Diversity through Specificity – design lessons learned from the Games [4Diversity] Jams Dr. Menno Deen Fontys ICT Eindhoven, the Netherlands
[email protected]
Dr. Frank Nack University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, the Netherlands
[email protected]
ABSTRACT
The study used a research-through-design approach and organized game jams as a method to examine game design processes, with the aim to investigate how the diverse identities of designers affect and inspire their game designs. During the Game [4Diversity] Jams we hypothesised that homogeneity in groups may lead to a single-minded message in their games, and diversity in groups may result in games that allow more freedom for players to create their own personal interpretation(s) of the game’s content and mechanics. The results of this study suggest that a narrow theme and diverse team composition may assist designers in creating novel games. As such, designers can find diverse gameplay and content from additional specificity in the game jam’s organisation. Author Keywords
Gamejam, game jam, Games [4…] Jam, applied games, serious games, minorities, design, LGBT, LGBTQIA, Queer, women’s studies, expressive media, diversity, sociocultural.
Prof. Dr. Mata Haggis NHTV University Breda, the Netherlands
[email protected]
Developers Conference in San Francisco, and on industry or academic related mailing lists (e.g. see DiGRA lists at http://www.digra.org/the-association/digra-mailing-lists/) criticize mainstream games for being exclusive and (unintentionally or otherwise) offensive. In 2014, the GamerGate debate incited vitriolic debates about sexism in both the industry and the content of digital games [39]. There is some growth in games that target specific demographics. For example, the cyberpunk adventure game ROM: Read Only Memories [25] stars queer-friendly characters, in an attempt to break with stereotypical straight-male protagonists in games. Anna Anthropy’s Dys4ia [1] (see Figure 1) tells the story of difficulties and emotions surrounding hormone replacement therapy, using simple mini-games to explain how hard these therapies can be to go through.
ACM Classification Keywords
D.2.2 Software: Software Engineering; Design Tools and Techniques INTRODUCTION
There is still a lack of gender, ethnic, racial, class, religious, and sexual diversity in the game industry workforce [9], which is reflected in the games that are produced. With the exception of a minority of games, such as Persona 2 [2], Mass Effect 3 [3], The Last of Us [28], and Tomb Raider [6] which contribute to an improved representation of homosexuality, femininity, and ethnicity, most games appear to focus on characters, stories, and artistic directions that exclude women, the under-privileged, and socio-cultural minorities. Debates at the annual Game Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from
[email protected]. ACE '15, November 16-19, 2015, Iskandar, Malaysia © 2015 ACM. ISBN 978-1-4503-3852-3/15/11…$15.00 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2832932.2832957
Figure 1: Dys4ia by Anna Anthropy
Sassybot’s Fragments of Him [33] portrays the loss of a loved one, with prominent bisexual and gay characters (see Figure 2). Lastly, Wispfire’s Interactive Period Drama game Herald [44] narrates the story of a man of mixed heritage in search of his roots. These games create novel experiences and enrich the games industry with new themes, and sometimes, new mechanics. Many groups have distinct social values, challenges, and perspectives, and designers can find inspiration from anywhere [21]. With this basis, we hypothesised that the personal backgrounds of game developers can inspire new gameplay experiences if appropriately stimulated during the design process. This was examined through the comparison of games made by groups with greater/lesser diversity in their composition. We believed that the socio-cultural and personal circumstances would be synthesized as rule sets and explored in multiple ways, either literal or metaphorical (using their discourses to compose new forms of
gameplay), potentially leading to innovative games that represent varied groups in constructive and positive ways. If supported by further studies, this research supports the call for greater diversity in the workforce, in line with the growing interest in diversity in technology industries, typified by developers involved in the growing ‘indie games’ community [37].
