Grand Text Auto

What happens to game designers when they don’t know the “right” answers?

This is especially important in situations where designers need to somehow verify crowdsourcing data. What data can we obtain with the resources we have?

Well, what do we have?

1) In the case of our Metadata Games project for Archives, we have a huge collection of photographs.

2) Users who might want to interact with these photographs, and the user accounts they create.

3) The competitive relationships between players that might be fostered within our games.

At Tiltfactor we’re designing a suite of games that inspires users to tag photographs with “expert” data. Using their input, are building a searchable database of terms that users can explore to find the photographs they need. But how should such a database be constructed in order to be searchable? To answer this question we need to decide exactly what we will be sorting.

If you want to sort dates, design a timeline; if you want to sort names, just make an alphabetical list.

We need to tag 64,000 photographs with expert data.

Thousands of people are going to come and help us, some for hours at a time, and we will attract them through the pleasure of play. How can tagging an archive of old photographs ever be an enjoyable experience?

Contemporary designers are more and more mixing play with work, and at Tiltfactor, we’re interested in how this happens, and how one can foster expertise in the process. We’re also interested in how values manifest in these data-driven systems. In making games for the social good, and games that result in real-world contributions, the designer must rely on ideas beyond innovative game mechanics and good old-fashioned playtesting. The data entry system for repositories such as databases need to be so enjoyable, well-organized, and instantly rewarding that people approach the tasks with motivation playfully like… a game.

www.jesperjuul.com
gambit.mit.edu

Juul believes that there’s something missing from academic game studies.

We are beginning to understand that games are not static artifacts. Games are dynamically created and changed by the players who engage with them and the cultures within which they are played. Each play session is a completely different experience with different motivating factors and very different meanings.

Games can be:
-rule based systems that you master
– fictional worlds that you imagine
– social phenomena that you play with other people
– self-expressions that show who you are.

In his 2009 speech at Dartmouth, Jesper Juul argued that the list of games people choose to play is itself a form of self-expression. His “video game literacy” really does exist. People read, experience and cite games like they do printed text. Yet we don’t consider gamers to be ‘well-read’ just quite yet.

Why we don’t spend more time playing games? Why is experiencing games viewed as less beneficial than spending the same amount of time reading a book?