Can we make a game to save someone we don't understand? What are the politics of othering? Do we ever make anything for someone who is not us? Why are game so prone to saviourism?

1. MINDFUL
PLAY
THE POLITICS OF
DESIGNING FOR
THE OTHER

2. by:
mohini
dutta
@freyadutta

3. @freyadutta
What does it mean to design for the OTHER?

4. Who is the OTHER? @freyadutta
This is me

5. Who is the OTHER? @freyadutta
These are some
cute pandas

6. Who is the OTHER? @freyadutta
NOT A
PANDA !_!

7. @freyadutta
Narcissistic Red Pandas!
...not all pandas are alike!
Playground Panda!
Adventure
Pandas!

8. @freyadutta
The OTHER is not a homogenous group

9. Pandas @freyadutta
All endangered animals
VS

10. @freyadutta
DESIGNING FOR THE
“OTHER”
IS A DISINGENUOUS
PROPOSITION.

11. @freyadutta
There is nothing
about being
'female' that
naturally binds
women
Donna Haraway, Cyborg Manifesto

12. $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $
OTHER == Commodity
$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $
@freyadutta

13. @freyadutta
The other occupies a cultural space
outside of ours

14. @freyadutta
We, as designers,
embody the SELF.

15. @freyadutta
We design games that WE want to
play.

16. @freyadutta
Games are a celebration of the
SELF

17. As consumers of games:
we are trained to focus on our
own experience as paramount.
As designers: we are trained to
measure our projects against ourselves.
@freyadutta

18. The
unconscious
is the
discourse of
the Other.
@freyadutta
Jacques Lacan

19. BIG OTHER
@freyadutta
little other
Jacques Lacan
The Alien
OTHER
Projection of
the SELF

20. @freyadutta
WE HAVE BEEN
DESIGNING FOR THE
little other

21. @freyadutta
The flaw in our design strategy so
far has been working with commonality
VS
embracing the alien, the unfamiliar

22. @freyadutta

23. @freyadutta
PURPOSE!
GOALS!

24. @freyadutta
Even an abstract game like Tetris tasks the
player with creating order from chaotically
falling blocks by making neat lines which are
then deleted, re-ordering the play space through
erasure. Such games cast the player in the role
of RESTORER, someone to set the world right
again.
David Chandler, Videogames and the Aesthetics of Ruins, KillScreen

25. @freyadutta
Games are haikus for expressing
the chaotic narrative of life

26. @freyadutta
Games provide a terrain from
which meaning can emerge
Image/Panoramical
by Fernando Ramallo & David Kanaga

27. @freyadutta
The politics of representation are
the rules of the poetry of games

28. image/ Vincent Ocasla’s @freyadutta
Magnasanti, SimCity 2000
Achieved at the cost of social repression and totalitarian control, his goal was not the
quality of his Sims' lives, but the quantification of technocratic efficiency; his intention,
to critique the lethality of the games managerial assumptions. Ironically, because of its
precise techno-scientism, Magnasanti's viewers speculated about its applicability to real-world
urban projects. Many of the Reddit posts were optimistic.
Ava Kofman Les Simerables, for Jacobin.

29. @freyadutta
Is ennui the great
Cthulhic horror of our
privileged times?
MEH

30. @freyadutta
To counter the mixed
feelings and
groundless despair
that might greet such
an era, we need to get
there first; to invent
new desires, to solve
the problem of boredom
and meaninglessness by
our wits and good
looks.
Brandon Joyce, On Cathexis & Life games

31. @freyadutta
Estragon: Nothing to be
done.
Vladimir: I'm beginning to
come round to that
opinion.
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot Act 1

32. @freyadutta
All is well!
One must
imagine
Sisyphus
happy.
Albert Camus, The Myth of
Sisyphus

33. Rapture no longer haunts me. I got the help I needed, @freyadutta
or at least am getting it. While playing BioShock
Infinite last year, I had a moment of epiphany when I
was suddenly back in Rapture at the game’s end.
Joe Donnelly on coping with depression using BioShock (Kill Screen)

34. @freyadutta Tarot Card Deck

35. @freyadutta
Why are we making
meaning for
others?
Why aren't we
letting them make
meaning for
themselves?
Where’s
my
Umwelt?

36. INTENTIONS != EFFECT
@freyadutta

37. @freyadutta
The White Savior Industrial
Complex is not about
justice. It is about having
a big emotional experience
that validates privilege.
Teju Cole

38. @freyadutta
Tomb Raider: Underworld
Ruins provide an aesthetic setting that matches the core
idea behind most games: To interact with a broken world and
change it through play
David Chandler, Videogames and the Aesthetics of Ruins, KillScreen

39. @freyadutta
How to iterate with an invisible
audience?

40. @freyadutta

41. @freyadutta
How DO we design
games for Others?

42. @freyadutta
How DO we design
games for Others?
WE Don't

43. MINDFUL PLAY

44. PLAY AS CONVERSATION
VS
INSTRUCTION

45. Ask not what fun does for you. Ask rather what you do for fun.
”Bernie DeKoven

46. PLAY AS DIAGNOSTIC
VS
GAMES AS CURES

47. You never change
things by fighting
existing reality. To
change something build
a new model that makes
the existing model
obsolete.
Buckminster Fuller

48. CAN SHARING OUR TOYS TEACH US NEW WAYS TO
PLAY WITH THEM?

49. Game-making Workshop

50. Playing games together and having fun
=
MOST IMPORTANT PART

51. Sharing what Games CAN do,
vs what Games do

52. Games are more than their rules, they are
means of self-expression

53. BOO! BOO!
SCARY!
GAMES CAN APPEAR TO BE
Marceline the Vampire Queen, Adventure Time, Cartoon
Network

54. Super awesome fun!
when you understand them!
BUT THEY ARE NOT!
They are
Marceline the Vampire Queen, Adventure Time, Cartoon
Network

55. MAKING games makes the “OTHERED” group an
active participant in their (intended)
emancipation

56. To give an Author to a
text is to impose upon
that text a stop
clause, to furnish it
with a final
signification, to
close the writing.
Roland Barthes, Death of the Author

57. @freyadutta
Instead of stopping at
intention,
let us move on & embrace the
creation of conversations of
consequence.

58. MOHINI DUTTA
@freyadutta
Antidote Games
@helloAntidote