2. Patrick Jagoda
“Conceptual Games, or the Language of Video Games”
“Concepts can operate as constructivist
mechanics—in the specialist sense of ‘game
mechanics,’ the verbs or actions that a player
enacts and experiments with in order to
participate in and alter the state of play”
TheValueofConcepts
3. FourBigConcepts
• Play
• Why does play matter?
• Games & Videogames
• How do games work?
• What do games do?
• Tools & Platforms
• Game engines, Twine, VR,
ARGs
• Change & Activism
• Cultural, social, political,
technological, personal, and
institutional change
4. Playand/asLearning
“Play is the foundation of learning, creativity, self-
expression, and constructive problem-solving. It’s how
children wrestle with life to make it meaningful.”
Susan Linn
Contemporary American psychiatrist
“All meaningful, organic, and foundational learning is at
heart playful and ludic.”
Marcelo Suárez-Orozco
Contemporary American professor of education
“Play is our brain's favorite way of learning.”
Diane Ackerman
Contemporary American author
6. Anna Anthropy, “What Is It Good For?”
Rise of the Videogame Zinesters (2012)
Provides a broad definition of game:
A game is an experience
created by rules.
7. It is easier to start talking about
games as systems, which by
definition “are groups of interrelated
elements that work together to form
a complex whole”
Games as Systems
8. “Exploring dynamics, relationships, and systems”
Games can be simulations of existing systems or
original systems designed by game designer
Systems implies the interaction (or ongoing
interaction) between a set of rules
What are games good at?
Anna Anthropy
12. What are the common elements of
games?
• Formal elements: elements that
produce structure to the experience of
games
• Dramatic elements: elements that
translate formal elements into
emotional connection and/or
meaningful significance
Tracy Fullerton, “The Structure of
Games,” Game Design Workshop
13. Formal Elements of Games
•Players
•Objectives
•Procedures
•Rules
•Resources
•Conflict
•Boundaries
•Outcome
Anything else?
Platform/Hardware
14. Dramatic Elements of Games
•Challenge
•Play
•Premise
•Character
•Story
Anything else?
Graphics/Visual Design
Affect/Sensation/Game Feel
16. “Instead of focusing on how games work, I
suggest that we turn to what they do—how
they inform, change, or otherwise participate
in human activity…Such a comparative video
game criticism would focus principally on the
expressive capacity of games and true to its
grounding in the humanities, would seek to
understand how video games reveal what it
means to be human.”
Ian Bogost, “Comparative Video Game Criticism.” Games and
Culture 1, no. 1 (2006): 41–46.
How Games Work vs. What Games Do
