Teaching Intentional Design Practices: Feminist Game Design

by: , October 30, 2024

© Photo by Andrew Neel/Unplash

Introduction

Early last year, I went into the classroom where I teach. It was a semester-long design studio course where student groups worked on game projects. As I entered the space, my students started working on game ideas they could pursue for the rest of the semester. I approached a student group as they were discussing collectibles and the varieties of weapons they should have in the game. They knew collectibles were powerful tools to encourage exploration. There was one issue, though: their game did not need any of the different weapons. It did not need weapons at all. I suggested using another type of collectible to enhance the game experience and motivate players to explore. I cited the example of Disco Elysium (2019), ‘You know, it does not have to be swords or shields; there can be other ways to structure the game’s economy and exploration; think about collecting thoughts in Disco Elysium?’ Then I heard the unspeakable: ‘walking simulator.’ ‘So, do you want us to make a walking simulator?’ a student asked, with evident disgust. I quickly thought I should not lose the credibility of my future feedback. I defended my argument, explaining there are many ways to engage a player; the lack of war mechanics does not qualify a game as a walking simulator, not that it is a bad thing. A higher chance of winning a fight is not the only way to motivate a player. While watching their disappointed faces, I quickly added, ‘You can still have war mechanics, of course.’ The group sighed in relief.

The Toolkit: Creating Space for Designing with Feminism

The toolkit I introduce here is based on my experiences and needs in the field, which I have identified through my interactions, research, and overall engagement with other scholars, educators, and designers. Its main goal is to provide a structure and system for instructors who wish to implement feminist game design practices and weave feminism into the design process in their classrooms. While I discuss the backbone of my arguments and the theories behind the toolkit after its introduction, the way I see feminist design and designing through feminist ideologies includes an understanding of intersectionality. I consider it in relation to its social impact and justice, sustainable practices, economies, and systems that respect all communities and people. I keep in mind how it links to community building, representation and protection of marginalised groups such as, but not limited to, women, the LGBTQA+ community, and racial and ethnic minorities.

All pedagogical suggestions presented in this article relate to these concerns. I outline how to implement them more intentionally in classroom spaces as a feminist pedagogical practice. Hence, a feminist, critical design approach is holistic and not limited to women’s rights and position in society, of which students might not be fully aware. Raising awareness regarding this issue is another goal of this toolkit which positions feminist design practices in a more accessible way for all students. Therefore, I intentionally keep the tool’s language simple and flexible enough to leave room for implementing the different versions of feminism. Given its accessibility and ease of use, the toolkit, its classroom introduction and implementation, can be meaningful on its own, acting as a guide. However, the rest of the article relies on a deeper reading of the toolkit. It consists of two activities and a planning session with guiding questions. These activities and questions are designed as cards for easy implementation in the classroom. The design cards are available on the author’s website (ahuyolac.com) and are free to download.

 

Figure 1: Design Cards (Examples)

 

Figure 2: Close Up of Design Card (Example)

 

The cards are designed to be used on a surface (whiteboard, wall, desk, etc.) to create an interactive board that students can manipulate. Each question card includes a space on the right for students to write on (Figure 1 & Figure 2). Instructors can also use the digital version of the cards and implement them in collaboration tools like Miro, Mural, and Padlet boards instead of physically printing the cards. In all scenarios, the final result should be a board, or a map of the system students create, which is expected to inform the design and work plan documents. The main goal of this toolkit is to provide resources, including guiding questions, to help students think as they design and promote active, project-based and inquiry-based learning from their lived experiences. Therefore, instructors can adapt it to their classrooms, resources, and the critical feminist themes and design practices they wish to explore.

This teaching tool is primarily intended for the planning phase of the game projects, as it frames the inquiries that guide the design process and intentions. The expected result of implementing this toolkit—the system map—is intended to serve as a project guide for the next phases. Therefore, the suggested activities of the toolkit are expected to be followed by traditional project management and early planning tools such as design documents, work plans and timelines.

