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3 Part Animation

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Week 3 Reading ?’s

Chapter 1

  1.  How does Mary Flanagan’s definition of a game differ from Chris Crawford’s and from Salen & Zimmerman’s?
    1. Chris Crawford says games are mostly about goals, rules, and winning; they’re kinda like math problems with competition. Salen & Zimmerman are similar, saying games are systems with rules and conflicts that give measurable results. Flanagan is different because she thinks games can do more than that. They can show culture, make statements, or even challenge people. She thinks games can be art or a way to think about society, not just play or winning.
  2.  What is an activist game?
    1.  An activist game is a game made to make you think about real-world issues. It might show unfairness or challenge the way society works. You don’t just read about a problem, you experience it by playing. The goal is to question things, imagine change, or make people see a different perspective.

Chapter 3

  1.  Go and chess are examples of games with “perfect information.” What other games share that feature?
    1. Perfect information games are ones where everyone can see everything that’s happening. Other examples are checkers, tic-tac-toe, Othello (Reversi), Nim, and Nine Men’s Morris. These games are more about strategy than luck.
  2.  Why might chance or gambling games hold spiritual or religious importance to ancient cultures?
    1. Ancient people thought random games like dice could show what the gods wanted or what fate was planning. It wasn’t just luck, they believed the results had meaning and could guide decisions or rituals.
  3.  When was the earliest battle between government/religious groups and games? What modern games have been banned or demonized?
    1. In ancient and medieval times, people banned games like dice or gambling because they thought they were sinful or bad for society. Today, examples are Dungeons & Dragons during the Satanic Panic, violent games like Mortal Kombat or GTA, gambling/loot boxes, and even online games that get restricted for political reasons.
  4.  What is a fox game, and what is a modern example?
    1. A fox game is one where one player has an advantage over everyone else. Modern examples are games like Dead by Daylight or military simulations where one side has way more resources. Flanagan uses them to show how power differences can be built into a game.
  5.  What was the purpose or intent of The Mansion of Happiness?
    1. It was a board game from the 1800s that taught kids Christian morals. You got rewards for being good and penalties for bad behavior. Basically, it was supposed to teach obedience, temperance, and piety, not just be fun.
  6.  Why do artists from the Fluxus and Surrealist movements play games? Why did Surrealists believe games might help everyone?
    1. Surrealists played games to get creative, break normal thinking, and challenge rules. Fluxus artists played games to turn everyday life into art and make people participate. Surrealists thought games could help everyone by shaking up habits and opening minds.
  7. What changes can signal profound changes in games? How were pinball games reskinned during WWII?
    1. When games change in looks, rules, or stories, it can show culture changing too. During WWII, pinball machines got military themes and patriotic symbols to boost morale.
  8.  What statements did Fluxus artists make by reskinning games like Monopoly and ping-pong?
    1. By changing classic games, they critiqued things like capitalism and competition. They also questioned rules and ownership. It showed that games aren’t neutral, they reflect culture and values.
  9. How are artists like Lilian Ball, Marcel Duchamp, Takako Saito, Yoko Ono, Gabriel Orozco, and Ruth Catlow using war games?
    1. They use war games to show how messed up war and power can be. Instead of teaching you how to win battles, the games make you think about violence, responsibility, and systems of power.
  10. Why is it important for players to have agency in a critical or serious game?
    1. Players need to make real choices, otherwise it’s just like reading a story. When you have agency, you experience consequences yourself, which makes the game more meaningful and teaches lessons in a way you feel.
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THE KAELEGO FREQUENCY RULES

An Alternate Reality Game
“Online Friendship / Upside Down”

Game Overview

You are an Archivist, tasked with protecting memories, places, and people from being lost. You do this by exploring hidden clues, recording real moments of friendship, and using old-school media like cassette tapes, letters, and folders.

The game happens in the real world and online:

  • Old or “dead” websites
  • Physical mail
  • Audio recordings
  • Real-world locations
  • Interactions with other players

There is no single main character. You are both watcher and watched, and your success depends on your connection with another player, your Online Friend.

How to Start

  1. Find the “dead” 1990s tech company website.
  2. Inspect the site’s source code.
  3. Locate a hidden PO Box address.
  4. Mail a self-addressed stamped envelope.

Rule: If you don’t send something physical, you are not in the game.

Player Roles

  • Every player is an Archivist.
  • Each Archivist is secretly paired with an Online Friend.
  • You do not know your Online Friend’s real identity.

Core Rules

1. Artifacts Are Never Perfect

  • You will receive a cassette tape or USB with scrambled audio.
  • The audio is intentionally distorted.
  • You may edit it but never make it perfect.

2. Record “Sounds of Friendship”

  • Examples: laughter, shared meals, natural conversations, cooperative work.
  • Not allowed: solo narration, acting, or music created for the game.
  • Upload your recording to the URL included in your artifact.

Rule: The sound must be a real connection with real people.

3. Listen to the Return Signal

  • The website will send back a warped melody.
  • It may contain hidden clues, reversed audio, or GPS coordinates.
  • You must listen to it, no skipping.

