Mark Chen gave a keynote about using games and intentional constraints to teach about transportation systems and increase empathy. He discussed vehicle and infrastructure simulators that simulate things like trucks and roundabouts. Commute times have a strong relationship to social mobility, so games could explore how transportation constraints impact marginalized communities. Games are systems of constraints and can foster understanding through their design, so designers should pay attention to how players interact with intentionally designed constraints.

1. Transportation Games
and
Intentional Constraints
Mark Chen @mcdanger markdangerchen@gmail.com
SHACS FutureTech 2016 Keynote
April 8, 2016 Sam Houston State University

2. Mark Chen
Pepperdine University
Gameful Design Lab

3. Gameful Design Lab Mission
Increase → agency and empathy
through gaming.

4. Agency

5. Agency

6. Agency

7. Empathy

8. Empathy

9. Empathy

10. Empathy

11. Audience

12. New HS Game Design Units
Lots of great curriculum work!
Standard Patterns in Choice-Based
Games by Sam Kabo Ashwell

13. New HS Game Design Units
And some cool innovative student projects!

14. Urban Afterschool Hacker Space
Unity grant
12-week summer studio

15. LA Board Game Jam

16. Transportation Games
and
Intentional Constraints
Mark Chen @mcdanger markdangerchen@gmail.com
SHACS FutureTech 2016 Keynote
April 8, 2016 Sam Houston State University

17. Vehicles,
Infrastructure,
Operations

18. Vehicle Simulators:
Trucks!

24. Vehicle Simulators:
The Transporter

28. Play Roundabout

29. Infrastructure

35. Operations

42. Gunshow: The Farmer’s Riddle by KC Green

43. Gunshow: The Farmer’s Riddle by KC Green

44. Gunshow: The Farmer’s Riddle by KC Green

47. System Failures

51. Games are Systems of
Constraints*
*http://markdangerchen.net/pubs/anewdefinition.html

52. “Playing a game
is the voluntary
attempt to
overcome
unnecessary
obstacles.”
-Bernard Suits

53. Learning through Failure

55. Incomplete Systems

56. As we design, what do we leave out?
“In a large, continuing study of upward mobility based at Harvard, commuting
time has emerged as the single strongest factor in the odds of escaping
poverty. The longer an average commute in a given county, the worse the
chances of low-income families there moving up the ladder.”
“The relationship between transportation and social mobility is stronger than
that between mobility and several other factors, like crime, elementary-school
test scores or the percentage of two-parent families in a community, said
Nathaniel Hendren, a Harvard economist and one of the researchers on the
study.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/upshot/transportation-emerges-as-crucial-to-escaping-poverty.html

58. Marginalized
Community?

59. Games are an “…art form that is
ideally suited to fostering
understanding.”
-Steve Wilcox
http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/videogames-and-empathy/
Empathy through Design

60. But what do players do?

61. Leet Noobs:
Expertise is
successful
arrangement of
systems (aka
network)

64. ●Intentional
design of
constraints.
●Pay attention
to players.
Takeaways

65. Transportation Games
and
Intentional Constraints
Mark Chen @mcdanger markdangerchen@gmail.com
SHACS FutureTech 2016 Keynote
April 8, 2016 Sam Houston State University