Thinking with games

In her exploration of how ‘objects can be good to think with’ Nina
Wakeford suggests how:
62 Daniel Ashton
A sociological narrative can be offered which positions key-chains as objects
through which to talk to designers about sociological concepts which might
otherwise be difficult to introduce in other ways.
(Wakeford 2003: 234)
My concern was in some respects to talk about ‘sociological’ concepts such
as identity and relationships with technology within the wider context
of my research. In terms of this article, the explicit focus is on expanding
imaginaries. Wakeford’s approach, based around the artefact as a way of
‘creating collaborative discussions’ (Wakeford 2003: 235), was adopted
using ‘strange’ games to make design practices ‘strange’ and as a catalyst
for discussion. Harold Garfinkel’s breaching experiments described by
Lucy Suchman underpin this method:
Within ethnomethodology, the idea that objects are self-evident has been
developed through studies in a variety of areas. Garfinkel’s notorious
‘breaching experiments’ were aimed at rendering mundane settings and
their furnishings strange in the interest of recovering the members’ methods
through which they were made intelligible.
(Suchman 2005: 388)
As Suchman further outlines in relation to her own research:
My starting place with respect to the audience was to work at making the
machine, so familiar to them, strange in such a way that they could begin to
grasp the nature of the user’s experience in encountering it for the first time.
(Suchman 2005: 388)
In selecting games such as September 12th (Powerful Robot Games 2003),
Super Columbine Massacre Role Playing Game (SCMRPG) (Ledonne 2005)
and those of Molleindustria (Molleindustria, n.d.) for discussion with
games design students, my aim in one respect was to address the meeting
of game design, the familiar and the more unfamiliar. Insofar as these
games are explicitly politically underpinned, they raise questions about the
reach of expanding imaginaries and how they are negotiated by and may
resonate with students.
Whilst thus far only two ‘thinking with games’ sessions have been conducted,
the findings emerging from these one-on-one sessions of approximately
forty five minutes are provocative. The sessions were a revealing
contrast to the focus group data I had collected in that a detailed threeway
exchange between the student, the game on the screen and myself
developed. A detailed discussion of these games is unfortunately not possible
here (see Ashton 2007) and I would encourage the reader to consult
the games first-hand. In turn, the student comment ‘it’s a weird concept to
be honest with you [. . .] obviously games are supposed to be fun’ (interview
on September 12th) points to the departure these games seemed to
present. This was not strictly the case and SCMRPG had been encountered
in the context of their course by one student: ‘this was introduced with the
whole issue of videogame violence and how does it affect society and does
Thinking with games: exploring digital gaming imaginaries and values in higher . . . 63
it have an impact?’ (interview). SCMRPG, this account suggests, is introduced
as part of a specific debate related to digital games culture rather
than to explore design imaginaries and ‘make strange’ as I sought to do.
When I pursued how SCMRPG touched with those students’ design experiences
and their own practices they replied, ‘if you look at the artwork –
we’re looking at 2D images, 2D assets – this is the kind of stuff we are
doing for that MMO [Massively Multiplayer Online] game, 2D assets like
that, we could make a game like this in 2 months’ (interview). In terms of
technical capability and competence the game was familiar. It was through
unpacking how the game form and political messages of these games are
constituted together that further perspectives emerged.
That game form and the political message are intricately intertwined is
made clear by the designer of the Molleindustria Tuboflex game exploring
labour conditions. Paolo Pedercini (2006) states, ‘we thought we could
describe the intolerability of these labour conditions using a frustrating
random-level structure instead of classic arcade linearity’. Similarly, the
choice of graphics and representation are equally important, with
Pedercini describing them as ‘an anti 3D statement’ (email interview). The
contrasting perspectives on this intricate meshing of form and content are
brought out clearly in two comments on September 12th. The first is a
transcription taken during play:
See now if I’m killing these guys here, then I’m killing civilians as well, is
that right? Now a game like this . . . What the hell! People are turning into
terrorists because I bombed them! Yeah, well, a game like this just makes me
want to hate America (interview with the author).
This quote shows a perspective that is radically different from another
student’s: ‘I don’t really pay any notice to the war in Iraq. I just click and
see what happens’ (interview). Both reveal how students engage with
game mechanics and content, and how assumptions on each of these are
tested or not. In one case, the student makes the connection between the
mechanics of the game and the message and motivation of the game with
regard to the ‘war on terror’. In the second, the focus on exploring the
mechanics and seeing how the game works is of much more pressing
interest than ‘narrative’ or message.
Upon reflection, my input at times verged on what Sara Bragg (2007:
59) refers to as a ‘narrative of enlightenment’ and may have conveyed that
the students ‘lacked the kind of critical discourse’ to understand these
games and why I introduced them. In relation to September 12th, a student
suggested ‘a game like this shouldn’t have used rockets [. . .] I’d do a sniper
personally’ (interview). I went on to suggest that would move away from
the ‘reflection on collateral damage’ and the implications for those in the
target area. This was agreed by the student and whilst prompting further
discussion of game mechanics and the broader political stance, reinforced
my position as an ‘expert’ on the game. Similarly when another student
described how the game weapon was ‘re-loading’, my immediate ‘in-theknow’
prompt was to highlight how the lag was to illustrate the practical
constraints affecting weapons compared to weapons in digital games.
64 Daniel Ashton
Given that my interest was in the negotiation of ‘subjugated knowledges’
(Bragg 2007: 50) and politicized game forms, my approach should have
emphasized particular political messages less. My involvement was just
one aspect alongside a vast array of personal predilections and contextual
factors that no doubt shaped the students’ engagements with these games.
These also include the context with which they are introduced. For
instance, the same student who explored the link between game design
motivations, design mechanics and wider political message was seemingly
not attuned to these factors in terms of SCMRPG when the game was presented
in a specific way:
I think [the designer] used [the technology] well [in] the way he has implemented
it. But then again it’s not about, these kind of games, it’s not about
the technology it’s about the moral story and issue behind it (interview with
the author).
This comment points to the focus in this article and the tensions around the
interconnections of technology, such as design affordances and mechanics,
and political and ‘moral’ issues. These are questions of what is negotiated,
what is ignored and what is overlooked in encounters with certain selected
examples.