Presentation in the panel "Social Spaces", at the Aalto University in Helsinki on Friday Sep 30th 2011. http://www.designsonelearning2011.com/

1. wey-han.tan@uni-hamburg.de
http://blogs.epb.uni-hamburg.de/metagames
The Breaking of the Circle
Playing with, through, against medial boundaries

3. Narratives | „Why?“
Text
„Doom“ „Ultima Underworld II - Labyrinth of Worlds“
(Id 1993) (Origin 1993)
[Juha Keinänen (DoeL 2011): „Good guys are handsome, bad guys are ugly.
Is there an application in education?“]
[Paul Lowe (DoeL 2011): „The more you know the more you see.“]
[Stephanie Rothenburg (DoeL 2011): WoW embodies the capitalistic dream.]

4. Rules | „How?“
Learning games created by teachers-to-be
Start
(Ignorance) Finish
(Knowledge)
?
? ?
? „Crossing the
fairy woods“
„Spelunking the
cave of wisdom“
„Climbing the mountain
of knowledge“
or just „School“ ?

5. Narratives | cultural inscription
„In elementary school kids learn about the
actions of the Continental Army that won our
freedoms under George Washington and the
Army's role in ending Hitler's oppression.
Today they need to know that the Army is
engaged around the world to defeat terrorist
forces bent on the destruction of America and
our freedoms.“
„America's Army. FAQ – Parentʼs Info“, United States Army (2003-2004)
„Americaʻs Army“,
US Army (2002, 2003, 2009)
"In (...) World War II games, where is the
liberation of the concentration camps? I
[Lauri Tammi: Is there am looking for the motivation rather than
historical accuracy in just shooting a bunch of human figures."
„Medal of Honor“?] David Franzoni, Screenwriter, on the DICE-Convention 2006

6. Rules | explicitly implicit
„Three-Learning-Theories-Mini-Games“,
Tan (2009)
„Ayiti - The Cost of Life“,
Global Kids (2006) [Salvatore Iaconesi:
How to patent rules to
create 20 Millionen Chairs?
What is the product?
The rules or the chairs?]

7. Magic Circles | receding borderlines
Gamification Ludic Design
Serious Games Beyond Usability
Game Based
Playsuasion
Assessment
Educational Alternate
Reality Games
“(…) the interference is drawn that any
contamination by ordinary life runs the risk of
corrupting and destroying its very nature.”
- Caillois (2001): “Men, Play and Games”

8. ‚Game‘ | authored environments
decontex- toying, ‚playing‘,
tualisation setting rules and ‚gaming‘
narratives
First order gaming within the game
• Liberating, non-serious virtuality
• Meaningful, expressive choices
• Experiment, repetition and variation

9. ‚Play‘ | re-interpreted givens
decontex- toying, ‚playing‘,
tualisation setting rules and ‚gaming‘
narratives
Second order gaming targeting the game
• Liberating, non-serious virtuality
• Meaningful, expressive choices
• Experiment, repetition and variation

10. Metagaming | rules & narratives
Skinning / Modding Emergent Gameplay

11. transmediality/pervasivity | abduction
The hijacked thread - „digital borderliners“
"(2) The form of the culture of the next society isn't
balance anymore, but the system. Identities can't be
gained from letting disruptions fade out, but that
deviancies will be amplified and will be upgraded to
niches. Equilibrations are empty states; they wait for
the next disturbance. (…)"
"(7) The art of the next society is light and smart, loud
and unbearable. It evades and binds with wit; it
hassles and tempts. Its images, stories and sounds
attack and deny having done so."
„Futurecapability: 15 theses for a coming society“, Dirk Baecker
(2011) (translated)
Ben Jammin vs. Ben Zol
17 Posts in 6 days
13.000 letters / 2000 words / 4 pages „May I ask what's happening here?“ - ThorstenA
http://www.thorstena.de/?p=4143

12. transmediality/pervasivity | abduction
„Hardliner - Keine Zeit für Helden?!“,
Jens Wiemken (2000)
“When the three expansions of pervasive games
are taken to extremes, the magic circle starts to
„Cruel 2 B Kind“, lose its meaning as a contractual boundary
McGonigal & Bogost (2006) between ludic and ordinary. Extreme temporal
expansion leads to ordinary life becoming a
pervasive game. The same happens with space if
the ordinary world is seen primarily as a game
world: There cannot be a game world without the
ordinary world. And, finally, a game where
everyone is only an unaware participant is no
longer a game.”
Montola et al. (2010) „Pervasive Games“

13. Unusability | wrong interface
„September
12th
-­‐
A
toy
world“,
Gonzalo
Frasca
(2003)

14. Unusability | unbearable ‚realism‘
„Violence.
„The Ultimate War The Roleplaying Game of
Simulation Game“, Egregious and Repulsive
David Wong (2007) Bloodshed“,
Greg Costikyan (1999),

15. Unusability | wrong narrative or rules
Patent drawing for
„Starpower“, „The Landlordʻs
Gary Shirts (1969) Game“,
Elizabeth Magie
(1905)
„The University of Hamburg Game“,
Tan (2011)
“Suppose we could admit that most of us act as we do
because of our places in the system. Suppose we [Ben Betts: going against
turned our energy from blaming each other to blaming
the structure of the games we play.”
functional fixedness]
Meadows (2004): “Why would anyone want to play Starpower?”

16. 2nd order gaming | some assumptions
• The more ubiquitious the gameworlds become, the
stronger the desire to appropriate the actual possibility
space for interpretation and action.
• The richer the range of alternative medial modes of
representation, the more tempting to transfer content.
• The more familiar and meaningful the gameworlds
appear, the stronger is the potential for irritation,
sabotage, or perturabtion.
Thus (educational) game design may follow two roads.
Deliver the content as challenging and balanced as can be, to draw the
player smoothly into the confines and safety of the magic circle.
Or hint on the magic circle, given rules and narratives as something
expandable, mobile, artificial, modifiable, where the decision to take
the game serious 'as is' is up to the player - and at oneʻs own ‚riskʻ.

17. Paradoxes and questions
• How can one encode the failing of the code
into a medium, in this case into a game?
• How can one encode the challenge to change
the code by the user?
• How can one motivate the user to endure the
irritation and the consequential strenous re-
generation, testing and tuning of a new code?
• Is it possible at all to turn the above into an
educational method? Is this desirable?