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?

3. Why am I even here?

4. “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

5. this applies!

6. two stuck and disconnected levels of abstraction

7. two stuck and disconnected ways of seeing the city

8. chapter 1 Big City Games

9. the city as a simulation game

10. … soon to be real practice in the “smart city”

11. data model = reality

12. people pointing at maps

13. educated elites pointing down at clean, docile maps in comfy, well-lit rooms shielding them from the less-so city life outside.

14. “Seeing like a state”

15. Disembodied utilitarian 3rd person view from above on a simplified representation of infrastructures and resource flows through them

16. MAPS ARE FEEL-GOOD FICTIONS

17. “god games”: model train play as power fantasy

18. the control room fantasy

19. design fictions

20. populated by render ghosts

21. An ephemeral vision forever removed in a proximate future

22. MAPPING SHAPES THE TERRITORY

23. rendering reality legible and thus, manipulable

24. rendering reality gamelike

25. … means rendering reality less resilient and livable

26. MAPS IGNORE & DESTROY THE LOCAL FABRIC

27. “authoritarian high modernism”

28. “The plan: Dictator!”

29. le corbusier, la ville radieuse

30. costa & niemeyer, brasilia

31. “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”

32. “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

33. communing

34. mutual presence, watch & help

35. appropriation

36. “placemaking”

37. chapter 2 Small Street Play

38. situationist international, 1957-61

39. 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

40. big urban game, 2003

41. pacmanhattan, 2004

42. massively multiplayer soba, 2008

43. drift deck, 2008

44. koppelkiek, 2009

45. exclusionarypiano staircase, 2009

46. carpe diem, 2017

47. the city as parkour play

48. “Seeing like a citizen”

49. Embodied 1st person experience of lived street fabric of people interacting with each other and their environs, its subjective uses and meanings

50. PARKOUR IS EPHEMERAL

51. PARKOUR IS EXCLUSIVE

52. “Are you hipster enough?”

53. PARKOUR IS A FEEL-GOOD DECOY

54. chromaroma, 2010: switch more to bike and feet!

55. car-based, single-use zoning designs physical activity out of everyday life

56. gentrification: the game, 2010

57. chapter 3 Translation errors

58. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision

59. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision Fictive Reductive Fabricless

60. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision Fictive Reductive FabriclessEphemeral Exclusive Decoy

62. participatory design

63. play the city

64. community planit, 2011+

65. “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

66. participation is exclusive

69. how to design for appropriation?

70. open/modular/generative… design

71. “When designing tools for play – underspecify!” kars alfrink, 2008

72. obligatory minecraft slide

73. new babylon, 1959+

74. “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

75. fun palace, 1961

76. “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

78. the action office, 1964

79. “#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

80. … and what came of it

81. “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

83. chapter 4 Stepping sideways

84. 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

85. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision the muddy middle

86. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision “sociotechnical networks”

87. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision “institutions”

88. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision “politics and economics”

89. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision “power”

90. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision “polis”

91. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision a poorly designed game

92. invitation #1 How might we … re-frame and re-design our polis as a game for wellbeing?

93. From plans to rules

94. filibuster

95. behaviour and experience emerge from concrete sociotechnical systems

96. Mechanics Dynamics Aesthetics obligatory mda slide +$ !+ -$ !- frustrating endgame slow poverty gap

97. Mechanics Dynamics Aesthetics obligatory mda slide +$ !+ -$ !- frustrating endgame slow poverty gap governance game design

98. “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

99. 117 Ideas what to change Build out idea Playtest Evaluate experience

100. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision Prototype, adapt, cultivate Evaluate, deliberate, envision, enjoin

101. invitation #2 How might we … prototype and playtest our institutions and environs?

102. where the heck is the entrance?

103. Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015

104. Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015

105. chapter 5 Summary

106. how can games and play facilitate wellbeing in cities? we have an important question

107. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision but we are stuck in two disconnected efforts

108. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision Fictive Reductive FabriclessEphemeral Exclusive Decoy … with difficulty translating one into the other.

109. civic life Lived reality, practice, fabric city planning Map, structure, vision “polis” to move forward, we need to pay attention to the muddy middle.

110. how about we bring our unique conceptual tools and methods to the task … Ideas what to change Build out idea Playtest Evaluate experience

111. to move sideways and …

112. sebastian@codingconduct.cc @dingstweets codingconduct.cc thank you.