4. Visit the Physical Locations

  • Go to the GPS location provided (examples: old libraries, closed malls, abandoned tech spaces).
  • You may find: folders, notes, cassette fragments, or instructions from other Archivists.

Rule: Take one item and leave something behind.

5. Archivist Etiquette

  • Never remove everything from a location.
  • Never vandalize or damage the place.
  • Never tell strangers the ARG exists.

6. Your Online Friend

  • They monitor your uploads and send you fragments to interpret.
  • At some point, you will realize the “entity” observing you is another player.

Rule: Trust is optional; collaboration is inevitable.

7. Mutual Restoration

  • You cannot win alone.
  • You must complete tasks on behalf of your Online Friend (recording, traveling, or preserving).
  • You are restoring memories you never lived.

8. Use Analog Media

  • Allowed: cassette tapes, printed photos, handwritten notes, burned CDs, folders.
  • Discouraged: perfect digital files, AI-generated voices, clean edits.

Rule: Imperfection proves authenticity.

9. The Threat

  • There is no monster.
  • Danger comes from forgotten memories, missing items, and corrupted audio.
  • If something is forgotten, it becomes unsafe.

10. The End

  • The game has no official ending.
  • It concludes when:
    1. Two players acknowledge each other
    2. A final artifact is exchanged
    3. Both choose to stop or continue preserving

Rule: The friendship is the archive.

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Game Ideas

The Kaelego Frequency is an Alternate Reality Game inspired by Archive 81 that reimagines the world around you as a playground for strange rituals and restoration. It all kicks off when you stumble on what looks like a “dead” website from a 1990s tech company. If you dig into the source code, you’ll find an old-school PO Box address. Send in a self-addressed envelope and you’ll get back a warped cassette tape or a glitched-out USB drive packed with encrypted audio files. The main event? It’s called “The Reverse Feed,” where you capture and upload “friendship sounds”, think laughter with your roommates or the chaos of a group dinner, via a hidden URL. But when your audio comes back, it’s transformed into a weird, haunting remix, and it hides GPS coordinates. The clues send you on a scavenger hunt to “Physical Anchors” like sketchy old payphones or forgotten library corners, where you’ll find folders left by other players (known as “Archivists”). The deeper you go, the more you realize you’re being watched by an “Online Friend”, but plot twist: they’re another player, just like you. Together, you’re trying to restore each other’s memories and fend off something supernatural that threatens you both. In the end, it’s about forming a real bond with someone you’ve never met, all built on that Gen Z anxiety of being forgotten. Analog tech, digital mystery, and uncanny friendship, where reality and the internet get totally blurred.

The Archivist’s Echo is a narrative game built around the idea that understanding someone is the ultimate act of care. In this world obsessed with efficiency, you play as a Memory Technician, not here to “fix” old people, but to actually witness them. You enter fading minds to help organize their last thoughts, taking on all the sensory overload, emotional baggage, and weird associations they’ve collected. Instead of a linear story, you get a trippy mind-map to explore, unlocking memories by syncing your mood with the client’s vibes. It’s less about solving problems and more about validating a whole life so someone can leave with dignity. You’ll wander through a surreal, dreamlike 3D landscape, solving puzzles built around emotional resonance: pair the right sound or smell with the right memory, but don’t rush, an empathy meter forces you to slow down and literally breathe with the client, or risk losing memories forever. The visuals are all dissolving impressionist washes, like watercolors in the rain, and the binaural audio both guides you and sets the emotional tempo. If you’re into cozy indie games that hit hard, this one’s for you: low stress, high feels, and designed for anyone who wants meaning and comfort over grind or fixing what’s broken.

Mother’s Good Luck is like Coraline meets a psychological escape room, but way more unsettling. You’re this kid stuck in a perfectly curated, looping childhood made by Mother, who says she just wants to protect you forever, but it feels more like control than love. The wild part is you don’t fight your way out; you have to be empathetic and dig for the cracks in her world, called Missed Opportunities, to understand what’s broken inside her. The “Good Luck” system is genius: play by the rules and things stay warm and easy, but the minute you rebel, the world goes dark and the creepy stuff shows up, pushing you to find hidden paths out. The whole vibe flips between cozy nostalgia, like soft lighting, giant toys, and that childhood dream feel, and this eerie sense that something’s off, especially with rooms that look unfinished or sounds that turn from calming to straight-up bone-chilling. You solve puzzles by literally sewing memories back together, which is both weirdly wholesome and super unnerving. If you’re into games that mess with your feelings and flip comfort into horror, this is peak “creepy-cozy.” It’s the kind of game that makes you rethink what safety and love really mean, and whether always doing what you’re told is really for the best.

