!

Adventure

Pandas!

@freyadutta

The OTHER is not a homogenous group

All endangered animals

Pandas @freyadutta

VS

@freyadutta

DESIGNING FOR THE

“OTHER”

IS A DISINGENUOUS

PROPOSITION.

@freyadutta

There is nothing about being 'female' that naturally binds women

Donna Haraway, Cyborg Manifesto

$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $OTHER == Commodity $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $

@freyadutta

@freyadutta

The other occupies a cultural space outside of ours

@freyadutta

We, as designers, embody the SELF.

@freyadutta

We design games that WE want to play.

@freyadutta

Games are a celebration of the SELF

As consumers of games:

we are trained to focus on our

own experience as paramount.

As designers: we are trained to measure our projects against ourselves.

@freyadutta

The unconscious

is the discourse of

the Other.

@freyadutta

Jacques Lacan

BIG OTHER

little other

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Jacques Lacan

The Alien OTHER

Projection of the SELF

@freyadutta

WE HAVE BEEN

DESIGNING FOR THE

little other

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The flaw in our design strategy so far has been working with commonality

VSembracing the alien, the unfamiliar

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@freyadutta

PURPOSE!

GOALS!

@freyadutta

Even an abstract game like Tetris tasks the player with creating order from chaotically falling blocks by making neat lines which are then deleted, re-ordering the play space through erasure. Such games cast the player in the role of RESTORER, someone to set the world right again.

David Chandler, Videogames and the Aesthetics of Ruins, KillScreen

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Games are haikus for expressing the chaotic narrative of life

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Games provide a terrain from which meaning can emerge

Image/Panoramical

by Fernando Ramallo & David Kanaga

@freyadutta

The politics of representation are the rules of the poetry of games

@freyaduttaimage/ Vincent Ocasla’sMagnasanti, SimCity 2000

Achieved at the cost of social repression and totalitarian control, his goal was not the quality of his Sims' lives, but the quantification of technocratic efficiency; his intention,

to critique the lethality of the games managerial assumptions. Ironically, because of its precise techno-scientism, Magnasanti's viewers speculated about its applicability to real-

world urban projects. Many of the Reddit posts were optimistic.

Ava Kofman Les Simerables, for Jacobin.

@freyadutta

Is ennui the great Cthulhic horror of our privileged times?

MEH

@freyaduttaTo counter the mixed feelings and groundless despair that might greet such an era, we need to get there first; to invent new desires, to solve the problem of boredom and meaninglessness by our wits and good looks.

Brandon Joyce, On Cathexis & Life games

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Estragon: Nothing to be done. Vladimir: I'm beginning to come round to that opinion. Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot Act 1

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All is well! One must imagine Sisyphus happy.Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

@freyaduttaRapture no longer haunts me. I got the help I needed, or at least am getting it. While playing BioShock Infinite last year, I had a moment of epiphany when I was suddenly back in Rapture at the game’s end.

Joe Donnelly on coping with depression using BioShock (Kill Screen)

@freyaduttaTarot Card Deck

@freyadutta

Why are we making meaning for others?Why aren't we letting them make meaning for themselves?

Where’s my Umwelt?

INTENTIONS != EFFECT

@freyadutta

@freyadutta

The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about

justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.

Teju Cole

@freyadutta

Ruins provide an aesthetic setting that matches the core idea behind most games: To interact with a broken world and change it through play

David Chandler, Videogames and the Aesthetics of Ruins, KillScreen

Tomb Raider: Underworld

@freyadutta

How to iterate with an invisible audience?

@freyadutta

@freyadutta

How DO we design games for Others?

@freyadutta

How DO we design games for Others?

WE Don't

MINDFUL PLAY

PLAY AS CONVERSATION VS

INSTRUCTION

Ask not what fun does for you. Ask rather what you do for fun.”Bernie DeKoven

PLAY AS DIAGNOSTIC VS

GAMES AS CURES

Buckminster Fuller

You never change things by fighting

existing reality. To change something build a new model that makes

the existing model obsolete.

CAN SHARING OUR TOYS TEACH US NEW WAYS TO PLAY WITH THEM?

Game-making Workshop

Playing games together and having fun =

MOST IMPORTANT PART

Sharing what Games CAN do, vs what Games do

Games are more than their rules, they are means of self-expression

BOO! BOO! SCARY!

Marceline the Vampire Queen, Adventure Time, Cartoon Network

GAMES CAN APPEAR TO BE

Super awesome fun!

when you understand them!

BUT THEY ARE NOT!

They are

Marceline the Vampire Queen, Adventure Time, Cartoon Network

MAKING games makes the “OTHERED” group an active participant in their (intended)

emancipation

Roland Barthes, Death of the Author

To give an Author to a text is to impose upon that text a stop clause, to furnish it with a final signification, to close the writing.

@freyadutta

Instead of stopping at

intention,

let us move on & embrace the

creation of conversations of

consequence.

MOHINI DUTTA@freyadutta

Antidote Games@helloAntidote