- Culture - pertains to games as Cultural system which have a relationship, not just from within, but externally with the larger contexts in which they are played.
- As representational systems, games reflect culture. However, not all games manifest transformative, cultural play to transform culture.
- A game is a cultural environment because of the lusory attitude and the magic circle.
- In a sense, all game experiences involve playing around with the distinction between thee game world and the rest of the world. It is metacommunication about the act of play itself
What is Culture?
- Culture pertains to all of the body of knowledge and values shared by a society or group.
- It contains three basic components: What people think, what they do, and the products they produce.
- In a game design context, culture refers to anything that exists outside of the magic circle
- While what exactly is culture is hard to pinpoint, in design, remember the goal is meaningful play.
- Any game that establishes a strong presence in culture immediately engages with many cultural structures.
- The meanings created by games are at play within existing cultural contexts.
- Games are cultural representations. In the sense that we can read games as cultural objects in their own right — those that reflect their cultural contexts.
- Design contributes to a game’s meaning. Game design can be used to represent cultural ideas and phenomenon.
- Reading games as cultural representations means to read them as narratives.
- Acknowledging games as cultural objects allows us to create more meaningful play.
- The practice of design is in itself cultural How we arrange things is dependent on our existing culture.
Games as Cultural Systems
As Cultural Rhetoric
- Games reflect cultural values. Games are social contexts for cultural learning and exploration. Games are ways to discuss culture.
- Games are played, partly for their own sake, and partly for the values attributed to them within the ideologies that are their context.
- Although cultural rhetoric will always be intrinsically present in a game, it also can be actively incorporated into a game design.
- Games put culture “at play,” not just reflecting culture, but shifting between and among existing cultural structures
- Seeing games as cultural rhetoric necessitates understanding the complexity of culture.
- There is no single correct rhetoric that a game should embody, but be aware of the rhetorics your game reflects and perpetuates
- There are Seven Rhetorics of Play according to Sutton-Smith that reflect how play embodies ideological values
| Rhetoric | Description | Location | Era of Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Progress | Play is valuable because it educates | Children’s play and animal play | Contemporary |
| Fate | Play is controlled by fate and chance | Games of chance | Ancient |
| Power | Play is a form of conflict to fortify status | Sports, Athletics and Contests | Ancient |
| Identity | Play confirms, maintains or advances identity | Celebrations and Festivals | Ancient |
| Imaginary | Play is synonymous with innovation | Improvisation | Contemporary |
| The Self | Play exists to evolve the self by providing intrinsic experiences of aesthetic pleasure and escapism | Solitary play like hobbies | Contemporary |
| Frivolity | Play is oppositional, parodic and sometimes revolutionary | The multicultural roles of the Fool | Ancient |
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When we have transformative play external contexts are shaped by ideologies internal to the game. In this case, the game’s rhetoric challenges the external culture it mirrors.
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The real game design challenge is to engage with cultural rhetoric on more than just a superficial level. Rather than merely applying a veneer of political content or cultural narrative to your game, how can you embed your questioning or refashioning of cultural rhetoric into the actual play itself?
As Open Culture
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The emergent open-ended play of a game can occur on a cultural level; as an open system, games exchange meaning with their outside contexts.
- Designing for open cultural play can increase the permeability of the magic circle so that a transformative exchange of meaning occurs at multiple levels.
- Games absorb outside element and circulate internal elements to culture.
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The game design model should create a game that offers players explicit creative agency. This is the player-as-producer paradigm.
- In this way, players can manipulate and modify the game systems themselves. The key is to make the system open to player-as-producer intervention.
- Player oriented design tools can give rise to a whole ecology of fan culture. At the same time, player community can help fuel open games..
- It is not enough to have flexible code, the possibility of player-as-producer should be communicated properly.
- This also exaggerates metagaming and emergence. Open game systems are designed to be evolutionary, not static, and to be expressed in multiple forms.
- Player-as-producer artifacts not only reflect the meanings and values of the games from which they arise, but also contribute to the meaning and value of the cultural contexts in which the game arises.
- The permeability of the magic circle feeds innovation.
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Adopt the principles of open source code to games: Open game players have the freedom to:
- Use the game as they wish, for whatever they wish, however they wish.
- Have the game at their disposal to fit their needs. This includes improving it, fixing its bugs, augmenting its functionality, and studying its operation.
- Redistribute the game to other players who could, themselves, use it according to their own needs.
- Players of the game must have access to its source code.
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Game Systems - a set of components that function together across multiple games. They exemplify characteristics of open games.
- The challenge is to find a balance between flexibility and specificity.
- It must have a specific identity, while also being flexible enough to produce novel games.
- Designing game systems is meta-game design. It demands giving up a significant degree of control in favor of letting the player design the rules and play.
- Game Systems become catalysts for transformative and emergent play.
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Included in open games are the phenomena of speedrunning and machinima — transforming how the game is played entirely.
As Cultural Resistance
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Games as cultural resistance means that the very play of the game is intrinsically transformative — resistance creates tensions between the magic circle and the contexts surrounding the game.
- Resistance in a game often leads to more resistance, creating multi-layered systems of cultural play.
- When a game enacts cultural resistance, the seamless transition between the space inside and outside the game is interrupted — players are made aware of aspects of the game which usually go unnoticed.
- When critical consciousness is enriched, play becomes richer.
- This is possible because by its very nature, game involves play — resistance against structures.
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Game modifications are designed strategies of resistance in a game, whether created by players or designers.
- They call attention to the borders of the magic circle by creating friction between existing and alternative versions of the game.
- They have the potential to mutate and resist traditional symbolic codes, creating a critical view from within familiar contexts.
- They can be divided into three kinds of modification
- Alteration - make changes to existing game structures
- Juxtaposition - combine unexpected elements within a game space
- Reinvention - rework entire game structures on deeper levels.
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Consider how player induced modification and resistance to the game’s systems can be enhanced, interrupted, modified or transformed either by players or by the game design itself.
As Cultural Environment
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The wider we consider the context of games, the more we realize games are not entirely artificial, they are naturally influenced by the culture containing it. Play and ordinary life become the same.
- In this framing, the magic circle disappears (or is made less obvious). Games can play with the possibility of its own existence as a game.
- Here we see
- The blurring of the space within and outside the magic circle.
- Ambiguity between players and non-players.
- Game overlapping within real life.
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Nevertheless, games are artificial because they are designed.