usually get one of two reactions disgust
or envy disgust because despite their
many excellent TED talks that are out
there that explain how games can better
society a lot of people still think that
games are a waste of time a best or
dangerous at worst and envy because
there is this inexplicable assumption
that making games is the same as playing
games all day I tell my students that’s
not true so luckily I didn’t get that
memo
when I entered the game scene in my late
20s I had no idea what games were gaming
were supposed to be I thought you know
there are so many different kinds of
books and people read them for very
different reasons why shouldn’t the same
be true for games I didn’t grow up
playing games one day when I was 11 I
brought home a Nintendo DS with Donkey
Kong on it and that day I spent blissful
hours jumping over obstacles voiding
enemies rescuing the princess until my
mom who apparently had read the memo
said honey why don’t you go read a book
and so I did in about 500 books later I
received a degree in literature from the
University of Vienna in Austria and then
a few years after that a PhD in
linguistics and interactive systems
language in media in that broad sense
that encompasses movies and books in
music had always been at the core of my
interests because growing up in
different countries I was always the kid
who spoke a different language had a
weird dialect or strange accent and I
realized early on how language could
create a sense of connection and
belonging and how media had a capacity
to extend and even transcend language to
create the shared experience faces so
when I was reintroduced to games
sometimes during my
college career by my then-boyfriend a
decade after Donkey Kong I was in shock
because games are color now and
storylines and characters and when I
realized that mostly I just killed
skeletons in those games all I could see
was opportunity opportunity to create
yet another media language that could we
could use games to explore the human
experience just like really good books
and movies do but with game’s unique
potentials so for the last 10 years I
experimented with how we can use
metaphor to make games about emotions
and I could weigh in a world and I
termed my own term for it I call them
deep games because it was about making
these deep insights into ourselves
through game play now what I didn’t
expect was that the process of designing
games became much more meaningful to me
than a final product
and speaking of envy I realized that
deep game design designing games about
the human experience could make you
better lover because it promotes
connection across three different axis
connection to self connection to system
elements in connection to others and the
feeling of connection is intimately
coupled to the feeling of love this
connection traps us in a state of
rigidity or chaos or a mixture of both
and through my explorations I’ve come to
see the integrative connective power of
love game design over and over again
I’ve seen how game design can promote
love and I’m here today to share with
you how exactly starting with connection
to self so remember that boyfriend that
got me back into games yeah we were
perfect for each other for all the wrong
reasons and we got stuck in a pretty
destructive relationship for about nine
years and as a longtime of horror and
then when I finally got an opportunity
to study and design games at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology as
a postdoctoral researcher I jumped at it
because yeah awesome but also because I
thought of it as a way out but clearly I
wasn’t quite ready at that time and so
we struggled on for three more years
long-distance him in Austria I in
Cambridge it really sucked and I
spiraled into anxiety and depression but
being a game designer I dealt with it by
making games and I thought if I want to
understand how we can make games about
the human experience I can just as well
start with my own so I set out to design
a game about my own messed up love life
happy times
now the problem about in the world is
that they are intangible they are really
abstract you cannot just look at an
emotion like you look at a physical
thing like a stone and say oh I see what
you are I know what happens when I throw
you through a window I understand your
rules I had no idea what the rules of my
relationship were so I had to figure
that out to make a game about it and I
invented a tool to help you with that
and I called it dialogue with my inner
game designer the inner game designer is
a game savvy
higher self that uses the structural
elements of games to guide self
exploration it understands the games
have gold captured a flag that games
have wind states capture the flag hooray
it understands the games have conflict
the other team does not want you to
capture the flag and it understands that
games can be lost other team got the
flag d’arnot now that might sound pretty
mundane but that’s because capture the
flag does not plumb the depths of the
human heart the game I was trying to
design did and so the dialogue with my
inner game designer proved to be rather
revealing I understood that my goal was
just to be happy again
my conflict was that I viewed the
relationship is both the curse and the
cure the guy was caring
Eric and charming and emotionally
wounded and I love to help and so I
invested all of my energies into making
him happy until I felt empty inside and
now I observe Lee absurdly expected him
to make me happy in return I was never
going to happen so if I stayed I
wouldn’t just lose a game I would lose
myself it will completely consume me so
the only way to win this was to stop
focusing outward to take charge of my
own happiness and to cultivate my
self-love I called the game to bridge
that’s a screen shot because it was
about creating a bridge to myself
through game design but also bridge into
a brighter future that game you don’t
have to play it it didn’t turn out great
but the process of designing it truly
changed my life because it forced me to
connect to myself and it set me on a
path to treat myself like a precious
object trust me that took a lot of
practice but I’m now happily married to
an awesome guy that’s Misha and you have
and I realized that this game design
stuff is actually really powerful and it
is not a profession it is an attitude it
is a way to approach life’s challenges
and I wondered whether what had worked
for me might also work for others and so
I started to collaborate with mental
healthcare professionals and people with
lived experience of mental health issues
like Paul on Ellis whose story I’m going
to share with you shortly and we make
games with each other and we found two
more ways in which game design can
promote integration connection and make
you better lover so that second aspect
is about connection of system elements
system thinking so this is Paul a story
Paul is in her 30s she holds an
administrative position
she has social anxiety she does not care
one bit about games yet we meet for a
one-hour game design session to see how
game design can provide some perspective
on her social anxiety the session is
witnessed by five creative arts