During the ideation process, the game should be ideated with the following aspects in mind—these will help to identify a feminist framework at the beginning of the design process:

  1. Goal
  2. Social Value
  3. Mechanics, Narrative and Visual Elements
  4. Design System
  5. Audience
  6. Future of the Game and its Community

This teaching toolkit is intended for project-based classes. Therefore, in-class conversations to inform the project steps, especially with feminist learning outcomes in mind, are crucial to help structure the pedagogical environment. While my original ideation of the process was based on my experience with the semester-long studio course, this approach can be applied to shorter and longer-term projects.

Goal: In-game Goals and Goals of the Game

Every game has goals and a goal structure, which is a hierarchy. In a game, the goal represents the objectives, and what needs to be achieved. In most games, there are different levels of goals. I define them as:

First level goals: They are necessary, but smaller-scaled achievements that are important for navigating and enabling interaction with the game.

Second level goals: These are goals to raise confidence and slowly ease into the bigger challenges. They help with gaining skills and building a positive self-image without putting a lot of stress into achieving the main goal.

Main Goal: This is the main solution to the problem: what is wished to be achieved through the whole narrative structure and challenges. (Yolac 2019: 5)

While establishing a goal hierarchy is crucial for an interesting play experience, at this stage of the development it is important to discuss the overall purpose of the game. This is where feminist discourse can be introduced. The following questions are suggested, to structure the conversation: warm-up questions to make students start thinking about the game and their intentionality as designers. They are not specifically targeted towards a single feminist concern (such as women’s and queer communities’ rights in Turkey), allowing room for educators to identify their own feminist learning outcomes. The aim is to start having a conversation and ease into some of the feminist discourse by starting to design and make, through casual conversation. The variety of potential goals that the students will identify can be an excellent instructional tool for introducing the scope of feminism and how it is important to make it a part of the design process. The questions below can be asked in order, or they can be organically implemented into the class discussion to make it feel more conversational.

  • What does this game aim to do?
  • Are the goals informed by your own experiences?
  • What is the gap this game fills in the industry?
  • What will the players take away from the game after they complete it?
  • What are the societal structures the game will exist in?
  • Who do you see playing this game?

Asking and discussing these questions will make students start to identify the game goals and begin intertwining them with the overarching goals of the game, in addition to their own roles in it. The conversation regarding goals should include the feminist ideologies and concerns I have listed above (for example: an understanding of intersectionality, societal impact and justice—such as sustainable practices, economies, and systems that respect all communities and people—community building, representation and protection of marginalised groups such as, but not limited to, women, LGBTQA+ individuals as well as racial and ethnic minorities). Hence, this is the main step wherein feminist enquiry can be introduced to students and can start guiding their processes within a feminist framework.

Therefore, the overarching question regarding the goals is: What is the goal hierarchy of the game, and how do these goals contribute to the intentional, critical feminist goals of the game?

Activity #1

At this stage, a quick brainstorming exercise can be used to initiate the conversation. The short workshop I like to conduct in my classes involves a whiteboard and a twelve-sided die. I ask students to think about three categories; issues that they are facing as a generation, locations, and actions (such as singing, chewing, jumping etc). Through class discussion, I write twelve words for each category. Then, I ask students to roll a twelve-sided die three times. Each roll represents a word assigned to them from the three categories. Therefore, they end up with a random word assigned to them from each category. Then I ask them to quickly ideate (for five to ten minutes) a game concept using their three words. They verbally present a game idea, a mini game pitch, to the rest of the class and discuss it. It is a simple creativity exercise to help students start thinking about games with critical elements in mind. While this workshop can be used to structure entire projects, I like to use it to help students think about games as a response to societal issues, with which I often introduce feminist inquiry. This can be taken further—either to help produce projects, or simply as a quick ideation exercise.

