Rethink Game Design through Feminist Methodologies: a Case Study

Manuela Acereda & Laura Malinverni

Rethinking Game Design through Feminist Methodologies: a Case Study


Context: Game Design & Gender

REPRESENTATION PRODUCTION USAGE

Introducing a critical perspective

- Analysis- Critical Games

- Pedagogies


Some Reflections about Methods

Knowledge of reality is a light that always casts a shadow (Bachelard, 1974)

--> DEFINING A CRITICAL POSITION

Feminist Methods? - Recting positivism and reductionism- Subjectivity, challenging objetivity, empowerment, social change (Harding, 1989)

R.Q.: What a feminist perspective can bring to game design?


Some Reflections about Methods

Opening the code

Methods as generative and procedural instruments


The Case Study:Game Design Workshop


The Game Design Workshop

• Action research (2 researchers / facilitators)

•GOALS: collective creation of prototypes of minigames about identity in the Internet

•CONTEXT: Seminar “Digital Industry and Gender” (Sevilla, 2014)

•17 participants, 4 hours


The Game Design Workshop: Hypothesis

R.Q.: What a feminist perspective can bring to game design?

The use of feminist tactics would facilitate the participants’s interest in game design, enabling the creation of new imageries and generating a sense of competence and empowerment


The Game Design Workshop: Overview

Feminist practices (Performance, research

methods)

+Theatrical exercises (Forum theatre)

+ Mistake, Irony, Parody, Play

KEY CONCEPTS:

•Embodied experience

•Synesthetic thinking

•Intersubjectivity


The Game Design Workshop: the Structure

1. Warm-up: Body-in-motion

2. Feminist performance practices

3. Embodied political meanings

4. Transduction & synesthetic thinking

5. Examples and mirrors

6. Inter-subjective experience

7. Prototyping: trial and error

Progressive Structure:• reducing difficulties with

game design

• creating a path

• facilitating creative process



Warm- up:Body-in-motion

-->- Familiarity- Error- Laugh

1



Feminist performance’s practices: Repetition, Exaggeration, Decontextualization..

--> - Playfulness- Subvert meanings

2



Embodied political meanings

--> - Example/ Experience- Games’ elements as mediatiors of meanings

3



Transduction & Synesthetic thinking

--> - Introducing topics- Analysis and creation: shift perspective

4



Examples and mirrors

5



Inter-subjective experience as raw material for game design

--> - Ground concepts in concrete experience- Transforming it

6



Prototyping: trial and error

7


Discussion & Conclusion

EMBODIED EXPERIENCE

SYNESTHETIC THINKING

INTERSUBJECTIVITY

- Use the body as a mediator of meaning making

-Learningandreflectingthrough concrete, “hands-on” experiences

- Transduction: remaking meaning across modes (Kress, 1997)

- Explore the value of materials (form as meaning)

- The personal is political

- The others as mirrors

1. Warm-up: Body-in-motion2. Feminist performance practices3. Embodied political meanings4. Transduction & synesthetic thinking6. Inter-subjective experience

2. Feminist performance practices4. Transduction & synesthetic thinking6. Inter-subjective experience7. Prototyping: trial and error

2. Feminist performance practices3. Embodied political meanings6. Inter-subjective experience


Discussion & Conclusion

•EMPOWERMENT: Participants reported that now they feel that it was possible and easy to start designing games.

•PRODUCTION: Different games were prototyped proposing new imaginaries.

OPPORTUNITIES: The use of this methodology allowed new subjectivities to be brought into game design and thus it opened paths for generating new ways of designing games.

CHALLENGES: What if we apply this approach in other contexts?


Thanks!

Questions?

Education

Rethink Game Design through Feminist Methodologies: a Case Study