I think the architect building public housing projects has a different sort of responsibility than does the game-maker creating an activist game. No one is forced by economic circumstance to live inside your game; people can play it or abandon it. But there is certainly something to be learned from the architect’s dilemma – the impulse to try to reconfigure living spaces played against the well-worn paths of traditional modes of living.

My own piece in the GTxA show, Screen, very much builds on those old familiar kinds of “collision detection” computer gameplay, even if it’s not an exact reskinning of a previous game. Whereas the big problem with the current version of my “textual instruments” (like Regime Change) is that the play mechanic is so unfamiliar that there needs to be more interface support for the interaction.

There’s a real power in building on existing skills and literacies. And, of course, in involving the community that will use what’s created. I have to admit that I don’t know much about participatory design work being done in the activist computer games space — beyond Rapunsel. Are there others I should check out?

And, of course, it’s important to say that “conservatism” would be one of the last words I’d choose for characterizing your thinking :)

Regarding the thinking about incremental design, yes those designers who can break the mould should definitely try to do so, as artists do in their work consistently. As someone with a background in experimental approaches to artmaking, I am certainly positive about new paradigms and I hope we do develop these…but — the radical new paradigms will realistically be few and far between, and for the majority of emerging social impact games developers, this aim may be out of place or simply not achievable. In addition, the message may be far more powerful if we see gaming practices as a literacy that can be used (and tweaked, and subverted, and displaced) for more powerful ends.

I’m not sure my own approaches will even follow the provocative declaration i have made on all accounts in the activist design work, but I do use this call as a reminder for those of us who tend to think radically about interaction, expression and form — there is the danger in such conceptual design practice of simply losing an understanding of the existing literacy, preferences, and patterns of the audience/player/participant. Since there is discussion of the [giantJoystick] in another thread here, it seems that this piece works so well because it ties into so many players’ familiar knowledge — and thus is accessible in a way that some of my other artwork (not design, though) is not.

So, is this a discussion about art and design, ie, asking questions or solving problems, or is this about a certain conservatism in my thinking? I would hope to say the former. In this light, a more accurate and tempered conclusion for activist designers seeking to shed light on social concerns or involve audiences who may not have been included in the design and testing of games, might be to make a call for participatory design practice in activist games, one that takes into account familiarity, and uses this familiarity in novel design solutions and games.

Of course, this observation also leads me to challenge your suggestion that, “In the early days of interactive design, the best designers were always architects.” Engelbart and Nelson were hugely influential in the early days of interactive design, but one is an engineer by training, while the other trained more in the humanities and social sciences. In fact, in my thinking about the early days of interactive design (also including people like Kay, Papert, Sutherland, etc) I’m not aware of many influential figures besides Negroponte who had architectural training or an architecture-inspired outlook. But perhaps the issue is that we’re thinking of different eras as “the early days”?

As for reskinning versus radically new modes of gameplay, I think you’re right that the dichotomy is too simplistic. Pong may have looked radically new, from one perspective, but it grew out of physical types of play which were long familiar. Dungeons and Dragons may have looked radically new, but it was built on a foundation of familiar mechanics (from tabletop war games) and story tropes (from fantasy fiction). SimCity may have looked radically new, but it was built on simulation mechanics that people already found fascinating to think about, even if they hadn’t been quite so “playable.” On the other hand, all of these opened the possibility for rather new kinds of play experiences — and none rewarded playing in previous modes.

For activist games, part of the question may be whether it is worth risking that a new mode may fail (the innovative games we don’t remember, as opposed to those above) in order to explore new approaches to play that embody certain ideas and values. Or, maybe it’s better to use small changes on accepted modes of play (less chance of game failure) and risk that the play lacks a meaningful connection to the ideas and values of creators and players. I’m curious to hear you, if I understand correctly, coming down hard on the incremental side of this question. I’m a strong supporter of explorations of both types, this early in the game.