The Hive’s Debt is a social horror game with two timelines, inspired by Yellowjackets and the idea that “the past isn’t buried, it’s hungry.” Players move between the harsh winter after a team’s plane crash in the wilderness and their troubled adult lives twenty years later, as the “Wilderness” starts to affect the present. The main gameplay focuses on managing both timelines. Choices in the past, like betrayal or violence, have lasting effects in the future, showing up as paranoia, broken relationships, and blocked-off places in modern suburbia. The game avoids simple ideas of good and evil, pushing players to pick between “Primal” survival and “Civilized” morality. Primal choices help characters survive in the past but bring strange, ritual-like consequences in the present. Players must handle survival tasks like hunger and hunting in the past, while also dealing with hiding evidence and recovering memories in the present, all while trying to keep the truth hidden. The game’s look and sound set gritty wilderness horror against cold, sterile suburbia, with strange echoes connecting the two. A shared delusion system makes it hard to tell what’s real, mixing trauma and possible supernatural events. Made for fans of deep, character-driven horror, The Hive’s Debt is about social tension, moral choices, and the lasting price of survival, where recovery, time, and morality are always linked.

The Last Tea House is a narrative game inspired by The Umbrella Academy about being the “normal” sibling in a deeply dysfunctional super-powered family. Trapped in a magical Tea House during a memory-erasing storm, you’re stuck making tea, managing egos, and trying to keep everyone together while the rain outside slowly deletes who they are. The house is protected by a giant Umbrella powered by family harmony, so every argument weakens it. Your choices, where people sit, what tea you serve, and who has to sacrifice a power or memory, directly affect whether the family survives the night. Cozy on the surface but emotionally heavy underneath, the game builds to one final question: do you follow your father’s cold logic to keep the family intact, or let it fall apart so you can finally be free?

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2.5 Week 3 Games for Change Reviews

  • Detroit Become Human

1. What made the experience fun or not?

  • What made the experience feel fun was the fact that the narrative was able to connect in an emotional way as opposed to normal game play with their mechanics. the branching choices created a compelling story and Drew the user in.  overall I like the plot line and the fact that you can control the narrative while still having an underlying interesting storyline.

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

  • The biggest motorgating factor to keep playing was to see how the choices affected the outcome because there are so many branching paths there are so many endings which keeps the user drawn in because the story stays the same however we never quite know if that was the only ending. Honestly the game was really just investing in the storyline.

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

  • I would say the game is persuasive because it’s trying to get you to keep playing even during times when the game is not even being played it encourages the audience to feel more empathy and autonomy the idea of outside the game it encourages people to look at the way Society treats others even in real world issues like discrimination overall the game creates reflection. 

4. What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics stand out?

  • The metaphor of the game symbolizes an oppressed population being the Androids and they’re Awakening to fight for their freedom challenging ideas of what it means to be truly human. The main mechanic that stands out is the branching Choice system that is best displayed by the flow chart this just completely drives the narrative and brings the user in to keep playing even after the game is finished.

5. How does the gameplay make you feel? Who does the game make you feel empathy for?

  • The game play feels emotionally heavy intense because it invites the user to play a moral story as opposed to a typical action game and there’s a lot of pressure to make good choices to create change and fight oppression the game makes you feel empathy for a Marcus Cara and Connor by playing directly in their shoes.

6. Is the game an activist game? If so, what does the game play advocate for?

  •  yes this is an activist game because it advocates for empathy  equity and equality by stepping you in the shoes of these other characters and their narratives overall this game  advocates for change.

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

Machines learn to feel
Choices ripple through futures
Freedom seeks its voice

  • Factorio

1. What made the experience fun or not?

  • What made the experience fun for me was the system design an automation because it created out of the spying game loops the idea of solving complex problems is engaging for audiences and it allows them to feel a sense of growth for simple actions overall the game is very rewarding.

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

  •  the motivating factor for this game was the idea of continuous Improvement there’s always a  way to make the game faster and more efficient which allows these user to be easily sucked in to so many hours of gameplay to achieve milestones.

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

  • The game isn’t persuasive but it encourages analytic thinking among the audiences as well as developing logistical problem solving skills.  I didn’t see them pushing any real world agenda outside of the game but it changes the way the user thinks and their daily lives.

4. What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics stand out?

  • The game’s metaphor is a struggle for control over a complexity systems the idea of building and transforming chaos into order with structures to automate the process and amplify productivity. some of the standout mechanics come from the logistical systems like conveyor belts and transportation systems as well as blueprints that create reusable designs in a research Tech Tree to unlock more machines and capabilities.

5. How does the gameplay make you feel? Who does the game make you feel empathy for?

  • The gameplay made me feel strategic and clever because of the balance of expanding Productions however the game did make me feel frustrated because have how out of control the systems can get but I do feel invested in the idea of continuous creation. 

6. Is the game an activist game? If so what does the game play advocate for?

  • I didn’t necessarily see the game as categorizing under an activist game where it’s more focuses on the industry and optimization of systems but outside of the game it advocates for reflection of our industrial growth and environmental impacts. 

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

Belts hum in rhythm
Machines crafted by thought’s fire
Order from chaos

  • Gris

1. What made the experience fun or not?

  • What made the experience fun was the art and animation and honestly the atmosphere that the game and music provided. if you like it took the user on an emotional Journey and was on a relaxing.

