TOG: A Model for Innovation-Centric Design in Games and Expressive Interactive Media

This paper describes an approach to facilitate innovation in game design by increasing the designers’ palette of playable and participatory computational expressions. The TOG model (Technology, Ontology, and Game Genre) can be used in teaching game design and related practices, but is also applicable to prototyping in professional settings. TOG is inspired by the processes of AI-based game design, and introduces the concept of the techno-artistic minimum. It was conceptualized when teaching a course on computational expression at Malta University. The main aim for teaching with the TOG model was to facilitate innovation by challenging aspiring game designers to think ‘outside the box’ and come up with unusual and innovate creative solutions. In addition, TOG can complement existing design methods such as MDA and DDT in the practice of professional game designers.

‘Thinking Through’ Games in the Classroom: Using Discursive Game Design to Play and Engage with Historical Datasets

In this contribution, we outline Discursive Game Design (DGD) as a practice-based educational framework, explain how to use this design framework to teach game historiography, and report on findings from a series of in-class experiments. Using Nandeck, a freely available software tool for card game prototyping, we created sets of playing cards based on two game-historical datasets. Students were then asked to prototype simple games with these card decks; both playtesting and co-creating each other’s games in an ongoing quasi-conversational process between different student groups fostered discussions on, and produced alternative insights into, the complex notion of (Dutch) game history, canonization/selection and games as national cultural heritage. The article shows how DGD can be implemented to allow for students with little or no design background to actively ‘think through’ games about the subject matter at hand.

Educating Interactive Narrative Designers: Cornerstones of a Program

In recent years, games with a focus on narrative have been a growing area. However, so far, interactive narrative aspects have not been the focus of video game education (with the noted exception of a small number of programs in game writing), which indicates that many narrative designers are self-trained. The insular status means that many designers use private vocabulary and conceptualizations that are not directly transferable. This state of affairs is an obstacle to productive discourse and has negative consequences for the further development of the professional field. By starting an educational program, we aim to address this problem using the opportunity to also include perspectives outside of games. We report on the first iteration of a minor in interactive narrative design, and reflect on lessons learned, while considering future trajectories for this and similar programs.

Towards a “Filipino” Video Game: Teaching Filipino Culture and Identity for Video Game Development

This paper uses the author’s experiences of teaching the Filipino module of a multidisciplinary video game development class as a case study in teaching Filipino culture and identity as an element of video game development. A preliminary definition of “Filipino video game” as having Filipino narratives and subject matter, made by Filipino video game developers, and catering to a Filipino audience, is proposed. The realities and limitations of video game development and the video game market in the Philippines is also discussed to show how the dominance of Western video game industry, in terms of the dominance of outsource work for Filipino video game developers and the dominance of non-Filipino video games played by Filipino players, has hindered the development of original Filipino video games. Using four Filipino video games as primary texts discussed in class, students were exposed to Filipinomade video games, and shown how these games use Filipino history, culture, and politics as source material for their narrative and design. Issues of how video games can be used to selfexoticization, and the use of propaganda is discussed, and also how video games can be used to confront and reimagine Filipinoness. The paper ends with a discussion of a student-made game titled Alibatas, a game that aims to teach baybayin, a neglected native writing system in the Philippines as a demonstration of how students can make a Filipino video game. The paper then shows the importance of student-made games, and the role that the academe plays in the critical understanding of Filipino video games, and in defining Filipino culture and identity.

A Research-Based Approach to Game Writing Pedagogy

This paper discusses the importance of, and presents a possible framework for, phenomenological research of game industry practice to enhance pedagogy in computer game design (CGD) education. Built around examples from one such study on the practices of game industry writers, the author provides background for the study in question, outlines the theoretical framework of the research design, and presents an overview of the findings. A discussion of possible impacts and further applications in other subdisciplines of game development follows.

