City Games: Up and Down and Sideways on the Ladder of Abstraction
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Like games and everyday life, games and cities have been intersecting in two primary ways: modelling the city in an abstract view from above, with planning games and urban simulations, and transforming people's everyday urban experiences and behaviors with playful interventions on the ground. Neither one, this talk argues, has been particularly successful in creating lasting improvements in citizen's well being. To accomplish this, we need to take game design seriously and look sideways at the messy middle between map and territory, the processes in which one is translated into the other (or not). My keynote at ISAGA 2017 in Delft, NL, July 10, 2017.
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City Games: Up and Down and Sideways on the Ladder of Abstraction
- 1. city games Up and Down and Sideways on the Ladder of Abstraction Sebastian Deterding (@dingstweets) c b
- 2. how can games and play facilitate wellbeing in cities?
- 4. Why am I even here?
- 6. “The most powerful way to gain insight into a system is by moving between levels of abstraction. Many designers do this instinctively. But it's easy to get stuck on the ground, experiencing concrete systems with no higher-level view. It's also easy to get stuck in the clouds, working entirely with abstract equations or aggregate statistics.” bret victor, 2011
- 8. two stuck and disconnected levels of abstraction
- 9. two stuck and disconnected ways of seeing the city
- 10. chapter 1 Big City Games
- 14. the city as a simulation game
- 15. … soon to be real practice in the “smart city”
- 17. data model = reality
- 20. educated elites pointing down at clean, docile maps in comfy, well-lit rooms shielding them from the less-so city life outside.
- 22. Disembodied utilitarian 3rd person view from above on a simplified representation of infrastructures and resource flows through them
- 24. “god games”: model train play as power fantasy
- 26. the control room fantasy
- 27. design fictions
- 28. populated by render ghosts
- 29. An ephemeral vision forever removed in a proximate future
- 34. rendering reality legible and thus, manipulable
- 36. … means rendering reality less resilient and livable
- 37. MAPS IGNORE & DESTROY THE LOCAL FABRIC
- 40. le corbusier, la ville radieuse
- 41. costa & niemeyer, brasilia
- 45. “The issue is not whether it's a good city or a bad city. It's just not a city. It doesn't have the ingredients of a city: messy streets, people”
- 46. “The point of cities is multiplicity of choice. ... Intricate minglings of different uses in cities are not a form of chaos. On the contrary, they represent a complex and highly developed form of order.” jane jacobs, 1961
- 47. communing
- 48. mutual presence, watch & help
- 49. appropriation
- 50. “placemaking”
- 51. chapter 2 Small Street Play
- 53. constructed situation, “a moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambiance and a game of events” psychogeography, “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals” situationist international, 1957-61
- 54. big urban game, 2003
- 56. massively multiplayer soba, 2008
- 57. drift deck, 2008
- 58. koppelkiek, 2009
- 60. carpe diem, 2017
- 61. the city as parkour play
- 63. Embodied 1st person experience of lived street fabric of people interacting with each other and their environs, its subjective uses and meanings
- 69. chromaroma, 2010: switch more to bike and feet!
- 70. car-based, single-use zoning designs physical activity out of everyday life
- 71. gentrification: the game, 2010
- 75. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision
- 76. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision Fictive Reductive Fabricless
- 77. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision Fictive Reductive FabriclessEphemeral Exclusive Decoy
- 78. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision Fictive Reductive FabriclessEphemeral Exclusive Decoy
- 80. play the city
- 82. “Now that game play is over, the website has converted to a post-game state where you can see comments people have left and summary stats on player responses.” participation is tokenist
- 84. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision Fictive Reductive FabriclessEphemeral Exclusive Decoy
- 85. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision Fictive Reductive FabriclessEphemeral Exclusive Decoy
- 86. how to design for appropriation?
- 88. “When designing tools for play – underspecify!” kars alfrink, 2008
- 91. “Homo Ludens will demand, firstly, that he responds to his need for playing, for adventure, for mobility... Homo Ludens himself will seek to transform, to recreate, those surroundings, that world, according to his new needs. ... We would arrive at a new kind of urbanization ... New Babylon where, under one roof, with the aid of moveable elements, a shared residence is built; a temporary, constantly remodeled living area; a camp for nomads on a planetary scale.” constant nieuwenhuys, 1974
- 92. fun palace, 1961
- 93. “Its form and structure, resembling a large shipyard in which enclosures such as theatres, cinemas, restaurants, workshops, rally areas, can be assembled, moved, re- arranged and scrapped continuously ... Choose what you want to do – or watch someone else doing it… Try starting a riot or beginning a painting – or just lie back and stare at the sky.” cedric price, 1964
- 94. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision Fictive Reductive FabriclessEphemeral Exclusive Decoy
- 95. the action office, 1964
- 96. “#1: Forgiving Principle: We must be allowed to change our minds. The complexity of organizational environments coupled with the unpredictable course of future directions requires a forgiving behavior in facility design. #2: Grace with Change: A facility needs to change with ease. #3: On-line Planning and Expression: The individual can participate in goal setting and thus behave like a manager at any level. Users are often the best judges of what works.” robert probst, 1964
- 100. … and what came of it
- 101. “The dark side of this is that not all organizations are intelligent and progressive. Lots are run by crass people who can take the same kind of equipment and create hellholes. They make little bitty cubicles and stuff people in them. Barren, rat-hole places.” robert probst, 1998
- 102. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision Fictive Reductive FabriclessEphemeral Exclusive Decoy
- 104. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision realisation gives scale & durability representation gives legitimacy, wisdom, & spice Develop, adopt, cultivate Mobilize, deliberate, enjoin
- 105. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision the muddy middle
- 106. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision “sociotechnical networks”
- 107. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision “institutions”
- 108. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision “politics and economics”
- 109. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision “power”
- 110. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision “polis”
- 111. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision a poorly designed game
- 112. invitation #1 How might we … re-frame and re-design our polis as a game for wellbeing?
- 113. From plans to rules
- 115. filibuster
- 116. behaviour and experience emerge from concrete sociotechnical systems
- 117. Mechanics Dynamics Aesthetics obligatory mda slide +$ !+ -$ !- frustrating endgame slow poverty gap
- 118. Mechanics Dynamics Aesthetics obligatory mda slide +$ !+ -$ !- frustrating endgame slow poverty gap governance game design
- 119. “The life blood of game design is testing. Why are we playing games? Because it‘s fun. You cannot calculate this. You cannot plan this out in an abstract manner. You have to play it.” rainer knizia
- 120. 117 Ideas what to change Build out idea Playtest Evaluate experience
- 121. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision Prototype, adapt, cultivate Evaluate, deliberate, envision, enjoin
- 122. invitation #2 How might we … prototype and playtest our institutions and environs?
- 124. where the heck is the entrance?
- 127. Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015
- 128. Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015
- 129. chapter 5 Summary
- 130. how can games and play facilitate wellbeing in cities? we have an important question
- 131. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision but we are stuck in two disconnected efforts
- 132. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision Fictive Reductive FabriclessEphemeral Exclusive Decoy … with difficulty translating one into the other.
- 133. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision “polis” to move forward, we need to pay attention to the muddy middle.
- 134. how about we bring our unique conceptual tools and methods to the task … Ideas what to change Build out idea Playtest Evaluate experience
- 135. to move sideways and …