Date of Submission
6-2023
Type of Work
Exegesis and Creative Work
Principal Supervisor
Dr Toby Wren
Associate Supervisor
Dr Glen Spoors
Keywords
Practice-Led Game Design; Board Game; Designing Game Systems; Cultivating Player Emotional Intelligence; Emotional Literacy; Emotional Psychology
Audience
General (G) - suitable for everyone
Abstract
When designing a game to be engaging there are principles that a designer will follow to achieve this, it is common for the narrative or realism of a scene to be compromised to enable engagement. What if the engagement of the player was equally weighted with another design goal? I present the game design practice of system translation, a practice of translating a lived world complex system into a game system by adhering to the structure of a lived world complex system while still abiding by game design principles. This research was conducted through the practice-led action research of developing a tabletop roleplaying game using system translation of emotional psychology and literacy. After completion of four iterative designs using this process it was found that the practice holds capacities for generating unique gameplay structures that leverage the nuanced complexity of the original systems. These structures blur the line between entertaining and educational games by delivering informative experiences through the tactile process of system interaction.
Recommended Citation
Donovan, T. (2023). System Translation, Life as Play: A Creative Practice for Expressing Complex System as Game Systems [Masters dissertation, SAE University College]. Creo.