[12,22], and was additionally inspired by design theory from Schon [36] and Bonsiepe’s design virtues [5]. We also aimed to align our approach to the concept of ‘emergent dialogue’ discussed by Tanenbaum et al [41]. It positions people as social actors, collectively negotiating a shared vision of their desired future. We hypothesise that offering developers a time and place to express their position towards a particular situation (e.g. LGBTQ & women’s perspectives in games), without the need to worry about commercial viability, would result in some games that addressed the topics from new or revealing points of view. The overall idea was to bring together game developers from various backgrounds (professionally and personally) to create games investigating a particular non-mainstream theme in only 24 hours. By making games, we study the practical applications of varied social perspectives, and reflect on the processes that characterized the outcomes. GAME JAM - JUSTIFICATION
Figure 2: Fragments of Him (Sassybot, 2012/2016)
In order to investigate this hypothesis, we have organized ‘game jams’ (short events where a whole game is created rapidly). Pairs of Diversity Jams were organised, where each pair addresses game design from a sexual orientation, gender, feminist, religious, or cultural perspective. In this paper we report about the findings of the first two Games [4Diversity] Jams, which focused on homosexual and/or women’s perspectives. We outline the reason why game jams were considered as the methodological base for our investigation, we describe the procedural aspects of the game jams, and discuss the findings. The paper concludes with a discussion of the results regarding making diversity embedded in the games, rather than a tokenistic addition, and finalizes with a view on future work. GAME JAM – IDEATION
There were two reasons to apply the concept of a game jam as the method to explore how sociocultural perspectives could be used to inspire new gameplay: from an academic perspective, a game jam presents researchers with a rich amount of case studies that specifically target the research question under investigation, and it presents an opportunity to observe (or be part of) the design process itself [27]; from a societal standpoint, the existence of such an event communicates maturity in the games development community to the general public and the game community at large. The attention from the press during a game jam can begin many debates about the value of games in contemporary culture. This is explored further in the following section. Our approach is influenced by Flanagan’s critical play method [10]. This facilitates us, through the reworking of contemporary popular game practices, to propose an alternative game design approach; however, our approach also uses the methodology of “research through design”
A game jam is an event to create playable prototypes in a very short time frame (days, rather than months or years). Game jams can be seen as a design research method, situated in the research-through-design tradition, to create knowledge in a fast-paced, collaborative environment [8]. Research also already indicated that game jams appear as useful tools to specify design questions and develop useful case studies [27]. Game jams have been organized to explore the boundaries of game design. For example, the Games [4Health] Jam Sink/Swim [7] explored how videogames can be played in challenging locations, such as a swimming pool. The Lyst Summit Game Jam [17] explored how sex, love, and romance could influence and inspire new game designs. Other game jams investigated new concepts within a genre. The 7DPS Game Jam [40], explored new ways to interpret first person shooter games. The ChainJam [43] investigated multiplayer games within a single-distribution platform and presented them as a ‘chain’ of mini games. It was the first game jam that sought a playable manner of distributing the games, by making a meta-game from all of the smaller jam-games. The Local Multiplayer Jam [16] explored how new ways of cooperative or competitive play can be designed for players in one physical environment. Game jams were used for educational purposes as well. In order to educate students about game design and common pitfalls, the Games [4+2] Jam, was held [7]. Students of different levels of education (vocational and undergrad) worked together. This intense cooperation led to new insights, better understanding of each others’ strengths and served as kick-start for a longer-term commitment to the team. The Global Game Jams [11,14] are often organized in and around universities and have been used to teach programming and design skills [30]. Other game jams try to inspire game developers by placing them in/on unusual locations. For example, the Train Jam
[43] took place on a train. Within three days, the developers travelled from Chicago to San Francisco. The inspiring view and the cramped compartments inspired unusual ideas. For example, the abstract duelling game PSHNGG [45] was likely inspired by the curves of a train track. Mark Ellis: Train Bridge Inspector [18] is also clearly derived from the location of the jam, and critiques the system whereby American railroad companies are set up to be selfmonitoring. The aforementioned Sink/Swim Jam was set in a pool (see Figure 3), and the Lyst Summit Jam [17] stimulated a sense of freedom by its setting on a boat.
