Thoughts on What We Played in Class

Dumb Ways to Die
This game uses repetition, humor, and fast failure to build awareness through habit formation. Instead of lecturing players about safety, it creates quick cause-and-effect loops that reinforce attention and caution. Its strength is that the message is embedded in player action rather than text or narrative explanation.

Fake It to Make It
This game is effective because it makes the player directly responsible for spreading misinformation. The mechanics demonstrate that harmful systems can grow because they are efficient and rewarding, not necessarily because participants are malicious. The uncomfortable feeling of succeeding through unethical strategies is part of the persuasive design.

Cards Against Calamity
This game works as a social reflection tool. It uses humor to reduce player defensiveness while encouraging discussion about serious topics. Its effectiveness depends on the group dynamic, but it can create opportunities for players to confront difficult realities through conversation and shared reaction.

Cast Your Vote
This game helps players understand civic participation by breaking complex systems into understandable steps. It reduces intimidation around voting by making the process feel manageable and procedural rather than abstract or overwhelming.

Detroit: Become Human
This game builds empathy through branching narrative and consequence visibility. Players see how social systems, prejudice, and power structures influence available choices. The game is most effective when it forces players to live with the results of their decisions rather than offering easy moral victories.

Gris
Gris communicates emotional experiences through visual and mechanical design rather than direct storytelling. It encourages emotional reflection and demonstrates how games can create empathy through mood, pacing, and environmental interaction.

Outer Wilds
Outer Wilds builds empathy through discovery and perspective. Players gradually understand the lives and histories of others through exploration. The game emphasizes curiosity, humility, and acceptance rather than competition or dominance.

Five Game Ideas Around Empathy

Borrowed Minutes
Players have a limited number of daily actions that must be divided between work, health, relationships, and survival tasks. The game builds empathy by showing how limited time resources force difficult life tradeoffs.

Signal Lost
Players cooperate while dealing with incomplete communication. One player has information but limited ways to share it. The game builds empathy for communication barriers and information overload.

The Room Next Door
Players live in a shared building and learn about neighbors through small interactions and environmental storytelling. The game teaches empathy by showing how behavior often has hidden context.

Care Cycle
Players manage community wellbeing using limited support resources. The game demonstrates how systems, not individual choices alone, shape outcomes.

Alternate Reality Game — Kindness Protocol
Players complete real-world empathy challenges delivered through text, QR codes, or hidden messages. The game tracks participation through real-world interactions, encouraging empathy through behavior practice rather than simulation alone.

Rule Set + Prototype Plan (Closed Loop)

Game Concept — Closed Loop

Closed Loop is a systems management game where players run a fully closed city ecosystem. Nothing can leave the system, meaning every product eventually becomes waste that must be processed, stored, or converted into new resources. The goal is to maintain population wellbeing while preventing environmental system collapse.

Objective

Players attempt to maintain population stability and environmental balance over a fixed number of rounds. Winning is based on long-term sustainability rather than short-term growth.

Players / Time

2–4 players
30–45 minutes

Core Resources

Population
Energy
Materials
Waste
Stability (tracks system health)

Turn Structure

Each round represents one operational cycle. Players produce goods, support population needs, and manage waste processing. At the end of each round, waste converts into environmental pressure if not processed.

Core Rules

Every production action generates waste tokens that enter the system on the next round. Waste can be converted into energy or materials, but conversion is inefficient. If waste storage exceeds capacity, system stability decreases. If stability reaches zero, the city collapses.

Players can invest in infrastructure upgrades that increase efficiency, but upgrades require multiple rounds to complete and temporarily reduce available resources.

Prototype Version 1 (Paper Test)

The first prototype will use index cards for buildings and systems, tokens for resources, and a simple stability tracker. The focus of testing will be whether players clearly feel tension between short-term production and long-term sustainability.

Iteration Plan

After the first playtest, adjustments will focus on making long-term consequences more visible. If players ignore sustainability without immediate penalty, delayed consequences will be made stronger or more predictable. If players feel overwhelmed, resource categories will be simplified to maintain decision clarity.

