Author: Anne Emberline

Inside: A Game that Teaches Without Teaching

It doesn’t take long to notice that the puzzle platformer video game Inside isn’t going to tell you anything. Aside from the simple title, this game gives you no text, no explanation, no dialogue, no speech, no pop-up windows of instructions, no journals, no task lists, no signage in the environment – nothing. And yet, with all of these instructional conventions completely abandoned, players still learn to play this game, and they learn easily. So how does this learning happen?

Motivation

First, players are excellently motivated. “Good story-driven games create worlds that players want to escape into,” (Bryant & Giglio, 2015, p. 59) and the beautiful escape this game offers is an excellent motivator for whatever learning must occur to play the game. From start to finish, Inside is a work of art that masterfully evokes emotions in players. It capitalizes on the evocative nature of video games, which “open up new aesthetic experiences and transform the computer screen into a realm of experimentation and innovation” (as cited in Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Smith & Tosca, 2020, p. 43) and “can provoke strong emotions” (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Smith & Tosca, 2020, p. 43).

It would be hard to play this game without being regularly gripped by feelings of fear, curiosity, intrigue, disgust, surprise, delight, joy, or satisfaction – and it is this emotional stimulation and sense of experiencing a “lively art” (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Smith & Tosca, 2020, p. 43) that pulls players to learn the gameplay.

Scaffolded Challenges

To train players in how to play the game, Inside expertly focuses player attention on environmental details and carefully scaffolded challenges that facilitate learning without the player having to be “told” what to do. Careful use of lighting, colour, and camera angles draw player attention to manipulable items in the game, almost subconsciously at times, and mechanics are introduced one-by-one in scaffolded, manageable pieces.

For example, to start the game, the player must enter the opening screen by using the direction stick to run. Once this run mechanic has been introduced, the game then introduces players to the jump mechanic by presenting the player with a fence that must be jumped over. Next, once the jump mechanic has been “taught,” the player is then introduced to a “move item” mechanic when the character must move a broken refrigerator over to a wall that is too high to jump over without a step. These scaffolded challenges are minimal enough that players can easily learn them on their own without instruction, and they’re also interspersed with highly dramatic story beats that keep player motivation high.

Repeated Practice

This game also facilitates learning through repeated practice. Players quickly learn in the first scene of this game that either death or capture can happen easily if you fail to solve a puzzle or perform an action correctly – but players also learn that death or capture only results in the player restarting just a few seconds before the misstep occurred. This low-stakes death mechanic gives players more encouragement to explore and experiment when solving puzzles or manipulating objects.

Prior Knowledge

Learning the gameplay of Inside is of course also made easier through its reliance on several video game conventions – from a conventional use of button mappings (for example, “X” is often used for a jump action in PlayStation games) to the use of common types of puzzles (dragging blocks, flipping switches, raising/lowering water, outrunning threats, etc). While a novice player could still learn this game through the other ways it facilitates learning, experienced players will learn even more quickly by drawing on their previous experiences.

External Support

Lastly, while this element is not built directly into the game, the developers also know that if players get stuck, they can easily access the affinity spaces and the distributed teaching and learning system that surrounds the game in the real world – a “universe of ever-changing, distributed opportunities for being taught or mentored, for learning in different ways and at all different levels.” (Gee & Gee, 2017, p. 15) If players are, for example, struggling to learn a mechanic or figure out a puzzle, they can easily watch a walkthrough on YouTube, talk to an experienced gamer on social media, or ask other players in an online community. 

But What is Being Learned?

The gameplay and mechanics of Inside are all “taught” through these aforementioned aspects of the game, but players wind up learning a lot more than simply how to play the game.

As Gee (2008) notes, play can function as a sort of practice for reality, allowing players to practice the “complex, strategic, systems thinking and problem solving” (Gee, 2008, p. 237) they encounter in the real world outside the game. The lack of overt instruction in this particular game requires players to learn independent exploration, engaging in discovery via play, a process that happens to mirror the ways in which knowledge is built in the real world (Gee, 2008).