Although many game jams have explored a multitude of directions in terms of platform, genre or themes, few game jams have explored socio-cultural issues, such as discrimination, racism, and conflicts in ideology. The QuiltBag Jam at MIT Boston [15], and the I am a Gamer Jam [42] explored how games would change when designed from a different perspective. The queer perspective of the Boston Jam resulted in several text-based games and a puzzle game called One [34], in which players need to match colours: blue (male) connects to other blues and pinks go with pinks. Sometimes players can solve a puzzle by creating a love triangle between boxes. The I am a Gamer Jam placed women as main protagonists of the games, criticizing the position and sexualisation of women in popular culture. The jam itself appeared to make big impact, maybe even more than the developed games themselves. The idea that game developers were actually thinking and working with tough issues resonated well in the community of indie games and games for politics, but was given little attention in academic debates.
Figure 3: Jammers are creating a digital game in the pool during the Games [4Health] Jam 2013 Sink/Swim
Our own “location-based” jam was the Games Jam [4Research] [8]. This event was organized to explore academic research questions through games, and took place in a conference room during the CHI2014 workshops. Organizing this during an academic conference on computer human interaction was beneficial because the academics were already there, and jammers could easily connect to other researchers during lunch and coffee breaks; however, in terms of inspiration the conference room appeared to dull the senses, which the organizers tried to increase with music, festive decoration, and many peer-to-peer play-sessions (see Figure 4), which improved the creative atmosphere.
Analyzing this variety of jams results in a number of pros and cons that support our methodological approach, i.e. that a game jam provides a suitable environment for testing whether team composition affects the out-coming design artefacts. The positive points are: 1. Designers and researchers quickly narrow down the research question (the theme for the jam) to a useable statement. 2. Jamming creates a clear focus and understanding of practical implications very rapidly for the developers involved. 3. Participants share knowledge and inspire each other in multiple ways. 4. Iterations are rapid and visible to researchers. 5. The safe environment of the game jam lowers barriers and makes it easier to fail and learn from mistakes that are either practical or thematic. 6. Jammers dared to work outside of their comfort zone, picking up other skills than they would not normally approach in a task which requires greater commitment. 7. The different perspectives and the multi-disciplinary approaches of team members enrich research results. 8. Easy access to play testers and peer reviewing at the jam site.
Figure 4: during the Game Jam [4Research] organizers had to decorate both the room as participants to create a more inspiring environment
Game jams can be valuable tools to explore an initial concept of a game design and that it can fast-track particular decision making processes; however, this is also one of the main drawbacks of jamming: 1. The focus on prototype completion can redirect studies into the easiest (not always thematically optimal) solution.
2. Balancing design and development proves hard during jam sessions and appears to favour development tasks above exploration and experimentation.
Habbo Hotel [19]. Zuraida Buter played a mingling game, and being a Director of the Global Game Jam, presented her perspective on game jamming.
3. Because the jam session is mainly application driven in the described jams, it offers little room to study ‘wide’ questions.
In the USA Ard van der Vorst explained how ‘the Dutch’ considered diversity to be an important aspect of their lives, Alyea Sandovar presented a talk about how a particular perspective can influence design decisions, and Menno Deen presented the findings and lessons learned of the EU jam.
The focus on completion of a product (especially within the short time frame of particular jam sessions) may hinder the experimentation and wider exploration of a design direction. Nonetheless, organizing researchers can observe the design process and debate the merits of jammers’ design decisions, and in this way present them with other perspectives on the problem addressed. The gained observation and discourse element in game jams and the large output of playable prototypes on the particular problem, in comparison to the speed and volume of typical games development, presents researchers with a rich set of data to work with. GAME JAM [4 DIVERSITY]
After the introductions, jammers created groups and started their conception stage. During lunch, every group gave a 30 second game concept pitch to the other groups. After lunch the ‘achievement system’ was introduced. Every group received various beads for a necklace (see Figure 5). Every bead represented a quality of the pitch, e.g. ‘most feasible concept’ or ‘best integration of LGBT in proposed gameplay’. Players could grant other groups a bead, congratulating them with their achievement and engaging in debates about the works.
