Class Critical Game Design

This unit deals with critical play and radical game design as essential practices for expression with playable media, particularly the ability to subvert the language and signifiers of those media and to include relevant cultural and social stakeholders in their creation. Playable media do not exist in a vacuum, and have undeniable social and cultural impact, and so creators cannot work in isolation and expect certain impacts; they need to account for the opinions of stakeholder groups relevant to the work being created. The ability to include and consult cultural and social stakeholders have already become indispensable to commercial game development for entertainment, not to mention applied game design, also known as serious games. Well-rounded training in game design needs to cover this ability.

Not applicable

Critical Play; Radical Game Design and Intervention Game Design; Explainability of Subjects for Game Design; Persuasive Games and Procedural Rhetoric; Integrating Stakeholder Voices.

A series of innovative methodologies are implemented in all the sessions of this curricular unit: - Active methodologies, in which the teacher mediates the training so that the student can present their point of view in class and increase their critical sense. - Use of STEAM resources. - The Maker Movement, as several disciplines and teachers are involved in the development of this course; - Project-orientated teaching, in which students work in groups, with peer review, to solve challenges proposed (problems) by the class.

BOGOST, I. (2007). Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. USA, MIT Press. DE SMALE, S. (2016). Game essays as critical media and research praxis. In Proceedings of 1st International Joint Conference of DiGRA and FDG (Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 1-15). Digital Games Research Association and Society for the Advancement of the Science of Digital Games. FLANAGAN, M. (2009). Critical play: Radical game design. MIT press.  GRACE, L. (2011). Critical gameplay: design techniques and case studies. In Designing games for ethics: models, techniques and frameworks (pp. 128-141). IGI Global. SICART, M. (2011). Against procedurality. Game Studies, 11(3), 209.