{"id":78,"date":"2008-10-28T13:42:54","date_gmt":"2008-10-28T18:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/games\/?p=78"},"modified":"2013-09-26T14:46:44","modified_gmt":"2013-09-26T19:46:44","slug":"profound-games-metaphors-to-convey-meaning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/2008\/10\/28\/profound-games-metaphors-to-convey-meaning\/","title":{"rendered":"Profound games: metaphors to convey meaning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href='http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/games\/files\/2008\/10\/loadgame_akrasia_03.jpg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/games\/files\/2008\/10\/loadgame_akrasia_03-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"Akrasia - euphoria\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-79\" \/><\/a>At last night&#8217;s monthly meetup, Doris Rusch shared with us the game her GAMBIT team built this past summer (Doris was the product owner). See <a href=\"http:\/\/gambit.mit.edu\/updates\/2008\/09\/akrasia_-_a_game_based_on_an_a_1.php\">Doris&#8217;s own writeup of Akrasia<\/a> &#8212; a game about addiction. Her presentation largely covered the points she made on her blog post, but here are some major takeaways from her experience:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A rhetorical game should have a clear perspective: something specific to say.<\/li>\n<li>When developing a game around a vision, meaning must precede mechanics &#8212; in contradiction to the usual approach to game development.<\/li>\n<li>In playtesting and iteration, it&#8217;s important for the keeper of the vision to hold the team to the message rather than just respond to player feedback. The goal isn&#8217;t merely to get the game to &#8220;work;&#8221; if it&#8217;s to succeed at the core theme, it must hew to it as well.<\/li>\n<li>One of the major questions that arose is: How do we know that the game is &#8220;successful&#8221;? (1) When players &#8220;get&#8221; what the game is about, or (2) When they &#8220;get&#8221; the experience? Ultimately, Doris concluded that the game need not be understood in the way the creators intend &#8212; &#8220;Interpretive richness is important for profundity.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Several of us at the meetup had played with the game in beta state during the summer and were excited to see how it turned out. It&#8217;s worth trying &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/gambit.mit.edu\/loadgame\/akrasia.php\">download Akrasia here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At last night&#8217;s monthly meetup, Doris Rusch shared with us the game her GAMBIT team built this past summer (Doris was the product owner). See Doris&#8217;s own writeup of Akrasia &#8212; a game about addiction. Her presentation largely covered the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/2008\/10\/28\/profound-games-metaphors-to-convey-meaning\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1658,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[113393],"tags":[2346,910,3403,3404,13248,434],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archival","tag-addiction","tag-development","tag-meaningful-games","tag-metaphor","tag-review","tag-rhetoric"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1658"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":426,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/games\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}