Set-up
Considering the game jam’s pros and cons to explore socio-cultural issues, the team of game designers and researchers from the humanities organized two events: ● The Games [4Diversity] Jam 2014 EU, March 8 to 9 in Amsterdam at Amnesty International and ● The Games [4Diversity] Jam 2014 USA, March 22 to 23 in San Francisco at the Dutch Consulate. The theme of both jams concerned LGBTQ and/or women’s perspectives. The event attempted to raise a positive and constructive voice for those socio-cultural groups that are still under-represented in the game industry (based on comparing the percentages of their representation in society and their representation in the game industry [9]). Participants
The amount of participants differed between the EU and USA version. In Amsterdam 50 jammers (17 women, 33 men) participated in the session, whereas in San Francisco 22 jammers (10 women, 12 men) created games. In both events the jammers were active members of the game industry, covering roles such as game designer, generalist developer, artist, researcher, or student (in these respective fields of study). The participants were recruited on LGBTQ friendly websites, game review and critics sites (GamePolitics[13], IndieGames [29]), and academic mailing lists (DiGRA mailing list, for example). Procedure
Both jam sessions started with a lecture to introduce the problem space. At the EU jam, Nathalie Korsman taught about how to manage diversity in open play spaces like
Figure 5: (left) beads and their value - (right) participants debating each other’s’ games
After the feedback round, participants started developing games. Around 21:00 in the evening, jammers at both events had to leave the space because the offices closed at night. Participants were allowed to work further on their ideas at other locations. The next morning everyone started at 9:00. In a plenary session participants reflected on each other’s progress. Groups divided and played the other games, gave feedback, and moved to the next group. After 30 minutes everyone continued their own project until lunch. Lunch featured short pitches again and the distribution of beads with new values. Around 19:00 players presented their games to one another and voted for the winner. Queer was nominated for the best game audience award of the Games [4Diversity] Jam 2014 EU, and A Beautiful Sunday received the prize for the [4Diversity] Jam 2014 USA. Results
The Games [4Diversity] Jams resulted in 12 games [EU: 7, USA: 5].]. The games tackled a wide variety of subjects, from the disadvantage of women towards men in regard to job finding to less-obvious prejudices towards masculinity
and femininity. This article describes three of the games, A Beautiful Sunday, Queer, and Drag Cube, because together they cover the main features seen in the overall group. The analysis is based on observations of the researchers performed during the sessions (observing the decision processes, debates, interviews with participants) as well as on the design and development material that was available for analysis after the jam. A Beautiful Sunday A Beautiful Sunday was developed by Aben, Arnet, Boles, and McDonald. The team consisted of an American female artist, two queer male developers (Dutch and American), and an American gay sound designer. In the game, the players start with taking a stroll with a couple through a park. The next day, they go to work. The main protagonist is not yet ‘out’ at the office and so needs to lie about the weekend. The lies can be small but still can trouble relationships at work, but appear mandatory to feel safe in the workspace.
accumulation in the lives of people creates a situation that is termed ‘toxic’, where the toxicity of microaggressions slowly poisons the lives of the victims. In A Beautiful Sunday, the developers used the LGBTQ/women theme of the game jam primarily in the game’s narrative and visual representation. The characters in the game could be interpreted as any gender. This was a deliberate attempt by the designers to explain that lying is tough, despite of one’s sex or reasons to lie. A Beautiful Sunday is an example of game development where the clear focus in narrative and tone was inspired by the homogeneous composition of the team. Since all team members were part of a less represented socio-cultural group in popular culture, they easily agreed with the proposition that being gay was hard, even in a society that tolerates the LGBTQ community. Queer Queer was developed by Sassybot & Friends. The team consisted of one female designer, two straight male developers, one straight male artist, and one bisexual male designer. The players get to experience the world as 3 different characters, each with an inherent difficulty setting to convey a game based metaphor for ‘privilege’, without using the word. The player’s objective is to progress with the assigned character through a normal day and remain in a good mood. The player has to get ready and go to work, but, unfortunately, on the way there, they encounter a group of hateful protesters. When finally arriving at work, the boss also demonstrates intolerant attitudes.