Social Value

Following the initial understanding of the goal structure, the design brief should highlight the issue to which the game is responding. This time, the goals and the gaps are identified from the perspective of the social value which starts folding the other game elements into the feminist discourse. If the instructors conducted the brainstorming session suggested above, the curated issues can be assigned to the groups, or the students can come up with an issue they are passionate about. Here, the guidance of the instructor is very crucial. The issues that the students target can be based on lived experiences including traumatic events. Unless students share their experiences, the instructors can direct the conversation towards the player experience including the way the game will reinforce the message of the game, rather than asking students directly.

At this stage, it is important to guide students into thinking of the game as a system. As the first step of creating this feminist inquiry through making, students can start thinking about the issues they are targeting from a more holistic standpoint. This includes exploring the impact of the system elements: narrative, aesthetics and worldbuilding, mechanics, and the overall design system, all of which should be thoughtfully planned. Each element should be interrogated for its potential to contribute to the interactive system, the series of performances, and the activities that players are asked to realise.

The suggested questions for this stage are:

  • How can narrative contribute to the way the game communicates this issue? What are the characters, and their interactions?
  • How can aesthetics and world building contribute to the way the game communicates this issue? What might be some visual signals of communication?
  • How can mechanics contribute to the way the game communicates this issue?
  • As a combination of all three, what are the activities we ask players to perform? What do these activities achieve, and how do they contribute to the goal and the social values of the game?
  • How do my experiences and identity as a designer contribute to the way we are building this system?
  • Am I comfortable with working on this project and the identified social values it represents?

Therefore, the overarching question regarding the feminist social value is: How will the game elements function in coherence to produce the outcomes and goals, and achieve the social value(s), we have identified?

Mechanics, Narrative & Visual Elements

With the introduction of the social value and overarching goals of the game, the students should start thinking about mechanics, narrative, and visual elements (aesthetics, worldbuilding, UI/UX) at a more critical level.

Activity #2

Here, I suggest a quick creativity exercise as a part of this step, a way to sway away from the historic, white, heteronormative, patriarchal representations of games in the classroom. The challenge is to invent a new game mechanic without using existing games. The guiding question is: how can we design a challenge and an innovative mechanic? For example, in a previous workshop that I conducted using activities and Anthropy’s concept of verbs (2014), an outcome was ‘sticking.’ The students came up with the idea of an emotionally insecure bubble gum sticking to friends. The friends they chose to stick to would determine the outcomes of the game, including the bubble gum gaining confidence. This is a quick, verbal activity or a collective brainstorming session to help students begin thinking outside of existing traditions of game design.

It is also important to highlight the fact that there are different entry points to design. For example, if there is an issue around visual cultural appropriation, the starting point can perhaps be the visual elements of the game, as opposed to the mechanics. If the issue revolves around social interactions, then the narrative can be a starting point. I usually like to choose mechanics, as they are often the most challenging to separate from existing practices that the students adhere to within their design processes. Discussing game mechanics first also generates deeper ideas when discussing feminist approaches to game design. Usually, it is easier for students to understand the issues with ‘Lara Croft’s body,’ while it is more challenging to understand why first-person shooter mechanics might not always be in-line with feminism. Therefore, using mechanics as the main challenge allows for more in-depth conversations and interesting, better-rounded outcomes. While the activity I suggest has a starting point, or a specific element that it addresses, students should be reminded that this element is connected to the system of a game as a whole. In a well-thought-out game, mechanics cannot exist without narrative and visual elements, and vice versa.

Following this exercise, the questions from the previous section should be revisited from the framework of innovation. Guiding questions are:

  • How are we structuring the relationship between mechanics, narrative, and visual elements?
  • Is our approach innovative enough, what are some of the conventions we are following?
  • Do we have a full understanding of these conventions and where they come from?
  • What can be some alternative ways that we engage the players with mechanics, narrative and visual elements?
  • How can our game challenge the players to think differently about the issues we are targeting through elements like mechanics, narrative, and visual elements?

Therefore, the overarching question regarding the mechanics, narrative, and visual elements is: How can we challenge ourselves to think outside of existing design conventions and understand when and where to introduce new ways of creating playful experiences?