Additionally, players of this game also learn the important skill of seeing failure as instructive rather than definitive. Yes, the death scenes are dramatic and unpleasant, but they don’t come with any great penalty, and experienced gamers come to see these failures as meaningful and instructive information, rather than as personal shames to be met with future avoidance. In our 21st century world, where problem solving, creativity, and iteration are key parts of our working lives, this type of constructive attitude towards failure is invaluable.

Lastly, as Marshall McLuhan asserts, this game also functions as a reflection of our culture (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Smith & Tosca, 2020), acting as what George Herbert Mead considers a training ground for the roles of our society (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Smith & Tosca, 2020). When viewed through this lens, it’s here that the well-crafted intentionality of Inside develops some holes. Did they intend to “teach” us that the world is controlled by men? That all people are white or that white is the default and central story of our world? That women are either scary or mindless but not intelligent or powerful leaders? As a cultural training ground, games that cast every powerful character as a white male deliver a powerful and problematic message for players, even if the statement is not overtly instructed. In much the same way that players learn through experience that “X” means “jump”, players can also learn through experience some problematic ideas about what roles men, women, and people of colour can play.

From the well-crafted and intentionally scaffolded challenges that effectively teach gameplay mechanics to its (hopefully) unintentional and problematic messages about gender and race, Inside is a fascinating study in how a game experience can be a powerful teacher without relying on traditional conventions of teaching.

Field Notes

References

Bryant, R. D. & Giglio, K. (2015). Slay the Dragon: Writing Great Video Games. Studio City, CA

Egenfeldt-Nielsen, S., Smith, J. H., & Tosca, S. P. (2020). Understanding video games: The essential introduction (4th ed.). Milton: Routledge.

Gee, J. P. (2008). Cats and portals: Video games, learning, and play. American Journal of Play, 1(2), 229.

Gee, E., & Gee, J. P. (2017). Games as distributed teaching and learning systems. Teachers College Record, 119(11).

Exercise 6.4: Blue-Sky Brainstorm

In this exercise, use the techniques previously described to do a brainstorm for a “blue-sky” project. By blue sky, I mean that this project could not technically be made today, but we are going to pretend it could. The challenge is to come up with ideas for a “remote control” for a stereotypical character. Choose a character from this list: Door-to-door salesman, busy mother, God, superhero, politician. First, brainstorm about the character: What does the character do? What makes the character interesting? What aspect of the character would it be engaging to control? How does the character react? Does the character have free will? Next, brainstorm features for your imaginary controller. What will it look like? What could each button do? Remember, this is “blue sky,” so the buttons can do crazy things. Have fun with this! Come up with as many ideas as you can.

(Fullerton, 2014, p. 174)

For this exercise, I chose door-to-door salesman and tested out three of the brainstorming methods listed in Game Design Workshop (2014) – “Cut It Up” (an exercise where you cut up photos and words and match them together to form ideas), mind mapping, and writing ideas in a stream of consciousness style.

Method 1: Cut It Up

This was my first stop on the brainstorming tour. I clipped various screenshots from images and articles online, some related to door-to-door sales and some just random. I pasted them all into a digital sketchbook page with an unlimited canvas and moved the clippings around, letting ideas come from the associations between the images and text-based screen captures. The yellow text in the screenshots below are my annotations of the ideas that came up while I was working. Door-to-door therapy or romantic advice were some key ideas that surfaced.

Method 2: Mind Map

From the Cut It Up exercise above, I moved on to the mind map exercise, running with the idea of a door-to-door salesman who sells therapy services right at your door. The mind map allowed me to play with and expand some of the ideas that I liked from the first exercise.

Method 3: Stream of Consciousness

I then further explored the idea with ten minutes of stream-of-consciousness writing to see what ideas came. This method of brainstorming brought me a lot of backstory ideas for the character.

The process of these three brainstorming methods sketched out the bones of an idea where you learn sales and pricing strategies by moving a highly loveable ex-circus-performer/balloon artist through a new entrepreneurial venture as a door-to-door cheer-up therapist, which the performer had to start when a global pandemic stopped him from doing his usual work at large gatherings.

