Design Futures
Games as Speculative Design: Allowing Players to Consider Alternate Presents and Plausible Futures
Paul Coulton, Dan Burnett, Adrian Gradinar
Lancaster University
p.coulton@lancaster.ac.uk
Keywords: game design, speculative design, rhetoric, design futures
Abstract
As games are inherently about exploring alternative worlds this paper proposes the utilisation of games as a medium for speculative design through which players can explore scenarios that represent plausible alternative presents and speculative futures The paper reviews futures orientated design practices such as Design Fiction, Speculative Design, and Critical Design alongside complimentary research areas in games studies such as Critical Play, Persuasive Games, and Procedural Rhetoric to create a frame for using games as speculative design practice. The aim of this design frame is to create debate and facilitate productive future practice through which designers can develop games that encourage user reflection by enabling players to reflect upon the complex challenges the world now faces.
This paper is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.
→ download the paper (PDF)
Cite this paper: Coulton, P., Burnett, D., Gradinar, A. (2016). Games as Speculative Design: Allowing Players to Consider Alternate Presents and Plausible Futures . Proceedings of DRS 2016, Design Research Society 50th Anniversary Conference. Brighton, UK, 27–30 June 2016.
This paper will be presented at DRS2016, find it in the conference programme