Design System

The design system is included in the more technical side of the planning process. At this stage the instructors should bring up diverse users and how students are implementing accessibility, usability, and the overall interaction design as a part of their design decisions. This is also an opportunity to bring up the system-ness of the game. While students might more closely correlate the design system with aesthetic and world-building choices, students should be reminded of the previously established connections between all game elements. The design system is an overarching tool to create coherence and organise all elements and the way they interact with each other.

Guiding questions regarding the design system are:

  • Does our design system create a coherent experience?
  • Is our design system and its elements inclusive of diverse users?
  • What are the historical references behind our design system (for example, does it have gendered, racialised representations, does it assume players behave in certain ways, etc.)?

Therefore, the overarching question regarding the design system is: What does our design system represent? How did we identify its elements, do they align with the feminist social values and goals that we have identified?

Audience

With the audience, this tool aims to dig deeper than simply identifying the age groups and player types that might enjoy a game. As part of the feminist pedagogical approach, the projects that are produced using this toolkit have intentions and a social value. They work as a response to a feminist issue that is identified by the students through the guidance of the instructor. Therefore, the audience is the stakeholder in the original issue, in addition to the question of who would have fun playing the specific game that the students are ideating. While playtesting is in the implementation phase, questioning the audience helps students understand their role as designers who might not ‘know it all.’ It is important to acknowledge that games help wide audiences gain a better understanding of the experiences they might not live through, however, they also welcome people who go through those experiences depicted in them. Therefore, in this teaching tool, students are expected to find at least three experts on the issues they are targeting to consult at all three stages of their process. If a student group is dealing with their own lived experiences, naturally, they can serve as an expert as well. In fact, basing design decisions on lived experiences is encouraged in this toolkit. It is important to communicate this as a shift of expertise which positions the student as the more knowledgeable side. However, this does not mean forcing students to disclose private experiences or making assumptions regarding their lived experiences. In this stage, the important message is that having access to relevant expertise is the key to starting important feminist conversations through games. As a teaching tool, I also suggest implementing this approach during the design phase as a part of the audience research. For example, in a game that responds to women feeling unsafe walking at night, the target audience would include women who share that experience. If students do not have their own lived experiences, or access to people who have, it means that they do not have the necessary resources to build a game around that topic. While this might look like a failure, it is an important teaching moment to convey when to step away from a project and identify deficiencies in knowledge, or access to the right resources, as designers.

Questions for guiding this section are:

  • Do we have enough experience and knowledge to talk about this topic?
  • Can we gain access to people who have knowledge and experience on this topic?
  • What does the audience for our project look like?
  • Is this a topic we feel comfortable depicting, negotiating, and targeting in our game?

Therefore, the overarching question regarding the audience is: Can we make this game in a way that will authentically represent the issues we are targeting, or do we need to iterate the goals and feminist social values of our game based on our resources?

Future of the Game and its Community

A game exists in the systems of the interactive media and social relationships created in and around it. One of the main critiques of gaming and the gaming community today is the anti-feminist communities and toxic, heteronormative, cis-gendered, loud noises that make anyone who does not subscribe to these ideologies feel unwelcome and sometimes even threatened. These critiques have been made by many scholars, including and not limited to the work I initially referenced regarding race and game studies (Gray & Leonard 2018; Gray 2020), feminist game and media studies (Fenton 2000; Watkins & Emerson 2000; Payne 2014; Keller & Ryan 2018; Philips 2020), and queer game studies (Anthropy 2013; Shaw 2014; Ruberg 2019). Therefore, game designers should understand the systems in which their projects will exist, which is a very important aspect of designing through feminism.

Guiding questions for this section are:

  • What are the negative and positive interactions and discourse that can happen around a game? What are some of the real-life examples?
  • How did the design decisions contribute to the toxic vs positive environments that were built around specific games?
  • What could be some alternative design decisions which would have prevented the negative issues around specific games and their communities?