Exercise 6.5: Exquisite Corpse

This version of the game is played with words. Everyone writes an article and an adjective on a piece of paper, then folds it to conceal the words and passes it to their neighbor. Now everyone writes a noun on the paper they are holding, folds it again to conceal their word, and passes it to their neighbor. Repeat with a verb; repeat with another article and adjective; finally, repeat with a noun. Everyone unfolds their papers and reads the poems they are holding aloud. One of the first poems written this way was: “The exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine,” which is how the game gets its name.

(Fullterton, 2014, p. 180)

Since I’m working alone on this project, I tried two solo approaches to this exercise. For the first approach, I got my adjectives, nouns, and verbs from a random word generator and just put them into a spreadsheet in that random order. Then I looked for interesting combinations that could inspire game ideas. The best one? “The deranged equipment records the outrageous village.” There’s a lot of fuel for a twisty, spooky narrative in that statement.

For the second approach, I came up with my own lists of design-oriented words since I knew I wanted to make a game related to graphic design. Once the lists were complete, I randomized them and looked for interesting combinations. In this set, my favourite was “The colourful colour palette does inspire the inspired client.” The sentence structure is ridiculous and I could see it inspiring some absurd over-the-top game ideas where you have to do silly challenges to “inspire your inspired client”.

Exercise 6.6: Do It

Now it is time to brainstorm your own idea. Get a potential team together—either in class or a group of friends who are interested in working on a game with you. If you cannot get a group together, do it on your own. As you did in Exercise 6.4, in the blue-sky brainstorm, state an interesting challenge for your game, set up a whiteboard or a sheet of butcher paper, and use the techniques previously discussed to generate 100 ideas related to your challenge in 60 minutes. This might sound like a lot, but if you can keep the energy level up, you can do it!

(Fullerton, 2014, p. 181)

Again for this exercise I experimented with some of the different brainstorming techniques described in Game Design Workshop (2014).

Method 1: Mind Map

Ideally, I wanted to explore game ideas in the realm of graphic design, so I started with a simple mind map to discover various related ideas I could explore.

Once the mind map was complete, I went through with a pink marker and put a start next to any element that seemed like it could lead to interesting game ideas.

Method 2: Research

I noticed that the “Creative Process” section got the most stars of any aspect of graphic design I mapped, so I figured I’d see if some additional research could spark any ideas. I found myself interested in ideation and creative block, so I dove into a study on techniques to resolve creative block (Barrios & Singer, 1981) and a dissertation from Lillian Hemingway Gallay (2013), which included an extensive literature review on creative block research. From there, I found a paper on rumination, procrastination, and creative thinking (Cohen & Ferrari, 2010), which argued that 1. reflective rumination (where one rehearses information and runs through ideas related to a creative problem) was helpful to creativity while brooding rumination (based in low self-confidence and rigid thinking) was not helpful, and 2. procrastination is actually helpful to the creative process as well. (I’ve spent the past 15 years in a creative career lamenting my “bad procrastination habit” so this particular finding had me literally laughing out loud.)

Method 3: List

For my final method, I just aimed to generate the list of 100 ideas based around the loosely defined challenge of designing a game that teaches players something about graphic design or creativity. Here, both the research and mind map came in handy – I regularly found myself staring at my graphic design mind map to find areas I hadn’t explored yet for ideas. Overall, the process probably took 2-3 hours, but I did manage to generate a list of 100 ideas.

Get ready to scroll!

