The document discusses a case study on rethinking game design through feminist methodologies, emphasizing the empowerment and collective creation of mini-games about identity. It details a game design workshop that incorporates feminist practices and embodied experiences, aiming to facilitate participants' engagement in game design. The study highlights the potential of feminist perspectives to generate new subjectivities and approaches in game design, while also inviting further exploration of this methodology in different contexts.

1. Manuela Acereda & Laura Malinverni
Rethinking
Game Design
through Feminist
Methodologies:
a Case Study

2. Manuela Acereda & Laura Malinverni
Context: Game Design & Gender
REPRESENTATION PRODUCTION USAGE
Introducing a
critical
perspective
- Analysis
- Critical Games
- Pedagogies

3. Manuela Acereda & Laura Malinverni
Some Reflections about Methods
Knowledge of reality is a light that always
casts a shadow
(Bachelard, 1974)
--> DEFINING A CRITICAL POSITION
Feminist Methods?
- Recting positivism and reductionism
- Subjectivity, challenging objetivity, empowerment, social change
(Harding, 1989)
R.Q.: What a feminist perspective can bring to
game design?

4. Manuela Acereda & Laura Malinverni
Some Reflections about Methods
Opening the code
Methods as generative and
procedural instruments

5. Manuela Acereda & Laura Malinverni
The Case Study:
Game Design
Workshop

6. Manuela Acereda & Laura Malinverni
The Game Design Workshop
• Action research (2 researchers / facilitators)
• GOALS: collective creation of prototypes
of minigames about identity in the Internet
• CONTEXT: Seminar “Digital Industry and
Gender” (Sevilla, 2014)
• 17 participants, 4 hours

7. Manuela Acereda & Laura Malinverni
The Game Design Workshop: Hypothesis
R.Q.: What a feminist perspective can bring to
game design?
The use of feminist tactics would facilitate the participants’s
interest in game design, enabling the creation of new imageries
and generating a sense of competence and empowerment

8. Manuela Acereda & Laura Malinverni
The Game Design Workshop: Overview
Feminist
practices
(Performance, research
methods)
+
Theatrical
exercises (Forum
theatre)
+
Mistake, Irony,
Parody, Play
KEY CONCEPTS:
• Embodied experience
• Synesthetic thinking
• Intersubjectivity

9. Manuela Acereda & Laura Malinverni
The Game Design Workshop: the
Structure
1. Warm-up: Body-in-motion
2. Feminist performance practices
3. Embodied political meanings
4. Transduction & synesthetic thinking
5. Examples and mirrors
6. Inter-subjective experience
7. Prototyping: trial and error
Progressive
Structure:
• reducing difficulties with
game design
• creating a path
• facilitating creative
process

10. Manuela Acereda & Laura Malinverni
The Game Design Workshop: the
Structure
Warm- up:
Body-in-motion
-->
- Familiarity
- Error
- Laugh
1

11. Manuela Acereda & Laura Malinverni
The Game Design Workshop: the
Structure
Feminist
performance’s
practices: Repetition,
Exaggeration, Decontextualization..
-->
- Playfulness
- Subvert meanings
2

12. Manuela Acereda & Laura Malinverni
The Game Design Workshop: the
Structure
Embodied political
meanings
-->
- Example/ Experience
- Games’ elements as
mediatiors of meanings
3

13. Manuela Acereda & Laura Malinverni
The Game Design Workshop: the
Structure
Transduction &
Synesthetic
thinking
-->
- Introducing topics
- Analysis and
creation: shift
perspective
4

14. Manuela Acereda & Laura Malinverni
The Game Design Workshop: the
Structure
Examples
and mirrors
5

15. Manuela Acereda & Laura Malinverni
The Game Design Workshop: the
Structure
Inter-subjective
experience as raw
material for game design
-->
- Ground concepts in
concrete experience
- Transforming it
6

16. Manuela Acereda & Laura Malinverni
The Game Design Workshop: the
Structure
Prototyping:
trial and
error
7

17. Manuela Acereda & Laura Malinverni
Discussion & Conclusion
EMBODIED
EXPERIENCE
SYNESTHETIC
THINKING
INTERSUBJECTIVITY
- Use the body as a
mediator of meaning making
- Learning and reflecting
through concrete, “hands-on”
experiences
- Transduction: remaking
meaning across modes
(Kress, 1997)
- Explore the value of
materials (form as meaning)
- The personal is political
- The others as mirrors
1. Warm-up: Body-in-motion
2. Feminist performance practices
3. Embodied political meanings
4. Transduction & synesthetic
thinking
6. Inter-subjective experience
2. Feminist performance practices
4. Transduction & synesthetic
thinking
6. Inter-subjective experience
7. Prototyping: trial and error
2. Feminist performance practices
3. Embodied political meanings
6. Inter-subjective experience

18. Manuela Acereda & Laura Malinverni
Discussion & Conclusion
• EMPOWERMENT: Participants reported that now they feel that
it was possible and easy to start designing games.
• PRODUCTION: Different games were prototyped proposing new
imaginaries.
OPPORTUNITIES: The use of this methodology allowed
new subjectivities to be brought into game design and thus it opened
paths for generating new ways of designing games.
CHALLENGES: What if we apply this approach in other contexts?

19. Manuela Acereda & Laura Malinverni
Thanks!
Questions?