This document summarizes an article about abusive game design presented at the FuturePlay 2010 conference. The authors, Douglas Wilson and Miguel Sicart, explore how some games are designed to be abusive towards players through unfair challenges, deception, or other means. They identify several genres of abusive design, including physical abuse, unfair challenges, lying to players, aesthetic abuse, and social abuse. While some players may find such games frustrating, the authors argue abusive design can be an intentional aesthetic choice by designers to create a certain type of gameplay experience. The document provides background on the authors and their interests in game design, ethics, and theory. It also presents potential discussion questions about abusive games and the relationship between usability and this design approach.

1. Now It’s Personal: On Abusive
Game Design
Douglas Wilson & Miguel Sicart
Maija Kärkelä
ITIS54 Game Research Theories and Approaches 2014

2. Introduction
• Article about thinking of game design the other way
• Paper presented in FuturePlay 2010
• “Future Play 2010 is a unique forum for academic and
industry researchers to present their novel game-related
research to an audience that includes academics, game
developers, investors, government representatives and
students involved in the digital media and game
industry.”

3. Authors – Douglas Wilson
• Currently working as game designer
• Research interests: folk games, physical games, gestural games, broken
games, abusive game design, design practice, Arendtian action
• Publications besides ‘Now It’s Personal’:
•
Wilson, D. (2012). Designing for the Pleasures of Disputation -or- How to make friends
by trying to kick them! PhD Dissertation, IT University of Copenhagen.
•
Wilson, D. (2011). Brutally Unfair Tactics Totally OK Now: On Self-Effacing Games and
Unachievements. Game Studies, Vol. 11 (1).
•
Wilson, D. (2012). Disentangling Personal Style from Artistic "Expression": Hokra, Nidhogg,
Pole Riders, and the Indie Arcade.
•
Wilson, D. (2008). Look Before You Warp. In Ed. Luke Cuddy, The Legend of Zelda and
Philosophy: I Link Therefore I Am. Open Court.

4. Authors – Miguel Sicart
• Associate Professor at IT University of Copenhagen
• Research interests: Ethics and game design, (game) design
theory, computer games as arts
• (some) publications besides ‘Now It’s Personal’:
•
Beyond Choices. The Design of Ethical Gameplay. The MIT Press (2013)
•
The Ethics of Computer Games. The MIT Press, (2009)
•
Wicked Games: Designing Moral Dilemmas in Computer Games. Design Issues
(accepted for publication, 2013)
•
This War is a Lie: World of Warcraft and Ethics, in Wankel, Charles and Shaun
Malleck (eds.), Emerging Ethical Issues of Life in Virtual Worlds. Charlotte, NC.:
Information Age Publishing (2010)

5. Discipline(s)
• Article is connected to:
• Game design
• Ethics in games and designing them
• Usability and IT
• The backgrounds of authors are quite well visible.

6. Research question(s)
• The article aims to explain what the authors mean by
‘abusive game design’ (because there are also games that are just
done badly) and give some examples of games that are
abusive
• Explain the relationship of the player and designer in
these kinds of games: game is a conversation between
these two
• What do players get from playing these kind of games
and what do designers get from designing them?

7. Findings and conclusions
• “Abusive game design should be understood as an aesthetic move
from the designer”
• To master abusively designed game, the player needs to understand the motives
of the designer
• There are multiple genres of abusive game design:
• Physical abuse (such as PainStation)
• Unfair design (such as Kaizo Mario or I Wanna Be The Guy)
• Lying to the player (such as Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem)
• Aesthetic abuse (such as Tuning)
• Social abuse (such as Dark room sex game & truth or dare)

8. Questions
* Questions are in picks for discussion.

9. Picks for discussion
• What games that were designed abusively have you played?
• Why did you feel the game was abusive? Did you finish it?
• How did you find it?
• Is there really a need for this sort of term? What do you think?
• How about the “user-unfriendliness”?
• Could usability work together with abusiveness, or are they opposites?
• Has usability became too important in (major) games?