The document discusses designing games for creativity and kindness. It provides an overview of designing for creativity and kindness, presents case studies of games including The Pataphysic Institute and games from the C2Learn project, and offers tips for indie game development. The Pataphysic Institute is described as a game where players can affect each other's moods and cast spells depending on their feelings. Games in the C2Learn project are designed for co-creation and creativity in learning. 4Scribes and Mind Shadows are also discussed as creative story-making games.

1. DESIGNING FOR CREATIVITY AND
KINDNESS IN GAMES
Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari ,
Vaasa Game Days, 9 December 2015

2. OVERVIEW
➤ Design for creativity and
kindness
➤ Case studies
➤ Making game design part of
your life, some tips for indie
game dev

3. ABOUT ME
➤ Game designer, researcher, and indie developer.
➤ Research associate at Institute of Digital Games in Malta, and
at Dept. of Computer and System Sciences at Stockholm
University
➤ Recently founded Otter Play - one person indie studio
➤ Current obsessions are AI Based Game Design, Story Making
Games, and watercolour painting
➤ Past: Game Programmer 2000-02, Liquid Media
Tech Lead, Zero Game Studio, Interactive Institute 2002 - 04
Then: 10+ years of game research & faculty work, mostly in
Game AI & Design.

4. KINDNESS
“helpfulness towards someone in need, not in return for
anything, nor for the advantage of the helper himself,
but for that of the person helped”
Aristotle (translated by Lee Honeycutt). "Kindness". Rhetoric, book 2, chapter 7

5. CREATIVITY
a phenomenon whereby something new and
somehow valuable is formed.
Wikipedia

6. CO-
CREATION
In management&advertising research: Added value
In pedagogy: enhanced learning
In MMO research (wow) – add-ons, developer
integrating good ideas into regular interface.
Here: Players creating actants, entities that can act
within a multiplayer game world.
CO: players + system
The system providing the affordances given for
creating instances that may act within the system
(In the tradition of text based virtual game worlds,
MUDs, and later graphical ones, allowing different
levels of co creation to players. Adding own graphics,
animation, audio, scripting of dialog and behaviour.
Sliding scale of how persistent the player-created
content is, and various methods of editorial control.)
Making things together

7. GAME CASE STUDIES
➤ Pataphysic Institute
➤ Games in the C2Learn Project
➤ 4Scribes
➤ Mind Shadows
seeds
creativity
kindness

8. PATAPHYSIC INSTITUTE

9. HOW PLAYERS DESCRIBE IT*
(Not how I describe it. My description is bound to contain
design intentions, and perhaps not represent what is actually there.)
“In the game you use the characters feelings to cast spells, depending on how you feel,
different spells become available to you. you can affect how others feel by performing
actions such as hugging joking or insulting. long term playing creates relationships
between characters so that the mere presence of another character affects you.” (Player
with test id 16)
“The point of the game is to control the moodswings of your character. The world is full
of the manifestations of different feelings and mindsets and only by interacting with
them/your friends can you "get in the right mood" to counter them. Actions are things
like "hold hand" which would counter a "fear/terror" abomination.” (Player with test id
26)
* When asked, after play-testing: “Picture that you are talking to a friend. Describe how this game is played.”

10. THE PATAPHYSIC INSTITUTE

11. CHARACTER CREATION
Big Five (OCEAN, FFM)
assessed using IPIP NEO

14. MIND MODULE INFO

16. AFFECTIVE ACTIONS

17. ENTITIES:
Colossuses of Confusion
Avatars,NPCs, Single Sentiment
Manifestations, and Compound
manifestations

18. Colossuses of Confusion

19. MIND MAGIC SPELLS

20. MIND MAGIC SPELLS

21. CURSES AND BLESSINGS
➤ Avatars can be affected by the spells Sentiment Curse and
Sentiment Blessing.
➤ Sentiment Curse gives an avatar a strong negative sentiment
that has a zero decay rate.
➤ Example: curse of Guilt.
The way to get rid of this sentiment is to create a
manifestation of the sentiment, a compound manifestation
(CM). If the CM is vanquished, the sentiment disappears.