Playtest Goal for 2.19

The goal is to confirm that players experience meaningful tradeoffs between growth and sustainability and understand the closed system concept without needing long rule explanations.

Reading Questions (Flanagan Chapters 1 and 3)

How does Flanagan’s definition of games differ from Crawford and Salen/Zimmerman?
Flanagan frames games as cultural tools that can challenge norms and create reflection. Crawford focuses on structural properties like interaction and conflict, while Salen and Zimmerman define games as rule-based systems with measurable outcomes. Flanagan expands the purpose of games beyond structure into social and cultural impact.

What is an activist game?
An activist game is designed to influence awareness or behavior around real-world issues. It persuades through systems and player participation rather than direct messaging.

What other games share perfect information?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Checkers, Othello, Connect Four, and Nine Men’s Morris are all perfect information games because all players can see the full game state at all times.

Why did chance games hold spiritual importance?
Chance outcomes were often interpreted as fate or divine will, making gambling or randomization tools part of spiritual or ritual decision-making.

Earliest conflict between religion/government and games + modern examples?
Early conflicts centered on gambling and dice. Later examples include pinball bans and cultural panic around role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons.

What is a fox game? Modern example?
Fox games are asymmetric chase games with one powerful player versus many weaker players. Modern asymmetric multiplayer games follow similar design patterns.

Purpose of Mansion of Happiness?
It was designed to teach moral behavior through gameplay, rewarding virtue and punishing vice.

Why did Surrealists and Fluxus artists play games?
They used games to challenge logic, social norms, and traditional art boundaries while encouraging creative participation.

What signals profound changes in games? WWII pinball reskins?
Changes in rules, goals, and rewards signal deeper meaning changes. WWII pinball machines were reskinned with wartime imagery and messaging.

What statements did Fluxus artists make by reskinning games?
They showed that social and economic systems are built from changeable rules, not fixed realities.

How are artists using war games?
They repurpose conflict systems to critique power, violence, and social structure.

Why is player agency important?
Agency allows players to experience consequences of decisions directly, making critical messages more impactful.

Gris

1. What made the experience fun or not?
2. I wouldn’t say it was fun, mostly cause its not my kind of game. It felt kinda slow and like a regular platformer. There were the classic mechanics of jumping and ground pounding but it didn’t introduce any new mechanics I haven’t seen before. I think this game is more about the story and lesson rather than the gameplay.
3. What is the motivating factor to get or keep players playing?
4. I think the factor is to try and get through the puzzles successfully, but more importantly I think the goal is to get through the story to learn more about the character and what shes going through.
5. Is the game persuasive, and what is it trying to get you to do outside of the game?
6. I didn’t feel exactly pursuaded in anyway. I think the game is trying to create empathy for people who are having a rough time. I didn’t play the game long enough to really learn about what she was going through but I believe she was sad and lost something.
7. What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics standout?
8. I think the metaphor is going through sadness and slowly improving and becoming heathier and happier. The mechanics didn’t really standout, but rather the lack of. All you could do is jump walk and ground pound while collecting stars and solving puzzles. The lack of mechanics comes in the form of simplicity with no eneimies, which are usually a staple to platformers. It takes away the competitive part of the game and rather creates a more relaxing environment for the player to understand the character.
9. How does the gameplay make you feel? Who does the game make you feel empathy for?
10. The gameplay was kind of boring because it was simple puzzles, but I assume the puzzles get a little trickier later into the game. I honestly didn’t understand the story but I kinda felt empathy for the character because she lost her voice.
11. Is the game an activist game? If so what does the game play advocate for?
12. I don’t think its an activist game but rather a persuasive game to try and get players to feel more empathy for others in the real life. It tries to show that alot of people go through hard times.
13. Describe the game in 3 sentences or in the form of a haiku.
14. a colorful land, jumping up and finding stars, to the next color