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

  • The motivating factor to keep playing was the emotional engagement in the ability taking more and it allowed me to feel encouraged to see how the journey would unfold and what relevant themes came up.

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

  • This game I would say is persuasive in a reflective and emotional way I don’t think you pushed any specific agenda but it encouraged players to think about grief and healing especially through visuals and narrative outside of the game I think it encourages users to bring introspection and empathy into their life.

4. What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics stand out?

  • The game’s metaphor uses a progression from monochrome to vibrant colors which allows the user to better understand processing grief and emotions.  I think as a mechanic color but a huge role and emotional state as well as the ability to progression from like skills of floating swimming and singing which represented breakthroughs.

5. How does the gameplay make you feel? Who does the game make you feel empathy for?

  • Playing this game I felt calm with the Aesthetics and the sound rather than challenged the game made me feel empathy for Grace and honestly myself and others cuz we all go through some form of Sorrow finger or despair.

6. Is the game an activist game? If so what does the gameplay advocate for?

  • I would not say this is an activist game it more so focuses on emotion exploration and the psychological experience rather than cause the gameplay does advocate for empathetic engagement with big themes like grief and acceptance.

7. Describe the game in 3 sentences or in the form of a haiku
Gray heart learns to breathe
Colors rise from silent pain
Hope walks in sunrise

  • Dumb Ways to Die

1. What made the experience fun or not?

  • I thoroughly enjoyed the game because of its quick reaction times and how short the games are.  especially someone who has ADHD and sometimes can’t stay on one thing for too long I felt like this was really engaging.

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

  • The motivating factor of this game is to keep beating your own high score and a variety of many games because the longer you survive the more characters you unlock and overall it’s just a chain of progression.

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

  • This game is definitely persuasive because of its original intent which was to create Public Safety to avoid dangerous and Reckless Behavior in your trains and other scenarios which I had no idea coming into the game. overall it’s just trying to get people to be a little more cautious and aware of their surroundings in real life. 

4. What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics stand out?

  • The games metaphor and coincidentally is in the name Dumb Ways to Die because of how easy real life accidents can happen when people are not aware or careless.  I think the biggest mechanic within this game is the fast-paced mini games because it demands quick reflexes keeping each user on their toes and wear their surroundings. 

5. How does the gameplay make you feel? Who does the game make you feel empathy for?

  • The gameplay made me feel panicked but also excited because of the Split Second reactions it forces honestly with the humor in this game I don’t really feel empathy for anyone it’s just kind of funny and ridiculous. 

6. Is the game an activist game? If so what does the gameplay advocate for?

  • Going back into an earlier question yes this is an actual activist game that advocates for safe Behavior especially around trains and public safety hazard Lego listed influence real world behavior and great change. 

7. Describe the game in 3 sentences or in the form of a haiku
Beans wobble and fall
Tap fast, avoid silly ends
Learn to stay alive

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Game Design 2 Week 3 Homework

Chapter 1:

  • how does mary flanagan’s definition of game differ from chris crawford’s as well as the definition crafted by katie salen and eric zimmerman? Chris Crawford defines a game as a formal system with rules, conflict, and measurable outcomes, emphasizing structure, competition, and winning or losing. Similarly, Salen and Zimmerman describe a game as a system where players engage in artificial conflict governed by rules that produce a quantifiable outcome, focusing on systems, rules, and results. Mary Flanagan, however, views games as cultural artifacts and tools for expression, critique, and social change, highlighting their meaning, values, politics, and real-world impact. In short, Crawford and Salen and Zimmerman focus on how games function, while Flanagan focuses on what games do in society.
  • what is an activist game? Is a game designed to challenge dominant beliefs, expose injustice, or encourage social change.

Chapter 3

  • go and chess are examples of games that feature “perfect information”, what other games share that feature? Checkers, Tic-Tac-Toe, Connect Four, Othello, Nine Men’s Morris
  • why might chance or gambling games hold spiritual or religious importance to ancient cultures? Ancient cultures believed randomness revealed the will of gods or fate.
    Rolling dice or casting lots was seen as divination, not luck.
  • when was the earliest battle between government/ religious groups and games? what modern games can you think of that have been banned or demonized? Medieval Europe: Dice and gambling were banned by the Church. Puritan America: Card and board games were banned for being sinful. Modern Examples include, Dungeons & Dragons , Grand Theft Auto, Manhunt
  • what is a fox game, and what would be a modern example? A fox game is about chasing or trapping a clever target. Historic example: Fox & Geese Modern examples are Among UsDead by Daylight, Hide and Seek style games
  • what was the purpose or intent of the game: Mansion of Happiness? It was a moral training game. Players were rewarded for virtue and punished for sin. It taught Christian values and “proper behavior.”
  • Why do artists from the Fluxus and Surealist movements play games? Why did Surealists believe games might help everyone? They used games too: Break logic Disrupt authority Create chance Encourage collective creativity. Surrealists believed games helped people access the unconscious and escape social rules.
  • Changes in what can signal profound changes in games? How were pinball games reskinned during WW2? Changes in: Technology, Politics, Culture, War. WW2 pinball reskins: Pinball machines were redesigned with:, Military themes, Bomb imagery, Patriotic symbols, Games became propaganda tools.
  • What statements did Fluxus artists make by reskinning games like monopoly and ping pong? They showed: Games are not neutral, Rules reflect power, Play can be political. They turned consumer games into art + protest.
  • How are artists like Lilian Ball, Marcel Duchamp, Takako Saito, Yoko Ono, Gabriel Orozco and Ruth Catlowusing war games? They turn war strategy into critique of violence and power. Why is it important for players to have agency in a critical or serious game? Because: Players don’t just watch they experience systems, Choice reflection. Responsibility, emotional impact. Without agency, it’s just a lecture. With agency, it becomes personal and powerful.