23. Play Test

24. Play testing
Player 2
Film
Camera 1
Player 1
Film Camer
2
Game
Master
Player 3
In Clients:
-Log files of play (one file for each
avatar)
Camtasia recordings of:
-voice (microphone in headset),
-Face (webcam),
- Actions (taping of screen)

25. SCENARIO 3: PLAYER AUTHORED FOES
GM ask player to curse each other. Cursed player manifests the emotion they
cursed with. Players’ goals:
- defeat the foe using personal spells.
- Use AAs to affect each others moods needed to defeat foe.

26. I TESTED FOR MANY THINGS…
When designing the test and the test scenarios I aimed to gather data on:
➤ Sentiments (relationships whose values are based in previous interactions)
➤ Semi Autonomy – players’ attitude to the control of the avatar
➤ Mood – the summary of the avatars state of mind based on events, controlling the
avatars action potential
➤ Role-playing aspects
➤ Co creation of Manifestations – the main challenge in the play test. This was the
most engaging part of the game playing in the test.

27. WHAT WAS CREATED
The Manifestations players created in the play tests were of four main
categories;
➤ Persons, named according to real-life role (for player), (ex.
“mother”)
➤ difficult situations, (ex “an exam”)
➤ abstract concepts, (ex “blue”) or
➤ fictional entities. (“Goblin of Doom”)
In several cases players brought material into the game that had personal meaning to them. These
meanings were developed further when players saw how their manifestation behaved within
the rule system of the world

29. PLAYERS’ DESCRIPTIONS OF THEIR MANIFESTATIONS

30. FINDINGS
Players assigning meaning
from real lives
Players assigning intentionality to
AI entities of own creation
• Authoring,
• observing, interpreting,
strategizing
• interacting, and
• re-telling
• players in dialog with each
other assigning
intentionality to their
creations
• Viewing CMs as rational,
having own goals (Dennet)
• Creation of narratives that
rationalize behavior
(Sengers)
”I’ll forgive her to oblivion!”
”Look how he ignores you! He made me
feel so useless. Hold his hand!

31. POSSIBLE IMPLICATIONS OF FINDINGS
• Transformation of
problems, seeing them in
new ways.
• Transformative play
(Fullerton)
• Wicked Problem spaces
(Rittel and Webber,
Mateas)
A recipe for player generated
content?
• instantiated for only a small group
who can talk about it while it is
instantiated;
• an authoring interface that is quick
(max 5 min), but still allows
players to utilise a quite elaborate
AI system for specifying the
manifestation's behaviour.
Players assigning meaning
from real lives
Players assigning intentionality to
AI entities of own creation

32. GAMES FOR CO-CREATION
in the C2Learn project

33. The C2Learn project aims to introduce an innovative digital gaming
and social networking environment incorporating diverse tools, the
use of which can foster co-creativity in learning processes in the
context of both formal and informal educational settings.
All games in project are for android tablets, download at:
C2LEARN.EU

34. THE HOUSE OF EMOTION
➤ House of Emotions is a game that
gets you to play with how you and
the others express and interpret
emotions. By playing you will
realise how you and others make
emotive judgements: How do you
express emotion in something you
create? Do you have any control
over how the others understand
your expressed emotions or react to
your creations? House of Emotions
is a multiplayer game which you
can play on your tablet or computer
as part of a group of 2 to 5 players.

35. GUESS WHAT
➤ Guess What is a game that invites
you to guess what is shown in a
picture and generally think
through images, taking into
account the perspectives of other
players. It is a multiplayer game
which you can play on your tablet
or computer as part of a group of
2 to 5 players.

36. ICONOSCOPE
➤ Iconoscope is a game that gets
you to play with visual creativity
and ambiguity. It invites you to
do something quite unusual: to
represent a given concept
through an image that you will
create so that it will not be
obvious to everyone what your
creation represents! Let the
others guess what that image
might stand for and enjoy the
fun!

37. EXPLORE AND EXPAND
➤ The Wizard is asking you to create a
simple conceptual diagram in the
English language. Starting from a
given concept in the centre, try to
think of four other concepts that
are linked to it from a specific
perspective. In reality, the Wizard
has already ‘searched’ the world
and is inviting you to guess
concepts that he has found to be
associated with the given theme, if
you look at it from the specified
perspective.
Your score increases each time
you get it right – by more and
more points at a time, as you are
adding more of the related
words.