Detroit Become Human

1. What made the experience fun or not?
2. I enjoyed the expereince, its a good story telling game that gives the player alot of interactivity. It follows atleast 2 different androids that I know of who have different jobs in the world. It explores their relationships with others and allows the player to learn more as the game moves on, I’d like to play this game in my own time.
3. What is the motivating factor to get or keep players playing?
4. The motiviating factor is to get through the story and develop relationships with different characters, good or bad. It has an engaging story that makes the player want to keep playing.
5. Is the game persuasive, and what is it trying to get you to do outside of the game?
6. I think the game is perusasive in the sense its trying to teach about discrimination. The robots are treated poorly by their human creators and its a metaphor for racismm in real life. It wants to show the players how people might feel when being treated differently for something they cant control.
7. What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics standout?
8. The game is a metaphor for racism and trying to get players to understand that. The games mechanics stand out because even in a story it gives the player interacivity as well as the choices to develop relationships with different characters.
9. How does the gameplay make you feel? Who does the game make you feel empathy for?
10. I really like the game play, it makes me feel like im watching a movie but I am part of that movie. It tests your memory with some puzzles as well and its super entertaining. I felt some empathy for the androids because they are treated poorly because of how they were made, even if they are a good “person”.
11. Is the game an activist game? If so what does the game play advocate for?
12. The game can be considered an activist game. It advocates for minorities and people who are discriminated against. It shows this by giving instances of racist between the humans and the androids.
13. Describe the game in 3 sentences or in the form of a haiku.
14. a created bot, learning about the world and, becoming human

Outer Wilds

1. What made the experience fun or not?
2. It was decent, I’m not a fan of the movement in space which is a big part of the game, it get’s a little frustrating. It’s very exploratority and im not a big fan of those games. When I say explore its like walking around taking pictures, I don’t think you can collect materials which is whats missing for me.
3. What is the motivating factor to get or keep players playing?
4. The motivating factor is to explore other planets and find the truth about this other alien race. I only played the game for a bit and forget what the intro to the game told us so it’s a little confusing. I just know the goal is to explore and learn about other species.
5. Is the game persuasive, and what is it trying to get you to do outside of the game?
6. I don’t think its persuasive. Its pretty exploratory and the point is to learn about planets and other aliens. Maybe the point is to learn more about other parts of the world and explore different cultures.
7. What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics standout?
8. The games metaphor is to keep trying even after you fail, and after every failure you learn something new that can help you for next time!
9. How does the gameplay make you feel? Who does the game make you feel empathy for?
10. The gameplay can make me a little frustrated because the movement in space is pretty difficult because theres no friction. Theres also alot that can kill you, for example I followed a path and found myself in a blackhole. The point is though, next time I go to that planet I know not to go down that path. I don’t really feel empathy for anyone in this game. Its about exploring!
11. Is the game an activist game? If so what does the game play advocate for?
12. It could be? I can see people taking it as exploring other countries and cultures and trying to learn about other people. Maybe it says be kind and respect other’s cultures while you learn about them, no matter how different they are.
13. Describe the game in 3 sentences or in the form of a haiku.
14. fly a ship around, there is no friction in space, die and try again.

5 Games that revolve around empathy.

1. It’s a bit political, but with the big movements of ICE there can be a game where youre taken and put back into somewhere you don’t know. Maybe you live on a planet and you’re taken to a different one, and you have to leanr to get back on your feet.
2. There can be one about living in a lower class part of America. You start slow and its very difficult but you have to find different ways in order to become more successful and survive.
3. There can be a game about being homeless. Maybe you play as an alien who’s world is slowly collapsing and your house is destroyed. Then you have to go around collecting resources and trying to rebuild and survive.
4. Going back to about being homeless, we can add about wildlife preservaition too. You can play as an animal who gets his home destroyed and you have to find food to survive and make friends with other animals to protect yourself from predators. You could also find evolutions that make you stronger to help gather resoruces and protect yourself.
5. For the AR game, you can be a manager at a corrupt company. You have to go though books and look at what the company is doing to people and decide who to save and who to sacrafice in order to keep your job while also trying to reduce he damage on your innocent customers.

