Towards More Just Game Worlds: Conversations with Creative Game Designers

A few weeks ago, I was invited to speak in a game and learning course, and I was struck by a question one student asked me: “How do these examples of designers you are talking about here represent reality?” This question was in reference to  six game designers we interviewed during a co-design project aimed at designing a curriculum that engaged middle and high school students in sociopolitical dimensions of artificial intelligence. This project is a part of the NSF-funded National AI Institute for Student-AI Teaming (DRL-2019805) housed at University of Colorado Boulder. Indeed, people with the backgrounds of the six game designers we interviewed are underrepresented and systematically marginalized in the commercial game industry. The goal for interviewing the six game designers during our co-design process of curriculum was to introduce young learners to transformative ways for game design and develop their understanding of game ecology. As part of the unit, students learn from their stories about game design approaches that center justice, equity, culture, human interactions, and nondominant narratives in the writing, development, and design of games. Moreover, we hoped by interviewing them to invite young learners, particularly of historically minoritized and oppressed groups to see in curriculum both a window and a mirror, as education scholar Rochelle Gutiérrez says, a window into possible dream game-worlds that are free of oppression and a mirror of people who are like them engaged in that kind of dreaming (Gutiérrez, 2018, Style, 1996; also see video below).

We invited Zoyander Street, Cooper Sanghyun Yoo, Malik Toms, Liz Fiacco, Tracy Fullerton, and Momo Pixel, to hear from them about their game design process, how they developed these skills, what game features they include in their game design, what stories they tell through games, and how the identities they hold shape narratives and features they design in games. Through our conversation with them, we also aimed to engage young learners in learning activities where they compare game designers’ experiences, including how they make decisions, how they learned how to design games, and how they navigated the world of game design. In this way, young learners also get to see a wide range of ways for creatively telling stories about their own realities and everyday life. 

Game designers we interviewed: Liz Fiacco, Tracy Fullerton, Zoyander Streer, Momo Pixel, Cooper Sanghyun Yoo, Malik Toms

Below are six lessons that summarize what we can learn about game design from our conversation with the designers:

 (1) Use game narrative to tackle power issues in everyday life. Artist-researcher Zoyander Street, described how they tackle systematic injustice and power issues that emerge in everyday life through narrative and game design. As a person who identifies as a neurodivergent, genderqueer trans man and designs indie games for public audiences' engagements, they see narrative as a way to raise awareness about gender or the experience of neurodivergent people through designing interactions with games for public audiences. Through such engagement with games as a medium, Zoynader explains, the game “becomes a social object like another piece of art when it’s in public.”

(2) Learn tools in online communities and use them to build a new world. Game developer Liz Fiacco talked about the possibilities games create for experimenting with the creation of characters, rules, and world-building within game design. She asserted that learning technological tools for game development and modding games can be learned in online communities and in collaboration with various people who can bring their expertise into game design and its development. Liz mentioned that some games come with tools that allow participants in the game ecology (e.g., players, programers) to customize the game for their own needs. Modding games, she described, “is empowering and an expression of yourself.” 

(3) Take game design beyond programming to include aesthetics and visuals as language for storytelling. We also interviewed Momo Pixel, a multidisciplinary artist and a video game designer. Momo Pixel is the creator of Hair Nah Arcade, which she describes as“a video game about a Black woman tired of people touching her hair.” In her work, Momo Pixel uses various techniques that center aesthetics and inspiration from everyday life. For example, she uses pixel art as a storytelling language in game design. 

(4) Consider designing intentional features between players to connect, build relationships, and collaborate. Cooper Sanghyun Yoo is an Assistant Professor and a creative technical director based in Seoul, South Korea. Cooper introduced  us to the idea of designing games intentionally to strengthen interactions and collaborations among players. While he uses technologies like virtual reality for his games, he centers social interactions among players.

(5) Transform game ecology by writing the stories you want to see in games and the design experiences you are hoping to play, for example, centering the experiences of Black creators rather than reinforcing the gaming design space as a white-dominant space. Author and educator Malik Toms, who teaches science fiction, talked to us about his experience as a speculative fiction writer for game design. Malik described his own experience of not finding someone who “looks like him” in the game ecology. It was this lack of narratives with Black protagonists that made him decide to do this kind of work and tell stories that bring different perspectives into games.  

(6) Collaborate with others in the production process and combine storytelling with play, history, and culture. In our conversation with Tracy Fullerton, a game designer, professor, and author we talked about her approach combining storytelling, play, and connecting between art and technology mediums to create games that represent varied human experiences, stories, and cultures. Such an approach is made possible by teamwork that enriches the process of storytelling and building of games. Examples of games she created is Walden, a game that takes a narrative-based gaming approach to explore the life of American philosopher Henry David Thoreau during his experiment in self-reliant living at Walden Pond. 

In summary, these game designers' knowledge, experiences, and work invite us to create gameplay experiences where we consider diversity in storytelling narratives and engage in worldbuilding that is justice-oriented within the game world. They also invite us to use technological media (e.g., virtual reality, pixels) as tools for connecting players, addressing socio-political issues, and paying attention to visuals and aesthetics as fundamental parts of game design. Finally, the game design practices these designers talked about are also an opportunity for educators to create activities where young learners themselves can dream new narratives and design features for games they play. 

References:

Gutiérrez, R. (2018). The need to rehumanize mathematics. In I. Goffney, R. Gutiérrez, & M. Boston (Eds.), Rehumanizing mathematics for Black, Indigenous, and Latinx students (pp. 1–10). National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Style, E. (1996). Curriculum as window and mirror. Social science record, 33(2), 21-28.

Acknowledgement: These materials were developed by the Institute for Student-AI Teaming based at the University of Colorado Boulder, including educators and students from the Denver Public Schools  This material is based in part on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number DRL-2019805. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. 

Dr. Areej Mawasi is a Neubauer Faculty Lecturer (tenure-track) at Technion’s Faculty of Education in Science and Technology. In her research, she focuses on the intersection of learning sciences, technologies and digital media, design-based research, and critical STEM education. She studies learners' engagement and designs learning environments using tools like technologies, games, and hands-on artifacts. @areejmws // http://areejm.com