38. CREATIVE STORIES
➤ Creative Stories is a game
inviting you to write creatively.
Your aim is to use as much of the
creative advice the Wizard is
giving as possible, so that you
win more points while you are
writing.

39. 4SCRIBES
➤ 4Scribes is a creative
story-making game for
groups of 4 players.
➤ The story starts with a short
starting statement or phrase.
Your objective is to develop
the story together with your
co-players. Playing in turns,
you add a little more to the
story text each time…
➤ At the start, you get some cards,
the ‘Creative Elements’. Each card has a word or short phrase on it.
Every time it is your turn to play, you select to play one of your cards.

40. DESIGN AIMS:
COHERENT STORY
STORY TELLING TOKENS THAT SPARK PLAYERS’ CREATIVITY (CARDS)

41. STORY MAKING GAMES
In story making games players, via game rules, use tokens for narrative play
in order to partake in a playful process that results in told stories (narratives).
Important difference from role playing games:
Players do not act via an avatar or a game persona. Instead,
players act as authors or narrators, collaboratively telling
stories about the story tokens represented in the games

42. EXAMPLES
Story Cubes, Once Upon a time, NanoFictionary, Fiasco, Microscope

43. Story Cubes (Gamewright, 2005)
are a set of nine dice, each with a unique image on each of its six faces, for a total of 54 images.
To play the game, a player rolls all nine dice and creates a story that ties the resulting images
together. Whether this is a game or not is debatable as there isn’t a clear goal – the player could
succeed or fail at making a story, but there is no means to rank the stories against others or
determine a winner.

44. Nanofictionary (Looney Labs, 2002)
Players compete to collect a complete set of
story elements:
➤setting,
➤characters,
➤problem, and
➤resolution.
Once each player has a card of each type,
they all tell their stories that tie the four
together. Players listen to all the stories
and vote on the best one.

45. After selecting a scenario,
players roll dice to
determine
➤ characters,
➤ settings, and
➤ plot points.
They then act out the story
(adding a tilt along the
way), trying to reach the
agreed upon conclusion
while also completing their
individual characters’ goals.
Fiasco (Bully Pulpit Games, 2009)
a role playing game with strong storytelling elements. It is based on the standard
screenwriting tropes common in crime movies.

46. Once Upon a Time (Atlas Games, 1995)
Each player gets a random hand of cards that they need to incorporate into the story being told
collectively by all the players. The cards include story elements like characters, plot twists, and
resolutions. One player begins telling the story, but may pass it along to the next player if they
are no longer able to connect the cards in their hand. Players may also interrupt the current
storyteller if they (the storyteller) mention an element that the player has in their hand. The
goal is to be the first player to use all their cards.

47. Microscope (Lame Mage Productions, 2011)
The story begins with a single sentence, known as a Legacy, that spans the entire story, and players are
tasked to cooperatively fill in the details.
Palettes: each player takes turns writing down a specified number of words, such as objects, ideologies,
concepts, etc. on a ``Yes'' or ``No'' list. (These words will define what concepts players will be able to use at
any time during the storytelling phase and which words they can never use this stories universe.)
A Period consists of a significant event in the time line and can be dark (bad) or light (good). Players are then
tasked to recount the various stories collaboratively that define that period, which as whole serves as the
creative stimulus for the game.

48. DESIGN CHALLENGES OF THE GENRE
1. Inherent tension in the genre between winning a story-making
game and creating a good story through the game.*
2. Changing the players stance - from player-stance to author stance.
3. Ensuring that the tokens and rules help the creative process of the
players.
* Not much written (yet) on the genre, but both Mitchell and Wallis recognise this. Mitchell, A., McGee, K.: Designing storytelling games that
encourage narrative play. In: Interactive Storytelling, pp. 98|-108. Springer (2009),
Wallis, J.: Making games that make stories. Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA
(2007)

49. CHALLENGE: COHERENCE
➤ Dichotomy by
➤ free-form fantasy explorations and coherence
➤ “winning” versus making a good story
Only challenging if the AIM of the design is that it should result
in a ‘good’ story.
➤ Group play, individual styles, that may shoot out into space,
can be moderated by rules. Though the rules themselves can
gear towards ‘winning’ rather than a good story.

