Rules! Drama! Space! - A game design approach to crafting experiences

A make-to-learn, hands-on workshop that teaches how to break down and conceptualize complex digital / physical experiences using a straightforward methodology adapted from game design theory.

Learn how to analyze, describe, and explain experiences as if they were games by breaking them down into their formal, spatial, and dramatic elements. That is the rules they follow, the environment they create and inhabit, and the narratives they weave.

The workshop introduces a framework built on Salen & Zimmerman analysis in "Rules of Play" as expanded by Fullerton's in her "Games Design Workshop”, revised for clarity and a broader array of sources, and including a third category of patterns behind formal and dramatic, that of “spatial” elements. The original models break down games into manageable chunks for design purposes: this revised framework extends the approach to the design of experiences in digital / physical space.

During the workshop, we discuss card games, board games, and videogames, reflect on how they simulate complex environments while presenting players with a closed system devoid of external influences, and use the framework principles and methods to identify what elements we need to focus on, what are they (rules, resources, or mechanics; spatial elements; story elements), their relationships, and their role within the system.

We discuss how these insights capture and represent both the interplay between the elements and the systemic nature of digital / physical experiences; what benefits this understanding brings to day-to-day design practice, and how it can be applied as a part of a hands-on design methodology.

We sketch, we reflect, we learn. Oh, we also play games.

Workshop tickets are sold separately from other conference events.