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Game Design 2 Week 3 Game Rules Draft

Aleah, Mason, Lauren

Game Title: Always Waiting

A cooperative competitive board game about care, time, and responsibility.

Goal

Keep your pets healthy, happy, and loved.
If you care for them well, you can adopt more pets.
If you neglect them… they don’t die.
They just wait.

 Players

2–5 players

 Time

30–45 minutes

 Components

  • 1 Game Board (a room with action spaces: Kitchen, Bathroom, Yard, Clinic, Bedroom, School, Park)
  • Pet Cards (each with: Hunger, Cleanliness, Happiness, Thirst, Love, Intelligence meters)
  • Status Cubes (to track each meter)
  • Time Deck (event cards)
  • Care Dice (1 six-sided die)
  • Loneliness Tokens
  • Adoption Cards
  • Player Action Tokens

Setup

Each player starts with:

  • 1 Pet Card
  • All meters at 3
  • 0 Loneliness Tokens

Shuffle the Time Deck and place it facedown.

 Turn Structure

Each round = 1 Day

  1. Draw a Time Card
    Something happens:
    • “You were busy today: -1 Happiness”
    • “Rainy day: +1 Comfort if you’re home”
    • “Forgot dinner: -1 Hunger”
  2. Player Actions (2 per turn)
    Move to a room and perform its care action:
RoomAction
KitchenFeed (+1 Hunger)
BathroomBathe (+1 Clean)
YardPlay (+1 Happiness)
BedroomComfort (+1 Love)
ParkHydrate (+1 Thirst)
SchoolTeach Trick (+1 Intelligence)
ClinicHeal (remove 1 Loneliness)

You may care for your own pet or another player’s.

 Neglect Rule

At the end of each day:

  • If any meter is 0, place a Loneliness Token on that pet.
  • If a pet has 3 Loneliness Tokens, it becomes Waiting:
    • You cannot adopt new pets.
    • The pet no longer gains Happiness until comfort is given.

 Adoption Rule

If all meters on one pet reach 5, draw an Adoption Card and gain a new pet.
Now you must care for both.

Emotional Mechanic

If you skip caring for a pet for 2 rounds:

Place the pet in the center of the board.
It is now waiting.
It does nothing until someone comforts it.

Win Condition

The game ends when the Time Deck runs out.

  • Winner: Player with the most loved pets (highest Love total).
  • Co-op Variant: Everyone wins if no pet is Waiting at the end.

Theme Message

Love isn’t automatic.
It needs time.
If you leave, it waits.

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Game Design 2 week 3 game ideas

  1. Heartbeat City (Life-Sim With Emotional Systems) The city runs on invisible “emotional energy.”If people feel ignored, the world dims; when they feel heard, the city becomes brighter and safer. You help strangers by noticing feelings, not just completing tasks.
  2. It’s Still Breathing. You explore an abandoned hospital where the “monsters” are spirits who died feeling ignored or unloved. They follow you, whispering their regrets instead of attacking. You survive by listening, not fighting. Horror: psychological, haunting voices, flickering lights.
  3. The Ones Who Stayed. You play as a town that was “left behind.”. Ghosts roam, but they are stuck waiting for people who will never return. The town shifts based on how gently you treat its residents. Horror: empty streets, fog, slow dread.
  4. Don’t Leave Me on Read. You’re texting someone who slowly becomes more real—and more unstable. If you stop replying, the lights in your house flicker and the phone starts vibrating on its own. The horror is realizing how much power attention has. Fear theme: emotional dependence, digital haunting.
  5. Threadbound. Everyone is born with glowing threads that connect them to people they’ll matter to. Yours is tangled, broken, and leads into dangerous lands. You follow it to repair bonds—and discover who you’re meant to become. Adventure feel: fantasy, exploration
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Game Design 2 Week 3