GAME IDEA AND RULES WILL BE POSTED SEPERATE

How does Mary Flanagan’s definition of a game differ from Crawford’s and Salen & Zimmerman’s?
Mary Flanagan sees games as tools that can share ideas and challenge society. Chris Crawford focuses more on games having goals and conflict. Salen and Zimmerman define games as systems with rules and outcomes. Flanagan’s definition is broader because it looks at meaning, not just structure.

What is an activist game?
An activist game is made to bring attention to social or political problems. It is meant to make players think, not just have fun. These games try to inspire change or awareness.

What other games have “perfect information” like Go and chess?
Perfect-information games show everything to all players. Games like checkers, tic-tac-toe, and Othello work this way. There is no hidden information in these games.

Why did chance or gambling games matter to ancient cultures?
Ancient people believed chance came from gods or fate. Random results were seen as messages, not accidents. These games were often used in religious activities.

When did conflicts between games and authorities begin, and what modern games have been criticized?
Conflicts over games started long ago, especially with gambling. Religious and government groups often worried games were harmful. Modern games like Dungeons & Dragons and Grand Theft Auto have faced criticism.

What is a fox game, and what is a modern example?
A fox game puts a weaker player against a stronger opponent. The weaker player must use smart thinking instead of strength. A modern example is Metal Gear Solid

What was the purpose of The Mansion of Happiness?
The game was made to teach good behavior. Players moved forward by making good choices. It was meant to teach moral and religious values.

Why did Fluxus and Surrealist artists play games, and why did Surrealists think games could help people?
They used games to break rules and think differently. Surrealists believed games helped people use their imagination. They saw play as a way to challenge normal thinking.

What changes show big changes in games, and how were pinball games changed during WWII?
Changes in images and themes show changes in society. During WWII, pinball games used war images. This helped support patriotism.

What were Fluxus artists saying by changing games like Monopoly and Ping-Pong?
They wanted people to question money, competition, and rules. Changing games made players think differently about play. The games became messages, not just entertainment.

How are artists like Duchamp and Yoko Ono using war games?
They change war games to question violence and power. Their work shows war in a critical way. This helps players think instead of just enjoy conflict.

Why is player choice important in serious or critical games?
Player choice helps people learn by doing. Making decisions shows real consequences. This makes the message of the game stronger and easier to understand.

• • generate 5 new game ideas that explore changing players minds about … (climate change, energy, politics, etc.)
  • Did the 5 new game idea with Aleah and Lauren, should be in Aleah’s post

• Post thoughts on what we played in class
• I spent most of class playing Intergroup Monopoly and I did not enjoy it. I was forced into the “minority” rule set which made the game extremely boring and basically unplayable. I spent 90% of the game in jail and couldn’t purchase anything. For me, it was just a dice rolling simulator where the outcome of the die did not effect my gameplay what so ever. The game is made to be unfair from the start but I understand what its trying to explain in how they use real world stereo types and advantages to try and convey the difficulties/ ease of each stereotypes real world expierence.

• Read: Advergames from Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games: The expressive power of videogames

• what advergames have you played? did they influence a purchase?
• In class I played Cool Spot, the advergame for 7-up. Suprisingly, it makes me despise 7-up and did not make me want to drink it at all. The game barely actually advertized 7up except for the title screen, and the gameplay had nothing to do with it. I think the lack of effort put into the game makes me feel like 7up is trashy, which makes me not want to buy their product.
• why do the advergames tooth protector and escape work?
• Tooth Protector and Escape work because the gameplay directly matches the message they are trying to teach. Players protect teeth or avoid danger as part of the game, which reinforces the lesson through gameplay. The message is built into how the game works, not just shown through logos or text.
• What makes chase the chuckwagon and shark bait fail?
• These games fail because the product has nothing to do with the gameplay, just like coolspot and pepsiMan. The brand is added on top of a generic game, and the game would be the same even without it. This makes the advertising feel lazy.