50. CHALLENGE:
THE PLAYER AS AN AUTHOR
Many players are used to play in roles, in character. Game
mastering and instructions for play can encourage
➤ Player to add more, new, characters to a scene
➤ Talk/write in 3rd person
➤ Adding objects
➤ seeing things outside the current scene
➤ etc

51. CHALLENGE: HELP PLAYERS’ CREATIVE PROCESS
Common: Combine rules with randomness
and combinatorics to aid players’ creative
process
Ex: assign attributes to suites of cards, and to specific
cards, then pull random ones from pile.

54. MOTIVATION
Enhancing Story Making Games
Consistently Support:
-Player Creativity
-Narrative Coherence
Adopting Computational
Creativity Techniques

55. MOTIVATION
For this work we focus on the word of the card

56. COMPUTATIONAL CREATIVITY CRITERIA
Apply Ritchie’s (2007) Criteria in Story Making Games
Ritchie, Graeme. "Some empirical criteria for attributing creativity to a
computer program." Minds and Machines 17.1 (2007): 67-99.
Novelty
Typicality
Quality

57. COMPUTATIONAL CREATIVITY CRITERIA
Apply Ritchie’s Criteria in Story Making Games
Novelty
Obtain the most distinct card from
the entire set of cards

58. COMPUTATIONAL CREATIVITY CRITERIA
Apply Ritchie’s Criteria in Story Making Games
Typicality
Obtain the most similar card from a
pre-defined set of cards
how similar is this specific artefact to
this sub-group of artefacts

59. STORY MAKING GAMES
➤ Creation of stories through play
➤ Use of stimuli (cards, dice, text ...) during play

60. OUR GAME: 4SCRIBES
A theme is chosen at the beginning
Ex: French Revolution

61. OUR GAME: 4SCRIBES
Each player is dealt a hand of cards

62. OUR GAME: 4SCRIBES
Turn-based – Each player plays a card and writes a continuation
to the story
The warrior
picked up his
mighty
weapon
With a swing of
his weapon he
was able to
defeat the dark
lord and save
the city

63. NOVELTY/TYPICALITY AND 4SCRIBES
Why use Novelty or Typicality in 4 Scribes?
How to use Novelty or Typicality in 4 Scribes?

64. NOVELTY/TYPICALITY AND 4SCRIBES
How?
Think of the metrics as card
dealers

65. NOVELTY/TYPICALITY AND 4SCRIBES
How?
Each metric will deal cards, in
such a way that the cards dealt
maximizes novelty or
typicality

66. NOVELTY/TYPICALITY AND 4SCRIBES
How?
Semantic Difference

67. NOVELTY IN 4SCRIBES
Maximize semantic
difference between all cards
in the card database

68. NOVELTY IN 4SCRIBES
Compare semantic
difference between each
card and all cards in the
database
Get card that maximizes semantic
difference

69. TYPICALITY IN 4SCRIBES
Minimize semantic difference
between a pre-defined set of
cards

70. TYPICALITY IN 4SCRIBES
Compare semantic difference
between each card in the
database and each card in a
pre-defined set of cards.
Get card that minimizes semantic
difference

71. DEALING CARDS
For each player deal a metric selected card

72. NOVELTY/TYPICALITY AND 4SCRIBES
Why?
Challenge Player
Creativity
Keep it Fresh
Thematically coherent
as possible

73. C2LEARN RESOURCES
Knowledge-base about creativity and co-creation: c2learn.eu
Are you interested in the source code of our ‘behind-the-scenes’ technologies? Links
to the GitHub repository:
➤ C2Assistants services:
https://github.com/institutedigitalgames/c2assistants
➤ Semantic Reasoning Tools Suite:
https://github.com/CRU-NCSRD/Semantic-Reasoning-Tools
➤ Diagrammatic Reasoning Tools Suite:
https://github.com/CRU-NCSRD/Diagrammatic-Reasoning-Tools
➤ Emotive Reasoning Tools Suite:
https://github.com/CRU-NCSRD/Emotive-Reasoning-Tools
➤ Creativity Profiling Server:
https://github.com/CRU-NCSRD/CPS

76. MIND SHADOWS
Mind Shadows is a game of
kindness.
In this board game, you and
one or two friends together
find ways to overcome
Shadows - real-world
problems or concepts that you
approach playfully. You give
each other super-powers that
represent your strengths in the
real world.