Game Review 2

Dumb Ways to Die

  1. What made the experience fun or not? It’s fun because it’s cute, chaotic, and kind of dark in a funny way. The song gets stuck in your head, and the mini-games come at you super fast so you’re never bored. It can get annoying though when it gets way too hard and you die over tiny mistakes.
  2. What is the motivating factor to get or keep players playing? You just want to beat your last score and not mess up again. The quick rounds make it easy to say “one more try.” Unlocking new characters also makes you want to keep going.
  3. Is the game persuasive, and what is it trying to get you to do outside of the game? Yeah, definitely. It’s basically saying stop doing dumb stuff around trains and in real life. Instead of being serious or scary, it uses humor so you actually remember the message.
  4. What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics standout? The metaphor is that normal, careless choices can be just as dangerous as ridiculous ones. The fast mini-games and instant deaths make you feel how quickly things can go wrong.
  5. How does the gameplay make you feel? Who does the game make you feel empathy for? It makes you laugh but also feel stressed when everything speeds up. You end up feeling bad for the little bean characters because they’re cute and don’t deserve to die in such dumb ways.
  6. Is the game an activist game? If so what does the game play advocate for? Yes. It’s a safety game that’s trying to get people to be more aware and careful, especially around trains and dangerous situations.
  7. Describe the game in 3 sentences or in the form of a haiku. Tiny beans in danger,
    Doing dumb stuff way too fast
    Be smart, don’t be next.

Fake it to make it

  1. What made the experience fun or not? It’s fun in a messed up way because you feel powerful and clever while gaming the system. At the same time, it gets uncomfortable because you realize how easy it is to lie, manipulate people, and still “win.” The fun comes from making money fast, but the guilt sneaks in too.
  2. What is the motivating factor to get or keep players playing? You want to see how far you can push things without getting caught. Watching your money grow and your influence spread is super motivating.
  3. Is the game persuasive, and what is it trying to get you to do outside of the game? Yes, it’s persuasive, but in a reverse way. It shows you how fake news and shady media tactics actually work so you don’t fall for them in real life. It’s trying to make you more skeptical of what you see online.
  4. What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics standout? The metaphor is that misinformation spreads like a business fast, profitable, and harmful. The standout mechanics are writing fake headlines, targeting audiences, watching metrics grow, and choosing profit over truth.
  5. How does the gameplay make you feel? Who does the game make you feel empathy for? It makes you feel smart at first, then kind of gross when you realize how much damage you’re doing. You feel empathy for the people you manipulate and for society as a whole, because everyone is getting played.
  6. Is the game an activist game? If so what does the game play advocate for? Yes. It’s an activist game about media literacy and misinformation, warning players about how easily truth can be twisted for money and power.
  7. Describe the game in 3 sentences or in the form of a haiku. Headlines full of lies,
    Clicks grow while the truth fades out
    Who gets hurt the most?

Cards Against Calamity

  1. What made the experience fun or not? It’s fun because it’s chaotic, dramatic, and different every time you play. Watching disasters spiral out of control based on everyone’s card choices is funny and stressful at the same time. It can feel overwhelming sometimes, but that’s part of the fun.
  2. What is the motivating factor to get or keep players playing? The randomness and replay value keep things fresh. You want to try new strategies, mess with other players, and see how crazy the world can get before it collapses. Every round feels like a new story.
  3. Is the game persuasive, and what is it trying to get you to do outside of the game? Yeah, in a subtle way. It makes you think about how human choices and systems can make disasters worse, and how we all play a role in either helping or hurting the planet. It pushes you to reflect on real-world crises.
  4. What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics standout? The metaphor is that the world is fragile and one bad decision can trigger a chain reaction. The standout mechanics are the cause-and-effect card system and the escalating disasters that spiral quickly.
  5. How does the gameplay make you feel? Who does the game make you feel empathy for? It makes you feel tense, guilty, and sometimes amused. You start to feel for the people in the game world who are affected by all the chaos.
  6. Is the game an activist game? If so what does the game play advocate for? Yes, it leans into climate and social crisis themes, showing how small actions can lead to massive consequences.
  7. Describe the game in 3 sentences or in the form of a haiku. One bad card is played,
    The world cracks a little more—
    Can we stop the fall?

Cast your Vote

  1. What made the experience fun or not? It is it actually feels like you’re taking part in an election — you choose issues you care about, watch debates, and research candidates. It feels real and meaningful instead of just “tap here, win points.” Some people might not think it’s that fun because it’s slower-paced and more about thinking than fast action.
  2. What is the motivating factor to get or keep players playing?You want to figure out who best matches your views and feel confident in your choice. Trying to really understand candidates and issues feels rewarding, especially when you see how your decisions play out. The way you take notes and compare candidates feels kind of like solving a puzzle.
  3. Is the game persuasive, and what is it trying to get you to do outside of the game? Yeah it’s pushing you to think for yourself and become an informed voter. It’s not trying to get you to do something outside the game except maybe actually pay attention to real elections and issues in real life.
  4. What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics standout? The big metaphor is that voting isn’t just clicking a button it’s about research, priorities, and understanding what matters to you. The standout mechanics are choosing issues, watching “Town Hall” responses, taking notes, and then actually casting a vote based on all that info.
  5. How does the gameplay make you feel? Who does the game make you feel empathy for? It makes you feel thoughtful and sometimes a little stressed because picking what matters most and weighing candidate answers isn’t always easy. You start to feel for regular voters who have to sort through tons of info in real life before making a choice.
  6. Is the game an activist game? If so what does the game play advocate for? Yes it’s basically a civics-education activist game that encourages people to understand issues, think critically, and become better voters in real life.
  7. Describe the game in 3 sentences or in the form of a haiku. Choose what matters most,
    Watch, sort, and weigh every voice —
    Vote with your own mind.
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Week 3 — Games for Change: Sarah Juristy

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.

