This document discusses how humans have a remarkable capacity for imagination and identification. We can identify with objects, representations of ourselves, and even digital data. With imagination and emerging technologies, our identities can consist of multiple layers that are both fixed and changeable over time. Game design could explore how players identify with different personas, viewpoints, and emotions within virtual environments and games.

1. Game Design Workshop "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." -- Kurt Vonnegut

2. Cartoon by Peter Steiner. The New Yorker, July 5, 1993 issue (Vol.69 (LXIX) no. 20) page 61

3. When you think about it, a remarkable feature of humankind is the capacity to project a sense of self onto objects that are outside the self. While other kinds of animals do not even recognize their own reflection in a mirror, we humans can identify with everything our imagination comes up with. Anything can be experienced as a representation of the self. Nowadays this capacity is extended to digital data. In essence zeros and ones are nothing but the digital representation of information and since everything can be viewed as information anything can be translated to the digital. The fact that human beings are capable of using data as representation of themselves and others is due to the imagination. The stronger the imaginary capacities the easier it is to use a digital configuration as extension of the self. With those kind of extensions, the identity shows itself more and more as consisting of different layers of which some seem fixed and others are changeable or even just temporarily. For this reason, Arjun Appadurai (USA) prefers the term identification above identity. Identity as a term suggests something fixed while identification is the experienced sense of identity linked with a particular thing, idea or process during a particular moment in time. Human beings are capable of identifying themselves with everything their imagination comes up with. Game Design Workshop

6. Game Design Workshop Processes of identification in game

7. Game Design Workshop Thursday’s Exercise Develop a game concept and document that explores aristotle’s definition of emotions as follows: The emotions are: * Anger vs. Calmness * Friendship (Love) vs. Enmity * Fear vs. Confidence * Shame vs. Shamelessness * Kindness vs. Unkindness * Pity * Indignation * Envy