1. Game where you fix the margins on designs and get points for making balanced designs (like the kerning game, you get a percentage score) – develops your eye for spacing and layout
2. Platformer where you run through various eras of design history to learn about typography
3. A game that interrupts you with prompts to write down ideas about your creative project
4. Platformer with a creative career narrative, role model character
5. Walking game that uses pedometer data to unfold a narrative about creative career
6. Walking game where you connect socially to talk about ideas for creative projects. You have to walk to be connected with other artists who are also walking and thinking about ideas.
7. Text-based adventure game, chatbot type game, where you have to work through challenging design client situations
8. Shooting gallery type game where you have to shoot letters from the correct typeface to win (i.e. shoot all letters that are Avenir, don’t shoot letters that are Futura – to help you improve your eye for details in design and your knowledge of fonts)
9. Shoot your creative doubts game – AR game where you pop bubbles that represent your creative doubts
10. Feed the creative gremlins – Throw donuts or some other food into the mouth of a creative gremlin, feed it to get ideas when you’re stuck on a project. Partway through the game, prompts pop up to get you to think about your creative process, your project, etc etc, encouraging reflective rumination.
11. Throw ideas in the garbage – AR game where you throw crumpled paper into the garbage as you generate ideas. First you have to write out a bunch of ideas and then you can throw them in the garbage? That makes no sense haha.
12. First person AR shooter where you shoot monsters coming at you, monsters have negative self-talk / imposter-syndrome speech bubbles, blast their speech bubbles
13. Fix the colour palette game where you have to identify what colour in a palette is throwing off the mix, what colour is not communicating the right message, what colour is making a palette not analogous, etc.
14. A game with letterforms you have to move and slide around to create cool art?
15. Oh the circle jumper game but you have to jump to avoid the wrong typeface – for example, jump to/from Avenir and avoid Futura. Oh I like that. To teach you to notice the differences between typefaces and generally just improve your eye and notice detail in design elements.
16. Game where you have to draw letterforms and try to get them to accurately follow an actual letterform from a typeface
17. Game where you match a letterform to a font
18. Game where you have to edit layouts to improve one of the principles of design (i.e. edit to improve the sense of balance, edit to improve the sense of visual hierarchy, edit to add a sense of repetition)
19. Comic Sans game idea except make the narrative more about racism, sexism, ableism, and oppression in the world of design
20. AR face game where you have to eat letterforms from certain fonts
21. AR face game where you have to eat colours from the right palette or a specific shade of green while avoiding other greens, etc
22. AR face game where you have to eat a specific colour but based on just a simple text description of that colour (i.e. “Muted warm blue” or “Subtle desaturated raspberry”
23. Game where you take designs with too many things adding visual interest and remove things until it looks good
24. AR Feed the designer – throw inspiration items at a designer (sketchbook, healthy foods, music, devices, pencils and pens, magazines, flowers) and the game gives you prompts asking about your creative projects, encouarging reflective rumination. Maybe the game gives you random images and asks you how this could relate to your project. “How does this relate?” – To encourage lateral thinking, metaphorical thinking, random inspiration. Or maybe every time you get a “basket”, you get a “random gift” and are asked how it relates to your project.
25. Space invaders style game except the ships are letterforms
26. Pong style game with a narrative about client management (a design bouncing back and forth between client and designer)
27. Typing game where you have to type positive words
28. Typing game where you have to type technical design terms to learn them
29. Typing game where you have to type code strings to improve your ability to type code quickly (lots of code punctuation marks)
30. Mouse skills practice game where you have to trace shapes with your mouse
31. Adobe shortcuts game where you have to learn common Adobe shortcuts to get your character to do things or unlock doors (CMD + 2, CMD + G, etc etc). Maybe there’s a sign that says “Group!” and then you have to know that it’s CMD + G. Maybe it’s a self-scrolling platformer where you have to hit the right key combination to get your character to jump but you’re only told what Photoshop or Illustrator or InDesign action it is, not what the actual keys are (after you learn them in the game).
32. Dot to dot letterforms game, trace from dot to dot to reveal the letter and then guess what typeface it’s from
33. Match 3 game with colour palettes – match analogous colours for one effect, match complementary colours for another affect
34. Pair matching game with letterforms
35. Match 3 game with letterforms/fonts – you have to match 3 letterforms from the same typeface. Game starts out easy with letterforms from very different typefaces and then becomes more and more challenging as the typefaces become more similar (i.e. a script and a serif would be easy but two serifs would be difficult)
36. Information architecture game where you organize pages or products into categories
37. Information architecture shooting gallery game where you shoot things that fit into a particular category
38. Point and click game where you have to explore a designer’s studio to solve a mystery
39. Point and click escape game where you have to solve a design problem before you’re allowed to leave your studio and enjoy a weekend off (teaches about creative process?)
40. Spot the difference game where you have to spot the difference between two layouts or two designs – teaching eye for detail in design (could be logos and letterforms as well). You have to identify what’s different and how it’s different. At higher levels it could be a subtle change in the curve of a letterform or a slight difference in the colour of one element.
41. Spot the difference game with the narrative of a design student learning design, could introduce some design principles between challenges
42. Design super hero flies through the world fixing ugly designs, platformer
43. Design budgeting game where you have to figure out how much to charge for a design. You get to actually “make” the design (for fun) and then you win/lose based on whether you quoted the right amount based on size of client, scope of work, expenses, etc.
44. Platformer with a narrative about the creative process, fighting off impostor syndrome demons, going into the depths of hell, etc etc
45. Shooter where you have to blast your way out of a metaphorical creative block
46. Shooter where you have to blast things to make them colour coordinated with the environment
