4. Art Games
art games is an insufficient term to
consider many games, and it is
currently “a stand-in for a yet
unnamed set of movements or
styles, akin to realism of futurism
Ian Bogost
9. Design Fiction
“deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to
suspend disbelief about change... It
means you’re thinking very seriously
about potential objects and services and
try to get people to concentrate on
those – rather than entire worlds or
geopolitical strategies. It’s not a kind of
fiction. It’s a kind of design. It tells
worlds rather than stories”
Bruce Sterling
10. Design Fiction
“deliberate use of diegetic prototypes
to suspend disbelief about change... It
means you’re thinking very seriously
about potential objects and services and
try to get people to concentrate on
those – rather than entire worlds or
geopolitical strategies. It’s not a kind of
fiction. It’s a kind of design. It tells
worlds rather than stories”
Bruce Sterling
With roots in ancient philosophy ‘diegetic’ can
be a rather troublesome word for those outside
media theory. Thankfully design fiction’s
purposes diegesis simply to refer to the world
of the story (and therefore anything that exists
in that world, is diegetic).
Thus it follows that a diegetic prototype is a
prototype that exists within a story world
12. Design Fiction
“deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to
suspend disbelief about change... It
means you’re thinking very seriously
about potential objects and services and
try to get people to concentrate on
those – rather than entire worlds or
geopolitical strategies. It’s not a kind of
fiction. It’s a kind of design. It tells
worlds rather than stories”
Bruce Sterling
Engendering ‘disbelief about change’ is
commensurate with speculative design’s,
upon which design fiction draws, focus on
generating understanding and insights as
opposed to finished products, i.e. its role is:
“not to show how things will be but to
open up a space for discussion”
13. Design Fiction
“So a design fiction is
(1) something that creates a story world, (2) has something being
prototyped within that story world, (3) does so in order to create a
discursive space.”
“Although this definition appears straightforward, complexity
arrives when we consider what something may be”
Lindley and Coulton
14. are games diegetic?
mimesis and diegesis describe ways of
presenting a story. In mimesis, the story is
acted out. In diegesis, the story is narrated.
Mimesis is show. Diegesis is tell.
games can be both diegetic and mimetic
19. Critical Games
thus far the focus of the critical
games created has primarily
been either: critiques of current
events or practices; or critiques
of games themselves
22. Persuasive Technology
B.J Fogg
Captology - reduce a problem so
that it can be addressed through
the promotion of minor behavioural
change for easily understood and
uncontroversial goals.
28. Game
Game Designer Player
Rules
Interaction
Game Design as Rhetoric
Rhetoric of Design
the basic representational mode of
videogames is “procedurality”,
enacted through rule- based
representations and interactions
and, when used to reveal
processes or concepts of another
system, present the player with a
procedural rhetoric
Ian Bogost
37. Framing Speculative Game Design
Present Future
Time
Plausible Possible
Speculative Game Design
should be plausible
Pathos
(empathy)
Ethos
(credibility)
Logos
(logic)
38. Framing Speculative Game Design
Present
Future
Time
Plausible
Possible
Past
Plausible
Possible
Speculative Game Design
should embrace the plurality
of realities of both designers
and players.
39. Framing Speculative Game Design
Speculative Game Design
can encompass both
mimesis and diegesis.
Diegesis
+
Mimesis
43. Framing Speculative Game Design
Speculative Game Design
should utilise rhetoric rather
than captology.
44. Reflection
These strategies are not intended to be used to rank games in
relation to some perceived quality about what may or may not make
a ‘good’ speculative game design, but are to help designers reflect
on the appropriate uses of rhetoric and their responsibilities when
designing such games.