Figure 6: Foreground, A Beautiful Sunday played at Night of the Nerds 2014. On the distant screen, there is a conversation in Queer
The game was inspired by the concept of ‘microaggressions’ [24]. These are noted for being particularly endemic in the lives of minority groups, such as the LGBTQ community. Microaggressions are small actions or choices of words that would generally be considered minor and inoffensive to when taken individually, but become problematic when they accumulate over a period of time. Many of these microaggressions are considered comedic or normal behaviour in mainstream culture, such as mocking people who are transgender, particular those who are male-to-female, or referring to attractive adult women as ‘girls’ when a similar level of acceptability is not present for attractive adult men being described as ‘boys’. These microaggressions are small enough that it appears out of proportion for a person to be bothered by them, and the people engaging in these behaviours are often unaware of the damage they are contributing to [38], but their
Figure 7: Boys playing Queer at Night of the Nerds 2014 NL
The jammers were inspired by John Scalzi’s article ‘Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting there is’ [35]. In the game, one’s gender and/or sexuality sets the difficulty: the gender-normative and patriarchal role (heterosexual male) is the easy mode, and alternative sexualities and genders make the game more challenging. The theme of the game jam was found in the game’s mechanic as well as in the game’s narrative: the diversity theme was clear, in both the mechanics and the choice of
which gender, sexuality, and racial background they wanted to play. Additionally, the Non-Player Characters (NPCs) were openly addressing the topic by mocking gay people and protesting against homosexuality in public. Connecting the game’s difficulty level to the characteristics of the player characters, corresponds to issues that LGBTQ communities deal with in real-life. This portrayal of the troubles encountered by people, depending on their gender and/or sexuality, was presented in a more complex manner in Queer than in A Beautiful Sunday. The comparatively disparate group composition of the Queer team inspired the design decisions of including a straight character, and including racial backgrounds that fit with wider discussions of diversity but were not required by the LGBTQ/women theme. The inclusion may be because two of the team members were not native to the Netherlands. Thus, the diversity of the group composition resulted in a more complex game design because it integrated more varied views on the topic. DragCube DragCube was developed by Hawkins, Lombarts, and Deen during the Games [4Diversity] Jam 2014 USA. The team consisted of two straight male developers (Dutch and American) and a Dutch gay male designer/researcher. DragCube is a puzzle game of identity development. Players start with four colourless blocks (see Figure 8). They are presented with a colour configuration, which represent the end state of the puzzle. By pushing and turning the blocks around, players can copy colours of other blocks if they connect. If players ‘enforce’ their colour upon others, they lose theirs, but if players connect for a longer period of time, they may grow a new block or change both colours into a new one. With some creativity and strong reading, players could interpret the game as a metaphor of transgender transformation; however, for other players, the game remains ‘just a puzzle game’.
Figure 8: a still from the explanation movie of DragCube http://youtu.be/I2lSiMNJL2M The game was inspired by gender transitioning. Shifting from one gender identity to another state can stimulate
intense (internal) debate on what one’s identity entails and how it is often defined externally by social conditions rather than through personal development. We cannot acknowledge the self without reference to a contrasting other (in this case represented by the colour of the cubes), and so connecting to other individuals to develop one’s own identity became the initial concept of this prototype. The composition of the group, two straight males and one gay male, inspired the development of a less queer-themed game, in terms of aesthetics. All members wished to identify with the game they developed, and so the team focused on ‘interactions of transformation’ as the initial concept. The group was most interested in the transformation of identity, which is more apparent in gender transformation than other identity developments, and not so much in the cultural problems that gender transformation could create. As a result, the straight male developers could identify more easily with the game, because it was about playing with identity development and less about conveying the message that it was hard/difficult to switch gender. Identity development as a broad theme has relevance to the lives of many people, both from within LGBTQIA, women’s, and minority groups, and across the broader mainstream social spectrum. The interest in a broad theme, rather than the specific theme of Queer, could be hypothesised to reflect the composition of the development team, although further study would be necessary to strengthen this analysis. DISCUSSION
