So we’re here at GDC and its kicking off brilliantly with the Serious Games summit in West Hall. I’ll try to give updates on talks, people, and general discoveries that have relevance to the Meaningful Play message throughout the conference.

I was really looking forward to the opening talk for the Summit by Ben Sawyer and Peter Smith that aimed to look at the current state of the Serious Games industry, and the way we define the scope of the field. While they gave quite a nice overview of where games are being used for applications other than pure entertainment, they didn’t actually make much progress as to whether “Serious Games” is in fact the best definition for what we’re trying to do. For anyone that’s read our paper on the issue, you’ll know that we’ve put that definition on our blacklist for bringing up way too many negative connotations when presented anyone outside the industry.

On a lighter note, it’s not even lunchtime yet and I’ve already seen what is sure to be one of the coolest things at the show. Katie Salen (Parsons School of Design) and Greg Tretry (GameLab) presented their quite stunning game about making games: Game Star Mechanic.
Aimed at children in the 10 – 15 age group (I think), the game is presented through a beautifully rendered stream-punk-esque Anime World, drawing in any kids who might even be slightly interested in the YuGiOh or Pokemon franchises (which I think must make up around 70-80% of American kids). The story revolves around warring factions of Mechanics, who each think they know how to design the best game (each represents a different style or genre). The player is tasked with exploring these worlds, and fixing broken games. As they use subsets of the tools to make broken games playable again, they’re introduced to new elements of the game construction system. Before they know it, they have all the skills to start making their own games, without a single piece of code, and all playable by simply flicking a big EDIT / PLAY button always present at the top right of the screen.
Unlike other “simple to use” game creation tools (like Game Maker) this game doesn’t require a single piece of code to be written, and is all driven by and drag-and-drop, slider based interface.

Really quite amazing, and from the videos they showed us of the game’s in use in the classroom, the kids absolutely love it as well.
Other interesting developments of the day include Submarine training simulations, an open critique for a redistricting game, and a meditation game that you play with your heart rate!
Neat stuff. More soon.

In my opinion the best book out there on game design right now is Rules of Play by Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen. The heavy yet somehow still refreshingly succinct text lays out the most thorough and consistent framework for the analysis of computer game design today.

With the creation of Meaningful Play as a strategy, we scoured many texts on games and learning to figure out what two words we could use to describe our philosophy. By the time we came round to actually figuring it out, we realized it had been staring us in the face for a while (albeit in need of some reworking) right out of the pages of Rules of Play. You see Eric and Katie are also big on the concept of Meaningful Play, which they define on three different levels, according to the relevance or impact of an interaction which takes part between the player and the game:

Rules: An action is immediately interpreted and fed back by the system
Play: That action has a consequence within the closed game system
Culture: That action has a consequence to the player outside of the game

So we’re thieves right? Well I suppose we are actually (although not purposefully) but I’d like to think it’s in more of a Remix Generation context than outright snatching. Our definition of Meaningful Play sits within their Culture layer, requiring that the player walks away from the game with new skills, knowledge, or perspectives.

So thanks for the awesome text Eric and Katie, hopefully we havent butchered your brilliant framework