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Intentionally Broken Game Design and the Art of "Deputizing" Players
Why spend months debugging networking code or carefully balancing complex systems when it can be so quick and easy to develop fun multiplayer games? Digital games need not be treated like computational "systems" existing only inside the computer. They can also be viewed as "festive contexts" where players improvise their own rules. In this talk, researcher and developer, Douglas Wilson, discusses several of his indie party games. Drawing lessons from traditional folk games, design research, and precedents in other media forms, this session argues that deliberately silly, broken, and otherwise "incomplete" games can nurture a kind of self-motivated performative play.
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