Game jams appear to be valuable approaches/methods to explore design strategies for, and outcomes of, addressing socio-cultural issues. We use the word exploring, because all the developed games are best characterized as prototypes, and the short time-span of a game jam does not allow for in-depth debate and careful consideration. As a result, participants may have relied on their instincts and followed the group dynamics of the team. Due to the relation between heuristic judgements and group dynamics, we suggest one finding is that diverse teams increase the likelihood of complex social and ethical elements for gameplay mechanics and/or aesthetics in the final game. For example, the game A Beautiful Sunday portrayed a rather straightforward message: lying about your sexuality feels uncomfortable and is hard. The team consisted of a group of developers of the same age and had a strong connection with the jam theme (being for the greater part LGBTQ community members). This may have inspired the design of a strongly narratively driven game, where emphasis was given to the (less represented in today’s game culture) negative experiences of being gay. Considering the possibility that this team would have been joined by a member from another socio-cultural minority, the game’s theme might have been less about the negative experience and more about lying in general. This is supported by the manner in which the gender diversity of the group is
strongly reflected in the game, with the gendering in the visual design of the main characters left deliberately neutral. Here, the theme of diversity and the diversity of the group itself influenced the game’s visual components. Furthermore, the cultural mix in the group appears to have encouraged the designers to include visuals and storylines that reflect more than one setting. Queer does include a diverse set of visuals and different storylines, depending on which character is played. The set of predefined characteristics (gender, sexuality, and race) offered a wider spread of player choice than A Beautiful Sunday’s, and so Queer reflects the variety of people the development group. The wide range of choices made the game’s narrative closer to ‘reality’ than A Beautiful Sunday’s straightforward multiple-choice questions. Additionally, the diversity in the theme inspired new game mechanics in an existing genre. For example, games seldom utilize a happiness bar that reflects the decisions taken in turn-based text conversations. In Queer, there is a high correlation between the diversity of the team and the theme of the game jam being reflected in both the game’s narrative and in the mechanics of the gameplay. DragCube used identity transformation as initial concept of the game. The designers, consisting of three men where two are heterosexual and one homosexual, focused on the concept of identity development. The game’s narrative and visual representation does not include a gay themed story or visuals traditionally related to or representative of LGBTQIA communities. Instead, by being very specific on their subject, i.e. identity development, they created a game that does not explicitly feature LGBTQIA or women’s themes, potentially reaching a more historically traditional gaming audience, and yet which also aligns with the proposition of the game jam: engagement with problematic issues faced by socio-cultural minorities and women. The common interest in interaction design also led to a heavy focus on gameplay mechanics, which was their common ground, again suggesting narrow diversity within the group leads to tighter focus in the outcome. DragCube could be regarded an antipode to A Beautiful Sunday in terms of visual representation and gameplay design. Whereas A Beautiful Sunday is specific in visual representation and narrative, conveying a single-line message, DragCube addressed the multi-problematic issues surrounding identity development but in a manner that was generic enough that the original theme could be missed by players. A Beautiful Day presents players with the need to lie, conveying a very direct message about a specific problem faced by minority groups. In DragCube the players start building their own configurations, making it a creative endeavour, creating a more traditionally game-like experience. This manifests in presenting players with a sense of agency [26] and autonomy [31,32] over their decision-making and the outcomes, unlike the more pre-
defined route through A Beautiful Sunday. DragCube could be considered more ‘fun’ [20] than A Beautiful Sunday, due to this larger set of what Will Wright calls ‘interesting choices’[20]; however, the price that is paid is that DragCube would need additional content to clearly communicate a message about LGBTQ or women’s issues in society, meaning it was weaker on the overall theme of the jam. An interesting aspect of DragCube’s development is that it is inspired by a socio-cultural minority (people are transgender), which was translated and connected by the developers to experiences in their own socio-cultural groups (as straight and gay men). This group was somewhat diverse in age, ethnicity, and sexuality. They created a game design that resonated with all of them, but which lost clear connection with the source inspiration. In contrast, A Beautiful Sunday was developed from a specific shared annoyance about lying about one’s sexuality. This view was shared by three of the four team members of A Beautiful Sunday. As a result, they did not have to translate their feelings to other socio-cultural groups. Therefore, this team did not take the step from the specific to the