Practical Considerations for Values-Conscious Pervasive Games

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Jerrett Adam Howell Peter de Beer Koos
2022 DiGRA ’22 – Proceedings of the 2022 DiGRA International Conference: Bringing Worlds Together

Pervasive games are a genre that blur reality and fiction by creating unique experiences that are played in and affected by real life. Because of their effective blend of reality and fiction, the genre has become popular for creating serious games that, among other things, explore the values of players and their communities. While value exploration is often discussed in the context of subgenres like alternate reality and live-action roleplaying games, little literature exists that discusses value exploration in the genre of pervasive games more broadly. As such, this paper amalgamates practices across pervasive game types that facilitate value exploration through play. These practices are then presented as design considerations alongside practical techniques that designers can implement to encourage playing with values. These considerations are presented to provide designers with practical ways to make their games more meaningful to and representative of increasingly diverse player populations.

 

Creating Meaningful Games through Values-Driven Design Principles

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Jerrett Adam Howell Peter Dansey Neil
2020 DiGRA ’20 – Proceedings of the 2020 DiGRA International Conference: Play Everywhere

The interactivity present in games makes them useful vehicles for the exploration of various concepts outside of “finding the fun”. Empathy games – games that are developed to educate and encourage empathetic responses from players about a scenario – are one such example. However, the notion of empathy game design overlaps with other tangential design theories like emotional game design, radical game design, and critical game design. These theories often overlap but are difficult to discover because of their different naming conventions. To assist designers, this paper discusses design principles from these and other similar game design frameworks. Using these, it presents a consolidated set of design principles and considerations that can be applied to game projects. These principles are presented to inspire future design work to explore lesser-known experiences, in the hopes of being more inclusive of, and more meaningful to, a diverse player base.