Critical Play: Radical Game Design

For many players, games are entertainment, diversion, relaxation, fantasy. But what if certain games were something more than this, providing not onlyoutlets for entertainment but a means for creative expression, instruments forconceptual thinking, or tools for social change? In Critical Play, artist and gamedesigner Mary Flanagan examines alternative games--games that challenge the acceptednorms embedded within the gaming industry--and argues that games designed by artistsand activists are reshaping everyday game culture. Flanagan provides a livelyhistorical context for critical play through twentieth-century art movements, connecting subversive game design to subversive art: her examples of "playinghouse" include Dadaist puppet shows and The Sims; her discussion of languageplay includes puns, palindromes, Yoko Ono's Instruction Paintings, and JennyHolzer's messages in LED. Flanagan also looks at artists' alternative computer-basedgames, examining projects from Persuasive Games and Gonazalo Frasca and other gamescreated through the use of interventionist strategies in the design process. And sheexplores games for change, considering the way activist concerns--among them Darfur, worldwide poverty, and AIDS--can be incorporated into game design. Arguing that thiskind of conscious practice--which now constitutes the avant-garde of the computergame medium--can inspire new working methods for designers, Flanagan offers a modelfor designing that will encourage the subversion of popular gaming tropes throughnew styles of game making, and proposes a theory of alternate game design thatfocuses on the reworking of contemporary popular game practices.