I've been thinking a lot about the role of game design in the broader cultural sense. It feels to me that so far the understanding of what game truly are has not really been understood by the vast majority of gamers. If we consider them from the perspective of propaganda (or message carriers if you will) it is clear to me that what they do is not necessarily the face value. A game about tanks that shoot other tanks is on the surface a very shallow/trite message. but if we instead look at the social interactions of a game and how it shapes our behavioral patterns and problem solving skills it becomes very apparent that even the simplest of games carry a lot of mind altering aspects.

Consider the creation of America's Army (AA) as a recruitment tool, and a well documented and effective one at that. The game has a clear interaction pattern which is the traditional get task, do task, get reward loop (in itself a pretty devious way of teaching hierarchic relationships to the players), but underneath/behind that there is another more devious purpose: normalization. AA normalizes the thought of becoming a recruit by telling the players that what they experience in the game is somehow comparable to what they would experience if they joined the army.

Consider how many games that work under a capitalist accumulation theory of economy. Even if it is disguised as a leveling system in a TTRPG or as a Achievement meta system.

Why do we see so few games that try to break out of the current paradigm of hierarchic and capitalistic hellscape? I am sure we have a lot of game designers that crave something else for us all. So why do we keep making models of the same type of structures that we want to get away from? I am sure we have better imaginations than that. Don't we?

A while back me and some friend made a zine creating a few design challenges for game designers who want to break the mold. Check it out.

https://jocher-symbolic-systems.itch.io/fxck-capitalist-game-design-zine

#gamedesign #capitalism #propaganda #theory #transformativegames #gamesforchange #fuckcapitalistgamedesign #imaginaryfutures #exploratory #creativity

Listen to my radio art pilot I did a couple years back. I was meant to continue it as a series but I've been quite slow in the process. It's been broadcast on Archipel Community Radio. #Radioart, #collage and #storytelling #spokenword have become a way of experimenting with live performance; to bend the forms of performing songs etc.

The story talks about #imaginaryfutures, #dystopia and evokes #blackfeminism

What do you think?

https://soundcloud.com/aben-oada666/countryside-data_grass