47. Platformer where you have to blast things to make them colour coordinated with the environment
48. Platformer where you’re running your way through a web layout and you have to shoot things and bump things to make them align nicely, change fonts, change colours, add buttons and calls to action, change icons to appropriate icons, etc
49. Text adventure game where you explore responding to a friend’s creative ideas, learn different ways to give feedback and support to artists
50. “How to date an artist” – text adventure game following conversation between artist and partner
51. Giving advice to yourself – text adventure game where you play a character having a conversation with him/herself over text message, theme around negative self-talk and impostor syndrome in the creative process
52. Build towers out of letterforms and don’t let them fall over
53. Build a ladder with letterforms so you can crawl out of creative block hell
54. Guess the font – close up zoomed in image of a letterform
55. Guess the font – pictures of magazine or web layouts
56. Coloured shapes fly at you and you have to dodge the ones that aren’t in your colour palette
57. Letterforms fly at you and you have to dodge the ones that aren’t in your typeface
58. Jigsaw puzzle of magazine or web layouts
59. Jigsaw puzzle where you see a web layout and then have to put it back together without seeing the picture or knowing what order things were in, learn about structuring content in web layouts
60. CSS game where you have to change the type styling, margins, and padding of something by typing CSS in order to solve a puzzle or make a shape fit with the layout
61. CSS game where you have to make a shape match an existing shape on screen by changing the CSS or make a chunk of text match an existing chunk of text by changing the CSS styling
62. Photography game where you move lights around to learn how to light a photo shoot in 3D space
63. Colouring book game where you have to colour in shapes with a certain type of colour palette
64. Falling game where you fall into the depths of your own creative despair and then climb/jump your way back out
65. Racing game where you’re an idea travelling down a synapse in a designer’s brain and you must get to your destination before the client shows up for the meeting
66. Lorem ipsum typing game
67. Walk around a magazine or web layout and find clues that tell you where to go next, learn web and UI/UX vocabulary (Ex. “Go to the accordion”) – Top down view of the character
68. Try to keep your character from burning all of their own ideas
69. Generate 100 ideas and then walk through an environment and shoot all of them
70. Colour composition game – guess what primary colours make up a colour
71. Colour composition game – guess what HSL values a colour has, or CMYK/RGB
72. Colour adjustment game – edit colours based on a text-based prompt (“Make this colour slightly desaturated and more green”)
73. “This is messy” – layout adjustment game. See web/magazine/ad layouts and adjust to make them less messy. Remove drop shadows, fix stretched images, fix pixellated images, move things to line them up, reduce/add typefaces.
74. The Sims type game but for artists where the meters include inspiration, creative production, social time, professional work, physical activity, etc, and you grow their creative careers
75. Instagram design influencer where you create IG content and grow your following depending on what you make and how well you keep up with likes/comments/messages
76. Women in art/design history platformer
77. Text adventure game where you talk to a person facing oppression in the design industry
78. Women in art/design history platformer where you move through the eras and are stopped by sexist/racist issues
79. Guess the artist’s style where you get illustrations of famous artists/designers and you have to guess what kind of clothing/hair they wear
80. Story of creative block where you wander around and there’s just nothing for a long time and then you find resources but they get stolen/attacked and you eventually have to build your own resources
81. Get trapped in Photoshop app interface and run around in the interface until you find an escape
82. Get trapped in iOS and wander around until you find an escape or blast your way out
83. Get trapped in Instagram and wander around until you find an escape, clues in designers profiles
84. Music industry design history – run your way through iconic album covers and poster designs, learn about design eras and famous designers
85. Illustrator tool puzzle game where in each level you have to use an Illustrator tool to escape death (i.e. draw a path with the pen tool, use the width tool to make a line thicker and reach a jump, use the shape builder tool to make a solid platform, use the warp tool to move something out of the way)
86. Text adventure game where you get pep talks from famous artists and designers
87. Colour practice game where you see a colour and then it disappears and you have to recreate it using HSB sliders or pick it from a colour picker – practice remembering colours in your minds’ eye, visual skill
88. Type practice game where you see some styled type and then it disappears and you have to recreate it – type selection, pairing, leading, kerning, alignment, etc
89. You’re trapped in a colour wheel and you have to solve puzzles to get out and to solve the puzzles you have to know and create various types of colour palettes
90. Puzzle game where you have to use Photoshop tools to make composite images and solve problems via collaging objects/environments (ex. Photoshop a door into a wall). It has to look convincingly realistic for you to go to the next level.
91. Mood board game where you swipe through design styles and reference images to make collections that represent various eras or design styles, get a percentage score of how accurate your judgements were
92. Website/app wireframe platformer
93. Game where you’re a creative idea and there’s a designer always trying to attack you and/or change you and you’re trying to escape because it’s scary when you get attacked but you keep getting bigger and end up being cool at the end
94. Scribble game where you have to quickly choose a colour and scribble vigorously to colour in a shape before the timer is up
95. CSS game where you solve puzzles by using CSS transforms to move your character around, change their shape, etc
96. Drawing game where you fix proportions/perspective in images that are poorly drawn, or at least identify the issues
97. Microsoft Office nightmare game where you’re a designer and you get trapped in MS Excel and Word at a client meeting and have to explore the interface to find a way out.
98. The price is right type of game but for design project budgets, get points and win for guessing reasonable design budgets for various projects
99. Text-based narrative game where you have to problem solve creative block by trying various methods of generating ideas and see what happens to your character. You type in your ideas (like “mind map” and see what happens.)
100. Packaging game where you have to solve packaging shape problems, create the right size boxes, figure out how it will glue together, etc

