Paper-prototype socially responsive games with verbs

This is the recipe for a workshop I presented at the Mozilla Festival 2012.

My recipe was forked from the one Paolo Pedercini and Una Lee prepared for the Allied Media Conference, and inspired by Grow-a-Game.

Please take this recipe and try it at home, with your class, club or organization, and share your results with all people upstream.

Introduction

This workshop is about hacking the rules of existing videogames in response to topical issues, and prototyping new games that are vessels of alternative values and messages.

Working in small teams, participants receive two creative constraints:

1. a classic arcade game, such as Super Mario Bros, Pac-man, or Space Invaders
2. a topical issue, such as the financial crisis, global climate change, or digital literacy

The first task is to analyse the game verbs: what actions players can do, how they can interact with game characters or other players, what they should do to win the game, and what they simply can’t do. Participants explore how these verbs express messages and values, ideas and ideologies.

Then they redesign the game so that it is about the issue, using a different set of verbs that reflect the values and views of the team. Participants are encouraged to consider changing the gameplay¹, as well as the goal(s) and narrative of the game.

Each team is provided with a collection of pre-cut paper props ripped from the assigned game, which they use to discuss and prototype alternative gameplays, as opposed to simply re-skin² the game.

Ingredients

To be prepared ahead of the workshop:

1. A short presentation to be delivered in a kamishibai³ fashion, scribbling key concepts on a flip chart as you introduce them to participants, asking them questions and fostering an open discussion. Besides, the hands-on nature of the workshop makes digital slides inappropriate.
2. A set of printed game cards, each of them including a visual reference, a short explanation and a few questions to help teams analyse their game.
3. A set of printed issue cards, each of them including related keywords and an example scenario to stimulate different takes on the issue. Participants can choose to approach the issue in an abstract way, in more geographically or historically specific way or anything in between.
4. A printed brainstorming cheatsheet with tips and questions to help team discussion.
5. A set of printed props for people to use as main movable visual modules when prototyping their new gameplays. Physical paper pieces compel participants to reason in visual and spatial terms. They also allow for a more democratic process, since all team members can rearrange elements as if they were working on a jigsaw puzzle.

Additional materials needed for the paper-prototyping activity:

• large format paper, A2 or bigger
• sharpies in various tints
• post-its in different colours
• scissors
• glue sticks

The elevator pitch

In the joyful chaos of an event like the Mozilla Festival, you need a short and engaging description to attract people and distinguish your workshop from the other 100+ available ones.

As advertised on Lanyrd:

This session will allow you to prototype a videogame starting with something we are all familiar with: verbs! Whether it is running or collecting, shooting or trading, games are driven by verbs. We will look at classic games in terms of verbs and explore how these verbs express messages and values. Then we will hack these games, changing the verbs so that they express our own messages and values.

Method

This is how the workshop unfolds:

1. Start with a short presentation, providing people with a basic theoretical framework and case studies to discuss issues around videogames.
2. Explain the workshop team activity, walking through all steps from the extraction of verbs to the injection of new messages and values into the new game's prototype.
3. Give participants hints to possible outcomes, like PAC-MAN + BULLYING = Pac-Man is a student, bullied by ghosts. Some of them pick on his skin colour, others on his insatiable hunger. In order to defeat the different types of bullies, you need different skills (fruit). Examples are crucial, it seems, for people to grasp what they will work towards.
4. Form teams of 3 to 5 people.
5. Ask each team to pick a random videogame and issue cards. This prevents participants from spending too much time thinking about the game or issue they deem more appropriate. State clearly that the example scenario on the issue card is only an example, but teams can come up with any other scenario where the issue manifests itself.
6. Provide teams with plenty of paper, post-its and sharpies. A couple of participants after the workshop suggested a colour-coding system for this phase (eg: green post-its for verbs that are present, yellow post-its for verbs that are not present, pink for values and so on), to make the final outcomes more readable at a glance.
7. Teams start breaking down the game mechanics into verbs, and think about the implicit or explicit messages that these verbs entail. The focus is on the game at this stage, yet knowing already the issue may help teams consider how it could be fed into the game later on. Or maybe not, so you could consider introducing the issue cards only after teams have analysed their game.
8. After about half an hour, ask each team to quickly present their analyses so far to everyone else. These short mid-session presentations allow teams to compare their thought processes and inform their work.
9. Provide teams with a collection of game props, printed and pre-cut. If you don't cut them, people are less likely to use the props, either to negotiate with the other team members, or to visualize their game concept.
10. Ask teams to explore alternative gameplays, using verbs from their issue, and messages that represent their views. They will then paper-prototype one. This phase should take about an hour.
11. Ask teams to stick their work on a whiteboard or otherwise big support that can accommodate everything they produced, positioning elements so that it can be read as a flow (ie: game + issue = outcome).
12. Each team presents their new game to everyone else. After the workshop people suggested that these final presentations have a 3 minutes constraint, forcing teams to simplify the prototype's gameplay or at least to present a simplified version of their concept.

Outcomes

Three teams took part in the workshop at the Mozilla Festival. These are the game concepts they came up with:

1. MARIO + POWER of MONEY:

Princess Toadstool is in debt, and Mario has to bail her out. The more time passes, the bigger her debt grows. So you set out to gather money and keep up with repayments, while the game keeps throwing moral dilemmas at you: mug people or burgle houses for quick bucks, or go the slower legitimate way of earning money with hard work? This idea sparkled from the thought that actions in the original Mario have no consequences, you keep jumping over turtles and breaking bricks, collecting coins that can't be traded.

2. BOMBERMAN + DIGITAL LITERACY, re-titled NETWORKMAN:

You have Internet connection, but your friends don't. Your first goal is to get them connected, so that you can start building things together. So you set out to find cable and build a physical network, but the network thieves drop bombs to destroy your connections. When you connect another player, they can help you make the network stronger and unlock new challenges to build the Open Web.

3. PAC-MAN + ENERGY:

You (Pac-man) want to be energy efficient, but energy corporations want you to waste it. Your goal is to get out of each level's maze by consuming the least amount of energy (dots), while the shiny gadgets and juicy appliances that are thrown at you to increase your bill. This game subverts the Pac-man gameplay by turning its endless hunger and pointless accumulation into a strategic avoidance.

The party bag

Beyond a couple of hours of playful activities, during the workshop people can:

• develop a critical thinking approach to entertainment commodities
• practice a methodology that can be applied to game design and user experience design in general, using constraints to channel your creative response
• leave with a prototyped concept, which they could develop further, digitally as a videogame or physically as a board game
• organize similar hack-a-game sessions, independently, in the future

Footnotes

Gameplay

The system of rules and the ways players interact with characters and objects. ↩

Re-skin

Change graphic appearances while keeping the mechanics intact ↩

Kamishibai

A form of visual and participatory storytelling that combines the use of hand drawn visuals with the narration of a live presenter. Learn more about Kamishibai ↩