• what does volvo’s drive for life accomplish? 
• Volvo’s Drive for Life promotes the idea that safe driving is important. The game rewards players for careful driving, which matches Volvo’s brand image. This helps communicate the company’s values through gameplay.
• what company used in-advergame advertising 
• Red Bull used advergame advertising by placing its brand inside games instead of making the whole game an advertisement. This allows the brand to appear naturally in the game environment. Other companies do this now adays in movies as well.
• what was one if the first home-console advergames and what beverage was it for? 
• One of the first home-console advergames was Pepsi Invaders for the Atari 2600. It was made for Coca-Cola and focused on attacking the Pepsi brand, which made it a clear example of early advertising through games. I find it interesting that they put their competetor into the name of their game, it could give a false message.
• what makes the toilet training game sophisticated and do you agree?
• The toilet-training game is sophisticated because it copies real life routines instead of just giving rewards. It teaches through practice and repetition. I agree because this makes the lesson more effective and the gameplay can be translated to real life actions.
• what do advergames and anti-advergames have in common, and what principles do they share?
• Both advergames and anti-advergames try to persuade players through gameplay. They use rules and systems to communicate ideas instead of just telling players what to think.

Reflection questions Monopoly

What made the experience fun or not?

I didn’t have much fun with the game because i got the role of the minority. Like I said at the top of my post, this rleset basically made the game umplayable. I spent most of the game in jail and not actually buying properties or even paying other players. The other rules gives you a huge advantage as to where the winner is basically set from the start of the game.

What is the motivating factor to get or keep players playing?

For me at the start I wanted to play to try and win with this handicap that was gives, but soon into the game I got bored. Im not sure how the others felt playing with the super buffed roles, but I can;t imagine it was that fun because the game would seem too easy.

Is the game persuasive, and what is it trying to get you to do outside of the game?

This game is persuasive in the sense it wants you to understand how other people have it in the real life world. It tries to put you in the shoes of more or less fortunate people to try and get you to understand how other peoples lives run, whether they be easier or more difficult.

What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics standout?

I would say the metaphor is that not all people have it equal and that some people have to work hard just to get by, while others play with that kind of money for fun. The biggest mechanic is the rule set that have each player trying to succeed in different ways.

Describe the game in 3 sentences or in the form of a haiku.

This game is unfair

no matter what you do here

minorities lose

Reflection questions Cool spot

What made the experience fun or not?

I didnt really have fun with this game. I havent played many old games so maybe this game was well made but it felt super choppy. It was super simple which made it kinda repetitive, and the screen was so small you could barely see what was coming ahead of you.

What is the motivating factor to get or keep players playing?

I guess the motiviating factor is to win the game and get points, but it seems kindof simple to have any acheivement in complelting it.

Is the game persuasive, and what is it trying to get you to do outside of the game?

It’s persuasive in the sense it wants you to go and drink 7up but they don’t do a good job of it. The game has nothing to do with the product and they just slap their logo on a game.

What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics standout?

The metaphor is to buy their product i suppose. THey try and have you kill enemies and collect coins but that doesnt have anything to do with their product, so im not sure their relation.

Describe the game in 3 sentences or in the form of a haiku.

a common rip off

game is lazy and the ads

are not related

Reflection questions Mcdonalds

What made the experience fun or not?

I actually didn’t hate this game. It had some layers and was actually related to mcdonalds. You had to run the farm and the company/advertisement type things, which gave the player alot to do. The game was decently fun because it wasn’t rinse and repeat and there was an actual challenge.

What is the motivating factor to get or keep players playing?

The motivation is to have your mcdonalds company be succesful and not go bankrupt. Players keep playing because they want to succeed.

Is the game persuasive, and what is it trying to get you to do outside of the game?

The game has to do with mcdonalds so it puts that in the players mind, but at the same time it shows the killing of cows and gentically modified soy as well as bribery. This puts a little negative tone towards mcdonalds which can effect the player’s opinion.

What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics standout?

The metaphor is that there are multiple different factors in order to succeed, and that sometimes you have to sacrafice quality and health in order to be finacially successful.

Describe the game in 3 sentences or in the form of a haiku.

farm cows and soy fields

talk to corporate people

succceed and make money