Infrastructures of Play: Labor, Materiality, and Videogame Education

Preparing students for the job market is not the limit of our responsibilities as videogame educators. We must also prepare them to be ethical actors within the industries they may join. This paper argues for augmenting player-centric videogame design education and game studies pedagogies with approaches that situate videogames in context as operational components of extractivist business models and the political and financial economies that support them. This approach entails teaching videogames as technical systems with complex and expansive upstream and downstream supports and impacts. These supports and impacts have real and frequently detrimental effects on the environment, communities, and individual human lives, and yet are relatively rarely discussed in the literature, especially in comparison to discussions that focus on representation and rhetoric. By looking beyond the frame of the individual videogame as an expressive artifact, educators can help learners to apprehend issues such as the growing material and environmental costs of computer-based entertainment and the many tiers of labor exploitation involved in producing videogames and the computing machinery that makes them possible, among other concerns. The paper concludes by suggesting that students equipped with these kinds of understandings will be able to make more informed ethical assessments, and thus wiser choices, as they percolate into the videogames industries and, in some cases, into positions of leadership.

Introduction

This Special Issue of ToDiGRA comprises works that werepresented at the workshop “Teaching Games: PedagogicalApproaches”, which took place at DiGRA 2019 in Tokyo. Thepapers presented were elaborated into articles for this issue. Theblind peer reviews, along with the revisions of the articles, tookplace during the 2020 pandemic lockdown. The workshoporganizing committee, along with the editor of this volume, wouldlike to express their thanks and appreciation to all the authors andreviewers for their work and effort during these troublesome times.This volume is dedicated to Jeff Watson, who passed away beforewe could release it.

The Paradigm of Game System Building

In this article, we posit ‘game system building’ as a paradigm for game design. Inspired by earlier perspectives on cybernetic art, and current practices in game development and education, we consider the creation of dynamic game systems as a creativeartistic practice where the consideration of complex and often unpredictable behavior and effects are as foundational as the individual elements (rules, graphics, characters, UI etc.) of a game. The paradigm of ‘game system building’ has important implications for the education of designers and games scholars. In this article, we introduce the paradigm and its lineage, and propose an educational approach that reflects ‘game system building’.

Game Designers and the Ludo Mix: Constructing an Aesthetic Experience

A ludo mix occurs when a variety of media are organized around one or several central games. While this might be an opportunity to build worlds and create new intellectual properties, it is also a marketing strategy. These two perspectives are often contradictory, and are difficult for game designers to address: how to design games in a ludo mix? Firstly, I establish a theoretical foundation, and suggest that a definition of ludo mix can encompass the game designer’s experience more explicitly by relying on the pragmatist concept of “aesthetic experience” by John Dewey. Based on this perspective, I will demonstrate how Dewey’s concepts complement the works of two major thinkers in Japanese media studies, Eiji Ōtsuka and Hiroki Azuma. Secondly, I validate the usefulness of Dewey’s concepts for game designers by employing them in a “project-grounded” research approach. This particular project involves nine students enrolled in a narrative game design class, working on the franchise Aggressive Retsuko. The results show that pragmatism is indeed a fruitful philosophical stance for game designers; ludo mixes ought to be seen as “grand experiences” instead of “grand narratives”.

The Musical Ludo Mix of Taiko no Tatsujin

This paper analyzes the Taiko no Tatsujin (Bandai Namco 2001/ 2018) franchise and the musical literacy it conveys. While previous accounts of game musical literacy have focused on the competence necessary to interpret references across media (van Elferen 2016), this paper expands on the concept, and includes the discussion of live performances and oral traditions.The musical compositions included in Taiko no Tatsujin pertain to the Japanese phenomenon of media convergence known as media mix (Steinberg 2012), as they have been previously popularized by anime and geemu ongaku (or game music) (Yamakami and Barbosa 2015). However, the musical participation initiated extends its references to the practice of Japanese taiko drumming, a largely oral, non-notated musical form, which cannot be reduced to a musical repertoire. The resulting, emerging ludo mix, a form of media mix centered around digital games (Blom 2019; Bjarnason 2019; Picard and Pelletier-Gagnon 2015; Steinberg 2015), presents original musical characteristics, representing and synthesizing a dynamic musical culture.The conclusions show that game musical literacy is based, not only on competence with previous media forms, but also with various different forms of participation in musical performances, or musicking (Small 1998), which concur in constructing game musical literacy. The musical side of the ludo mix can therefore be expressed through a large variety of musical practices.