Designing a Feel for the Game

Designing a Feel for the Game

A Guide to Making Play Meaningful

von Steve Wilcox

“ Designing A Feel for the Game  is an important intervention in the world of game design. It offers a way to engage affective and emotional labor in a way that propels gaming forward. Wilcox does an excellent job showing how exploring feeling in games can help make design better, play more engaging, and mechanics more ethically sound and responsive to gamers.”

–Kishonna L Gray, Professor, School of Information, University of Michigan, USA; author of  Intersectional Tech

This book offers a practical method for making meaningful and memorable games by design. Drawing on over a decade of teaching critical game design, Steve Wilcox translates the social and cognitive science of meaning-making into applied lessons and concepts for designing a feel for your  game. Across eight chapters and a range of topics—including embodied cognition, anthropology, social psychology, affective science, persuasive design, and applied ethics—readers will learn that the mechanisms we already rely on to make sense of and give meaning to the world around us are the very tools we need to make games that feel meaningful and memorable to play.

Designing a Feel for the Game features practical lessons illustrated with various examples from digital, analog, and live action games. Each chapter includes numerous applied activities developed and refined over a decade of teaching, including individual and group exercises as well as a major design challenge.

“ Designing A Feel for the Game  is an important intervention in the world of game design. It offers a way to engage affective and emotional labor in a way that propels gaming forward. Wilcox does an excellent job showing how exploring feeling in games can help make design better, play more engaging, and mechanics more ethically sound and responsive to gamers.”

–Kishonna L Gray, Professor, School of Information, University of Michigan, USA; author of  Intersectional Tech

This book offers a practical method for making meaningful and memorable games by design. Drawing on over a decade of teaching critical game design, Steve Wilcox translates the social and cognitive science of meaning-making into applied lessons and concepts for designing a feel for your  game. Across eight chapters and a range of topics—including embodied cognition, anthropology, social psychology, affective science, persuasive design, and applied ethics—readers will learn that the mechanisms we already rely on to make sense of and give meaning to the world around us are the very tools we need to make games that feel meaningful and memorable to play.

Designing a Feel for the Game features practical lessons illustrated with various examples from digital, analog, and live action games. Each chapter includes numerous applied activities developed and refined over a decade of teaching, including individual and group exercises as well as a major design challenge.

Steve Wilcox, PhD, is an associate professor of Game Design and Development in the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada. He has over a decade of experience using social and cognitive science to teach aspiring game designers how to design meaningful, memorable, and engaging analog and digital games. His accredited pro-social learning games are part of the continuing professional development programs administered by the College of Family Physicians of Canada and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. As a researcher Wilcox focuses on mobilizing knowledge through play, with publications on cognitive play and social cognition, play and persuasion, and game design as a form of intercultural communication.

Highlights

• Foregrounds the science of sensemaking, helping designers purposefully create games that feel meaningful to players Provides design exercises for use in classroom teaching and/or the development of individual designers’ practices Focuses on the two core questions of why do we design games in the ways that we do, and how best to play with purpose

Über den Autor

Steve Wilcox, PhD, is an associate professor of Game Design and Development in the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada. He has over a decade of experience using social and cognitive science to teach aspiring game designers how to design meaningful, memorable, and engaging analog and digital games. His accredited pro-social learning games are part of the continuing professional development programs administered by the College of Family Physicians of Canada and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. As a researcher Wilcox focuses on mobilizing knowledge through play, with publications on cognitive play and social cognition, play and persuasion, and game design as a form of intercultural communication.