general, as Queer did to some extent and DragCube took the furthest. The generality of the mechanics of DragCube makes it of lower relevance to the experiences of women and minority groups than the high narrative specificity of A Beautiful Sunday and Queer. Judging the value of generality versus specificity is outside the scope of this study, but these artefacts demonstrate clearly that game jams can stimulate explorations of these contrasting value systems, and further that there may be an ideal balance between diversity and uniformity when creating media around a theme. The three design examples demonstrate that by diversifying the development team, designers appear to be more inclined to connect to a demographic outside of their own. Moreover, by making the problem more specific and easier to personally relate to for members of the team (for example, translating gender transformation to identity development, and translating identity development into an abstract puzzle), designers can use the group’s and others’ lives as an inspiration for gameplay mechanics. It may prove beneficial for game developers to delineate different methods of interpreting themes for their games: processes in the lives of others (e.g. identity development, or overcoming social opposition); narrative themes (e.g. lying about your sexuality); and emotional experiences (e.g. anger or guilt). This study suggests that taking inspiration from social issues does appear to be stimulated by, and to reflect, diversity in group composition, but also that this manifests based on the overall group’s connection to the theme. Whereas homogeneity in a group may lead to a singleminded message, diversity in the design group can open up
the possibility to facilitate players to create their own position and give their personal value and meaning to play. Instead of instructing the player what to think, games like DragCube and Queer empower players to think for themselves. Figure 9 demonstrates those differences in the form of graph structures for the 3 game examples.
Figure 9: from left to right: the structure of A Beautiful Sunday presents players with little choices and portrays a singular linear message. Queer portrays a more complex set of choices that lead to certain outcomes. DragCube creates a possibility space in which players can define and explore their own creations.
From an organizational point of view, the approach of the game jam also facilitated our aim to support ‘emergent dialogue’ in the Tanenbaum [41] sense. The community participants were invited to discuss and reflect on their personal (and often implicit) prejudices, while developers, not specifically women or people who are LGBTQIA, additionally explored game design through a new lens. The group reflections supported the notion that it gave them a better understanding of the problems and challenges faced by women and socio-cultural minorities. Game designers and developers needed to critically reflect on their work processes to be able to address and incorporate serious issues into popular culture artefacts, namely the games. For example, a group of jammers created a game in which players could press Q and change a fearsome male warrior into a helpless woman. The game was developed in an attempt to explain gender transformation. Their crude interpretation of the process was intensely discussed among other jammers, which helped the Q-jammers to understand that gender transformation was more than just pressing a button. Also in the context of “emergent dialogue’, another contribution of the jam approach was that a community outside the game industry realized that the industry could support their concerns in an adequate and relevant way. The jam session attracted much press attention: the Parool, NRC Next, NOS op 3, Expreszo, Winq GK, Control Game Magazine, local newspapers, and more, wrote about the European jam event. Game Politics, RockPaperShotGun, and Gamasutra reported about both events. Additionally the developed games were played at the Different Games
Conference (USA-NewYork), Lyst Summit (DNCopenhagen), Night of the Nerds (NL-Eindhoven), GaymerX (USA-San Francisco), and Serious Play Conference (USA-Los Angeles). As a result, debates about the games and the industry’s contribution to diversity transcended the boundaries of the Games [4Diversity] Jam itself. For example, one of the organizers presented at the Lyst Summit. The presentation was deliberately short to give room for a public debate about the value of the jam sessions [23]. Additionally, on Night of the Nerds, one of the organizers organized 1 hour workshops on designing from a socio-cultural disposition. The workshops resulted in debates among the participants about the meaning of being feminine, masculine, or queer. However, as outlined above, the larger number of games developed during the Games [4Diversity] Jam portrayed a single message, but did not invite players to engage in a discussion about the topic. These games can be considered Persuasive Games, utilizing a procedural rhetoric and visual representation to critique socio-cultural practices [4]. What the Games [4Diversity] Jam organizers intended to stimulate was more aligned with Flanagan’s concept of critical play: ‘the reworking of contemporary, popular game practices to propose an alternative, or “radical” game design’[10]. Instead of criticizing cultural practices with games, it was the organisers’ intention to stimulate design from an