Posted on

WEEK 2 — Persuasive Games: Sarah Juristy

Five New Persuasive Game Ideas

1. Climate Change — Closed Loop

Core Mechanic Inspiration: Lifecycle conversion systems (waste → resource → population support → waste again)

Game Idea:
Players manage a self-contained city where nothing can leave the system. Every product eventually becomes waste that must be processed back into usable material or energy.

Persuasive Goal:
Show that waste doesn’t disappear; it only changes form and must be accounted for somewhere in a system.

Key Mechanics:

  • All items generate delayed waste tokens
  • Waste can be processed into low-quality materials or energy
  • Overproduction causes long-term system slowdown
  • Players must design sustainable production chains

Why It Persuades:
Players experience environmental cost as a system pressure rather than a moral message.

2. Energy Use — Peak Demand

Core Mechanic Inspiration: Resource spike / stress testing systems

Game Idea:
Players run a regional energy grid trying to survive unpredictable demand spikes caused by weather, population growth, and emergencies.

Persuasive Goal:
Demonstrate that energy infrastructure must balance reliability, cost, and sustainability.

Key Mechanics:

  • Power sources have ramp-up times
  • Cheap energy sources cause pollution penalties later
  • Renewable sources require storage planning
  • Sudden demand events force hard tradeoffs

Why It Persuades:
Shows energy transition is a systems engineering challenge, not just a moral choice.

3. Political Influence — Information Economy

Core Mechanic Inspiration: Resource transformation (information → influence → control → instability)

Game Idea:
Players manage a media network competing for attention while trying to maintain credibility and long-term audience trust.

Persuasive Goal:
Show how misinformation spreads because it is efficient and profitable short term.

Key Mechanics:

  • Sensational content generates fast engagement
  • High engagement reduces long-term trust stability
  • Low trust creates volatile audience behavior
  • Fact-checking costs time and reach

Why It Persuades:
Players feel why low-quality information systems can dominate healthy ones.

4. Water Scarcity — Allocation Protocol

Core Mechanic Inspiration: Hard ration + multi-system dependency

Game Idea:
Players manage water distribution across farming, housing, industry, and healthcare sectors during a long-term drought.

Persuasive Goal:
Show how infrastructure decisions create cascading human consequences.

Key Mechanics:

  • Every system depends on water differently
  • Cutting water creates delayed secondary crises
  • Infrastructure upgrades take multiple turns to complete
  • Emergency reserves create future shortages

Why It Persuades:
Players experience how infrastructure fragility creates social instability.

5. Food Ethics / Population Consumption — Protein Directive

(Light Soylent-style inspiration mechanically — population feeding efficiency vs ethics vs sustainability)

Core Mechanic Inspiration: Population processing efficiency optimization

Game Idea:
Players manage food production for a massive population using increasingly efficient but morally questionable food technologies.

Persuasive Goal:
Explore how efficiency pressure can lead to ethically uncomfortable systemic decisions.

Key Mechanics:

  • Food sources vary by:
    • Yield efficiency
    • Public approval
    • Long-term health outcomes
  • Hidden system cost mechanics
  • Population satisfaction vs survival tradeoff

Why It Persuades:
Players experience how large-scale systems reward efficiency over ethics.

Rewrite Endless Game Idea as Persuasive Game

Original Endless Game Concept

Endless resource accumulation / score growth game where the player continuously expands wealth and inventory with no natural stopping point.

Persuasive Version — Antique Tycoon

Concept:
Player runs an antique acquisition and resale empire, constantly buying, restoring, and flipping historical objects to grow profit and reputation.

Persuasive Message:
Cultural preservation and historical artifacts often become commodified, where monetary value can conflict with historical, ethical, or cultural value.

New Mechanics

Artifact Source System

    • Estate sales (ethical, low rarity)
    • Private collectors (expensive, high authenticity)
    • Gray market dealers (high rarity, ethical risk flags)

Historical Integrity Meter

    • Over-restoring items increases sale price
    • But reduces historical authenticity score
    • Museums and historians may blacklist player

Market Trend Pressure

    • Players pushed to sell historically important items during hype cycles
    • Holding items preserves history but risks financial loss

Reputation Split System

    • Commercial Reputation → unlocks buyers and investors
    • Preservation Reputation → unlocks grants, museum partnerships, academic value

Endless Growth Pressure

    • Rent, staff, and storage costs scale infinitely
    • Forces constant acquisition and resale cycle

Players experience how markets can pressure owners to treat history as inventory.
The game does not tell players what is ethical or unethical; instead, it creates systems where players feel tension between preservation and profit.

The endless growth structure reinforces the idea that once a system is built around profit and expansion, it becomes difficult to slow down or prioritize non-financial values.