Exercise 6.7: Describe Your Game

In one or two paragraphs, describe the essence of your game idea. Try to capture what makes it interesting to you and how the basic gameplay will work. State your “X”—both razor and slogan—as a part of your game description.

(Fullerton, 2014, p. 188)

Title

Lost Letterforms

Razor

A narrative-based adventure game where players use their eye for design to reassemble well-loved fonts by collecting their scattered letterforms.

Slogan

Is it Futura or is it… Comic Sans? Test your eye for design in this thrilling typographic game

Description

Uh oh! There’s been a catastrophic meltdown in Lacey’s computer and her fontbook has exploded! Rogue letterforms from all of her favourite fonts have been scattered across her hard drive, and data-handlers Greg and Gary must frantically search for all of the letterforms inside her computer so they can put her fonts back together before she comes back to do more design work.

In each level of this top-down adventure game, players are tasked with reassembling a particular font. They must explore the digital environment to pick up the correct letterforms while avoiding any letterforms that come from a different font. The game will help players improve their eye for details in a design by requiring them to really look at the letterforms they come across. Is Avenir a script or a serif? How thick are the stems on Bodoni? Is this what Futura’s “S” looks like? Along the way, players will also find old posters, business cards, and websites Lacey has designed and can use them as a reference point for the fonts and how they can be used in design projects.

Exercise 6.9: Feature Design Exercise, Part 1

Think of a feature you would like to see added to one of your favorite games. I am sure you have plenty of ideas on this one. It does not matter how far-fetched or technically difficult the idea is at first because you are not going to actually build it. Rather you are going to illustrate how it works using storyboards and words.

(Fullerton, 2014, p. 193)

Feature: The Log Book and Design Reference Files

In addition to collecting letterforms from a font, players can also collect design reference files while searching through the different environments on the hard drive. The reference files are posters, business cards, and websites that Lacey has designed, and when a player finds one, it gets added to their log book where they can refer back to it at any time to double-check what various letterforms in the font might look like. For example, say the player finds an “S” when they’re trying to put the font Futura back together. The player might wonder, is this particular “S” too curvy to be Futura? They can open up their log book to see their collected reference files and check if any of the documents using Futura have an S on them they can compare with the letterform they’ve found. The design reference files will also come with some lore information about the typeface, like notes on why Lacey chose that particular font for her design.