therapists at Columbia College in
Chicago and we start identifying Paula’s
goal it’s the season of Christmas
parties and she says my goal is to at
least not feel worse about myself at the
end of the party than before going there
and the wind state would be to make one
meaningful connection with somebody so
we set up the play space hey there is no
coding yeah that’s another misconception
we take a piece of grid paper a bunch of
index cards there is a table with finger
food and drinks there is a couch in the
corner with a big fat cat apparently
that’s very important to her and there
are groups of people standing around
chatting now obviously to find that one
person we can have a meaningful
connection was you have to go out and
start talking to people that introduces
the conflict
Paula explains I am a boring storyteller
I speak slowly I have a bad memory
people will not want to pay attention to
me a scam designer you get to ask really
dumb questions and so I say why is that
a problem and she says well I will make
me feel like I’m not worth talking to
that’s great because we just identified
the game’s core resource social value in
a game a resource is something that if
you run out you lose ya monopoly if you
run out of money you’re done for in
games about the human experience these
core resources tend to be psychological
or interpersonal things for Paula it all
revolves around social value the feeling
of being worth talking to
and we assign points to this feeling we
say 100 points means she feels really
good about herself she wins introducing
that core resource changes everything
because we stop looking at her social
anxiety is a
rigid state and we start looking at it
as a dynamic system and in systems
everything is connected through rules so
now we can go and investigate how that
resource comes into play across
different Christmas party interactions
that’s our social value meter yeah
that’s what game designers do so we
start with 50 points
Paula gets credit for just going to the
party and if she makes that one
meaningful connection we it would be an
ABI immediate win state but that’s not
very likely that you meet your soulmate
at the first occasion so what happens if
she fails to join an interesting
conversation yep that would be quite a
hit minus 15 points but it is not game
over yet she is still in the race what
if she fails to join a boring
conversation yeah that is not so bad
it’s minus 5 points that’s ok you can
recover a little bit of sitting on the
couch with the cat it’s all good what if
she successfully joins a boring
conversation oh look at this this is
plus 15 points so this seems to be a low
stakes low-risk high-reward kind of
scenario seek out people you find boring
the only surefire way for her to lose to
be drained of that resource to feel like
she’s not worth talking to is if she
sits on the couch alone all night and
chooses not to interact with anybody
then it’s game over in 1 hour and 20
minutes we did the math so there are two
main takeaways for Paula from this
little exercise a there is more than one
way to win system thinking planted the
seed of hope and optimism by putting
things into perspective and B system
thinking erases the boundaries between
me and them if you view yourself as part
of a system you are an element connected
to a bigger hole which means you have
agency and responsibility within that
system
Paula realizes she is
at the mercy of others who assign social
value to her she decides who she engages
with and it is her who assigns points to
the outcomes of these interactions that
is a really empowering realization the
system thinking promotes connection
promotes healthy relationship promotes
love so the last aspect I want to share
with you is how game design can make you
a better lover through promoting
connection to others through deep
non-judgmental listening Ellis is a
dancer and she is recovering from eating
disorder and unlike Paula who met with
me ko designed a game with me for
purposes of self-exploration Alice is my
subject matter expert our goal is to
make a game about eating disorder so
that other people who don’t have it
understand what it’s like and since I
don’t have an eating disorder I don’t
know what I’m talking about I need to
pick her brain we conduct in-depth
interviews while I with her and then I
mind them for rules and metaphors I sit
down I create a prototype
I have Alice play it she takes it apart
I try again and then after a few weeks
of back-and-forth and we call this an
iterative loop
she finally thinks I got it I think how
she got it we call the game perfection
it’s a screen shot because eating
disorder is not about food it is about
creating this perfect sterile in a world
that is devoid of threatening emotions
and all emotions are perceived as
threatening because the point towards
needs the need to feel loved and
accepted if those needs cannot be
satisfied Alice says it doesn’t assert
it rose her entire existence into
question so she feels it’s better not to
have any needs at all and I learn all of
that from her because my only job as a
game designer is to understand and so I
listened and I questioned the
of her perceived reality no more then I
will question the rules of gravity in
the physical world and I have this
epiphany
if emotions really are such a threat if
they endanger your inner life like slugs
consume a precious garden and not eating
is the only way to defend yourself from
that consumption wouldn’t I do the same
wouldn’t you doesn’t it at least make
sense that there is a problem here you
cannot just get over making games with
others about their experiences requires
you to suspend all of your own
assumptions values and beliefs for the
sake of truly understanding somebody
somebody else’s perspective until that
person says these rules capture what
it’s like I feel recognized and that is
also a much better basis for discussing
handling the issue than just brushing
the experience aside and rushing towards
yeah let’s fix this validation is a
fundamental element of strong human
relationships and we need that now more
than ever
not just to make better games but to
make a better world we need the ability
to connect to ourselves to self-reflect
to handle our own before it can
meaningfully deeply and Pathak aliy
engage with those around us we need to
think in systems because everything is
connected
we cannot just build walls and think
that will solve any problems and we need
to listen to accept that our realities
are never an unfiltered truth so let’s
just stop the judgement for a moment
let’s trying to understand first and
when we created a shared experience
space walked in the shoes of the single
parent or a rebellious teenager or the
police offers already immigrant let’s
tinker with those system elements
together and find win states together
I think game design is not a profession
it is a mindset an attitude
and approach to personal and social
problems that emphasizes relationship
integration and connection and the
ability to connect fosters the ability
to love the world needs more love so
let’s all the game designers because
game designers are better lovers thank
you [Applause]