Reflection on Played Games

The McDonalds Game

The game is effective because it exposes hidden supply chain decisions through gameplay. Players quickly realize that maximizing profit requires making ethically questionable decisions somewhere in the system. The game persuades through player participation in the system rather than direct messaging.

Intergroup Monopoly

The game demonstrates systemic inequality by starting players with different rules and advantages. Instead of explaining inequality through text, it allows players to experience unfair systems directly, which creates a stronger emotional and cognitive understanding. Playing as a minority had me in jail most of the game, more aware of the games skew than other player may have been whilein play.

Cool Spot

This game works as an advergame because it prioritizes fun gameplay first and brand exposure second. Players build positive associations with the brand through repeated exposure during enjoyable gameplay rather than through forced advertising.

Reading Questions

From Chapter 1

How does Mary Flanagan’s definition of game differ from Chris Crawford’s and Salen & Zimmerman’s?
Mary Flanagan defines games more broadly as cultural tools that can be used to question social norms, explore values, and create critical reflection. Her focus is not just on what games are structurally, but what they can do culturally and politically. Chris Crawford focuses more on structural features like representation, interaction, conflict, and safety, treating games as designed systems with clear boundaries. Salen and Zimmerman are even more structurally focused, defining games as rule-based systems with artificial conflict and measurable outcomes. In short, Flanagan expands games into expressive and critical media, while the others focus more on formal system structure.

What is an activist game?
An activist game is designed to influence real-world thinking about social, political, or ethical issues. Instead of focusing only on entertainment, activist games attempt to raise awareness, encourage empathy, or prompt behavior change. These games often simulate systems or lived experiences so players can understand complex issues through participation rather than through passive learning.

From Chapter 3

What other games share perfect information besides Go and Chess?
Other perfect information games include Tic-Tac-Toe, Checkers, Othello, Connect Four, and Nine Men’s Morris. In these games, all players can see the full game state at all times, and there are no hidden cards, secret information, or random chance affecting the game state.

Why might chance or gambling games hold spiritual or religious importance in ancient cultures?
Chance-based games were often connected to spiritual belief because randomness was interpreted as fate, divine will, or communication from supernatural forces. Tools like dice, bones, or casting lots were sometimes used for decision-making because outcomes were believed to reflect guidance from gods or spiritual powers rather than human choice.

When was the earliest battle between government or religious groups and games, and what modern games have been banned or demonized?
One early conflict involved religious condemnation of dice and gambling, which were often associated with sin or moral corruption. In more modern history, pinball was banned in several U.S. cities in the 1940s because it was considered gambling and a corrupting influence. Later, games like Dungeons & Dragons were demonized during the Satanic Panic, and some violent video games have faced bans or restrictions in certain countries due to concerns about violence or social influence.

What is a fox game, and what is a modern example?
A fox game refers to traditional asymmetric games like Fox and Geese, where one powerful player competes against many weaker players working together. The single player usually tries to eliminate opponents, while the group tries to trap or restrict the stronger player. Modern asymmetric multiplayer games follow similar structures, such as one-versus-many survival or hunter-versus-group game formats.

What was the purpose of The Mansion of Happiness?
The Mansion of Happiness was designed as a moral teaching game for children. It used movement along a path to represent moral progress, rewarding virtuous behavior and punishing immoral behavior. The game was meant to teach religious and social values through gameplay rather than direct instruction.

Why did Fluxus and Surrealist artists play games, and why did Surrealists think games might help everyone?
Surrealists used games to disrupt logical thinking and access subconscious creativity. They believed structured play could help people break free from social conditioning and rational constraints. Fluxus artists used games to challenge the boundaries between art and everyday life, often turning ordinary actions into artistic experiences and questioning what qualifies as art or performance.

Changes in what can signal profound changes in games, and how were pinball games reskinned during WWII?
Major changes in rules, goals, player roles, or scoring systems can signal deeper changes in how a game functions and what it represents. During World War II, some pinball machines were reskinned with patriotic or military imagery by replacing artwork, renaming machines, and repainting playfields to reflect wartime themes and cultural messaging.

What statements did Fluxus artists make by reskinning games like Monopoly and ping pong?
Fluxus artists used reskinned games to show that systems like capitalism, competition, and social structures are built on arbitrary rules that can be changed. By modifying familiar games, they encouraged players to question the assumptions behind everyday systems and think critically about power and structure.

How are artists like Lilian Ball, Marcel Duchamp, Takako Saito, Yoko Ono, Gabriel Orozco, and Ruth Catlow using war games?
These artists often use war game structures to critique power, conflict, and social systems. Some reinterpret strategic games like chess to explore culture, perception, and politics, while others modify competitive systems to explore cooperation, peace, or alternative social structures. By changing rules or presentation, they encourage players to rethink conflict and competition.

Why is player agency important in critical or serious games?
Player agency is important because critical games rely on player choice to create meaning. When players make decisions and experience consequences directly, they are more likely to reflect on the system being simulated. Without agency, a game becomes more like a lecture, but with agency, players participate in the argument the game is making.