Exercise 6.10: Feature Design Exercise, Part 2

Create a visual storyboard stepping through the use of the feature idea you came up with for Exercise 6.9. Assemble the storyboard so that it tells a visual story of a player successfully playing the game. For example, the storyboard for Karaoke Revolution World Party could show all of the interfaces as if a player starts as a beginner and moves all the way to winning a prize. Present your idea to an appropriate group of people for critique, such as classmates or a game design club.

(Fullerton, 2014, p. 198)

Exercise 6.1: Below the Surface

Take the subject of the last book or news article you read and think of its systematic aspects. Are there objectives? Rules? Procedures? Resources? Conflict? Skills to be learned? Make a list of the systematic elements of the subject or activity. Do this several times per week with different types of activities or hobbies.

(Fullerton, 2014, p. 170)

Book: Show Your Work

Show Your Work by Austin Kleon is a book intended to help artists and other creative professionals grow their careers by networking, sharing their work, and improving their creative process.

Systematic Aspects

Objectives – Grow your creative career

Rules – You must be authentic to yourself. You can’t conjure money from thin air, must instead earn it by doing professional work. You also can’t conjure an audience for your work or a professional network, must develop it by creating and sharing work.

Procedures – Make a lot of creative work and share it regularly and often with other people in the world. Network to find a community. Make money from your work. Seek our criticism of your work.

Resources – Time, creative energy / inspiration, number of people in your network

Conflict – Limited time, limited network, personal fears

Skills to be learned – Emotional management, time management, creative process

Bread Recipe

I recently made bread from scratch following a new knead-free recipe.

Systematic Aspects

Objectives – Make a delicious loaf of bread from scratch

Rules – You must purchase your own ingredients. You cannot use pre-made bread. You must use the appliances and tools available in your own home.

Procedures – Mix dry ingredients, mix wet ingredients, let dough rise for 12-18 hours, form into a ball, put in pan, bake in a hot oven.

Resources – Bread ingredients, kitchen tools (mixing bowls, oven, timer, etc), time, physical effort and mental attention, time

Conflict – Paying attention to instructions, limited time to wait for the dough to rise, uncertainty over whether it will turn out or taste good

Skills to be learned – Purchasing and mixing ingredients, waiting for bread dough to rise, cutting fresh bread

Using the Memex

I recently learned about the Memex machine in the other course I’m taking (ETEC 540: Text Technologies). It’s an early vision of hypertext and hypermedia that Vannevar Bush (1945) described in a 1945 article “As We May Think.”

Systematic Aspects

Objectives – Store and quickly access a variety of linked pieces of information

Rules – You can only input information using the Memex photographic equipment. You cannot type information into the machine. You must stick to a limited number of link slots available on each piece of information. You must use the Memex controls to find information.

Procedures – Sit at the Memex desk, use the controls to access information, use the built-in photographic equipment to store more information, create links between the pieces of information.

Resources – Photography chemicals, film, electricity, physical energy, cognitive energy

Conflict – Information can only be accessed on the Memex machine and information can only be input using the photographic equipment

Skills to be learned – Memex procedures, using photographic equipment to scan documents, a new way of thinking about information (associative and reader-defined organization of information was very different for 1945)

References

Barrios, M. V., & Singer, J. L. (1981). The treatment of creative blocks: A comparison of waking imagery, hypnotic dream, and rational discussion techniques. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 1(1), 89-109. https://doi.org/10.2190/69G4-6YCM-N11H-EEEW

Bush, V. (1945). As we may think. The Atlantic Monthly, 176(1), 101-108.

Cohen, J. R., & Ferrari, J. R. (2010). Take some time to think this over: The relation between rumination, indecision, and creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 22(1), 68-73. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400410903579601

Fullerton, T. (2014). Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, NY: Taylor & Francis (CRS Press)

Gallay, L. H. (2013). Understanding and treating creative block in professional artists.

Kleon, A. (2014). Show your work: 10 ways to share your creativity and get discovered. Workman Publishing Company.