77. You monitor each other’s
wellbeing, finding ways to each
other happy, and lending each
other support when low. The
shadow will fights that all the
way, but by playing creatively
you can reduce the negative
emotion and the significance of
the Shadow and win the game.
Photo of prototype

79. You play with supportive social
actions, while the shadow uses
destructive ones. You can author
new support actions as needed,
to make new types of actions
that affects both the other
players, and the shadow.

82. During play a story-
pile is created, helping
you to keep track of
who did what, and so
that you, in the end of
the game have a
summary of how you
jointly approached
your problem.

83. In the end: pick the best new actions to become part of your play-deck,
personalising it, and making it possible for one friends support action to help
another friend, in a future game.

84. KINDNESS
LEADS TO
KINDNESS“helpfulness towards someone in need, not in return for anything, nor for the advantage of
the helper himself, but for that of the person helped”
Aristotle
At the end of play test #13,
having overcome a shadow of
pain “The one who is let-down”

85. KINDNESS
Player actions of kindness in Mind Shadows:
➤ monitoring the co-players states of mind,
➤ giving co-players personalised super powers,
➤ by card selection diminishing negative emotions on the others
player board, and increasing positive ones
➤ thinking constructively around how the co-players’ Shadow
can be overcome or coped with.

86. CURRENTLY WORK WITH MIND SHADOWS BOARD GAME
➤ making nicer boards in colour to make a
print-on-demand board game
➤ and considering it for tablets
➤ having tests of a black and white version
(for easy print out)
Would you like to play?
Give me your e-mail and
I’ll send you the BW print version!

88. MAKE GAME
DESIGN PART
OF YOUR
LIFE

89. MAKE INDIE GAMES
➤ Jam!
➤ Make!
➤ Reach out!
➤ Deploy!
➤ Maintain!
Have fun
making Make fun for
others
= upwards
spiral of
fun!

90. CREATE WITH YOUR CLOSE ONES
Gather friends and design together
Participate in Game Jams
Test the games with family and friends

91. IN IDEATION: FOCUS ON GOOD DESIGN
In the ideation process: rapid prototyping
on paper
Do’s Dont’s
Do not strive for perfection and
polish - you will likely reiterate
and throw away a lot
Focus on game mechanics
Test the game mechanics - are
they fun? Do your players get the
experience you you are aiming
for?
Don’t work too long on your
own - your risk polishing/
perfecting parts that might not
be enjoyable for the players
If you test a paper prototype - simulate
in the test that the interactions are on
your intended platform (mobile, tablet,
PC etc)
Don’t forget to have fun yourself!
If your work becomes a grind
- its an alarm bell!

92. PAPER PROTOTYPING AND GAME-JAMMING

93. IDEATION TOOLS

96. MAKE THE GAME!
There is a myriad of
tools - there are the
ones that I use

98. NAN DECK

99. PRINT ON DEMAND BOARD GAMES

100. GET IT OUT THERE
Players of your game will be the games’ spokes persons
➤ pictures and musings about the design in social media
➤ Bring the prototype with you wherever you go
… do this as soon as you have an idea about the ‘gist’ of the game, when you can describe it
in a few sentences.
Once it is playable:
➤ Kickstarter, Patreon, etc
➤ start-up support networks, such as Startup Grind or West Coast Startup
➤ Indiecade
➤ Sites specific to the genre of your game (such as Board Game geek if it is a board game)
➤ to people interested in the topic of your game - who might not be exposed to games
otherwise.

103. THE FUTURE
is what we make, right now,
right here

104. ENDING WORDS
➤ Make sure to have fun, and to
do what is meaningful (to
you) when making games.
That way it can stay/become a
part of your life.
➤ The design of a game governs
what a player DO when
playing: as designers we can
encourage behaviours - such
as kindness, such as creativity.
➤ It is up to us, as individuals,
to create the future of games
and play.

105. THANK YOU FOR
LISTENING
Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari
Contact: info@otter-play.com