unusual direction with the outcome of inspiring debates and discussions, and have players engage with particular mechanics that would not commonly be prioritised in games development. It was believed that the embedded discourses would invite people to (re)evaluate their position and maybe empathize with others. In the words of Flanagan: ‘Criticality in play can be fostered in order to question an aspect of a game’s “content,” or an aspect of a play scenario’s function that might otherwise be considered a given or necessary’ [10]. The preference for single-message games among the groups suggests that fostering a critical attitude to game mechanics development (using processes for inspiration, not narrative or emotions) is challenging, even when a diverse group is assembled, but that such diverse groups do promote critical attitudes to game aesthetics. The game DragCube corresponds to the design direction of mechanics exploration. It took one aspect that was a huge issue in gender transformation, namely identity development, and translated it to a game. Instead of explaining the difficulties arising from this transformation, it focused on a specific set of rules and translated these to game mechanics. The designers asked themselves what kind of gameplay they could offer that corresponds to the search and development of one’s identity. By being very specific: creating one’s identity by connecting to others, the game portrays a clear message: ‘you cannot be yourself without others’. This message resonates with the experiences of many individuals, and it may therefore be easier to invite these players to play the game and think
about issues of identity development, than contemplating the abstract concept alone; however, as noted previously and unlike the games with messages in their aesthetic choices, the message in DragCube’s mechanics is in the play-style rather than clear and specific on a conscious narrative level, and the strengths of these wide-appeal mechanics against the cultural specificity of the other games can be subject for further debate. CONCLUSION
Game jams can be useful tools to explore socio-cultural issues as inspiration for innovative design, gameplay, and for exploring subjects not commonly addressed in commercial games. Jams focussing on social issues, with diverse teams (in age, gender, sex, ethnicity, race, class, and ideology) resulted in games with greatly varied content, from narrative-driven experiences to the mechanics-driven play. Our work demonstrated that the jam approach, with interdisciplinary and socially-mixed developer groups, can facilitate games that make positive use of the varying backgrounds of each developer and result in novel gameplay mechanics and scenarios. The resulting games were not necessarily explicitly about gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race, or religion, but used their surrounding discourses for inspiration. The themes led to games that usually represented cultures in a constructive and positive way (and/or enhanced the developers’ understanding of complex issues) and contributed to representation and inclusion of women and minorities in popular culture. The diversity of a team appeared to influence the resulting gameplay, the game’s likely audience, and the level of abstraction in the content. While some more-homogenous teams took a direct narrative approach, increasingly diverse teams were more likely to also approach the themes also as inspiration for game mechanics. It is hypothesised that this may be due to the numerous perspectives in the group leading to a broader design to accommodate the multiple viewpoints. Organizing a game jam presents researchers with a valuable position to observe design strategies and approaches for a multitude of subject areas. The short time span of the development sessions appears to reveal particularly strong feelings that designers have about an issue and about ways to design for/from this issue. Additionally it presents researchers with a large amount of case studies and different interpretations of socio-cultural issues raised. We are aware that our findings are only an early step in the formalisation of design procedures for the facilitation of greater diversity in games development. This study is based on one set of events that investigated one particular sociocultural theme, and we are currently researching other topics in game jam settings. The Games [4Diversity] Jams for 2015 focus on ethnic backgrounds and in 2016 we address religion. Because we keep many parameters the same during the jam sessions, we will be in the position to investigate if similar development patterns emerge or if
there are socio-cultural dependencies that influence the design process based on a particular theme. For further formalisation of our observations, we are also designing a study, which compares different groups of developers, and different configurations in teams, that have been challenged with a design question about socio-cultural issues. Finally, we make use of every additional game jam to investigate our design method to see which pitfalls and practical implications are revealed during a session. The results of this study suggest that a narrow theme and diverse team composition may help designers to create novel games. As such, designers can find diverse gameplay and content from additional specificity in the game jam’s organisation. REFERENCES
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