Therefore, the overarching question regarding the audience, future of the game, and its community is: Where do we see our game existing within the community discourse, and how can we set our design decisions to produce positive community outcomes?

Timeline, Work Plan, and Design Documents should be produced as the outcomes of this planning process. A systems map—a visual depiction of all connected elements—should inform these three documents, as it provides a guideline produced with the feminist pedagogical concerns that this toolkit enables. While this toolkit mainly focuses on the planning phase, its results should naturally be revisited at each project phase, since it informs the way those phases and the design research that will be conducted.

Behind the Toolkit

In this section I introduce the scholarship and methods behind the toolkit, how they shape and inform the different phases of the toolkit as well as the feminist pedagogical implications. Table 1 reflects a short summary of these connections.

 

Table 1: Behind the Toolkit

 

Rethinking Game Design

The experience with my students I shared at the beginning is not unique to my class or the student group. War mechanics and the conventional goal structures around fighting, shooting, exploding obstacles, and challenges are easy to track throughout history. According to Holmes, wargaming with miniature figures including toy soldiers and hobby painting is where the concept of fantasy role-playing was born (1981: 62), which later affected the way digital games were designed. While wargaming and play-fighting have a role in creating meaningful experiences for humans, they have become an indicator of hardcore, real games. As in the earlier anecdote from my own teaching experience, games without war mechanics are seen as more casual and feminine in contrast to game elements that are ‘more closely aligned with boys’ culture: expertise and mastery, danger and narrative agency and control’ (Braithwaite 2018: 147). Playing without these masculine signifiers of ‘true gaming’ is challenging. Similarly, many popular games like The Sims and Animal Crossing, where interactions and challenges are less urgent and care-focused, are seen as more casual and feminine. ‘Care is typically associated with women and the domestic space because the largest tasks of caring—those of tending to children and caring for the infirm and elderly—have been most exclusively relegated to women (Tronto 1993)’ (Place 2023: 78). The players who participate in the communities of such games, (cozy games, life simulations, walking simulators, etc.) are still not considered gamers by many, even though they spend hours playing games. This situation also stems from earlier marketing decisions such as those depicted in Braithwaite’s (2018) example of Nancy Drew games and the girls’ games movement which come with interesting nuances. As explained in Braithwaite’s essay, while the movement was a successful attempt to include girls as a part of gaming culture and technological literacy, it simultaneously contributed to creating a dichotomy between girl and boy games.

In her book, Wandering Games, Kagen highlights how walking simulators and games in which the player wanders ‘are often gendered female within gamer culture, and sometimes presupposed masculinity of video gaming juxtaposes disjointedly with the alleged femininity of the Walking Sim’ (2022: 6).

Therefore, for well-represented students who participate in gaming culture, the possibility of designing a game without combat mechanics, or a ‘walking simulator’ from their perspective, is terrifying, as it implies that they are at the risk of not being able to produce a ‘real game.’ Foundationally, the lack of war mechanics, and related associations including gender, challenge the ‘game-ness’ of what they are designing as real gamers and have very specific signifiers to which the community subscribes.

In terms of the toolkit I introduced, challenging this notion of ‘true game-ness’ is addressed throughout all six steps: Identifying the Goal, Social value, Mechanics, Narrative and Visual Elements, Design System and Audience, Future of the Game and its Community. However, negotiating existing practices of design is especially highlighted in the Mechanics, Narrative and Visual Elements, and Audience, as these have the additional hazard of being designed from memory, repeating existing games. Hence, the third and the fifth steps are crucial to help students question what they consider as a game, who it is for and challenge existing tropes. The act of this collective challenging in the classroom is a feminist pedagogical practice within itself as it encourages students to start to think outside of the ways gaming and gaming culture is structured.

Empathy & Establishing Good Design Habits

While establishing the existence and importance of systemic issues, it is crucial to help students gain a better understanding of the individuals’ experiences. This understanding is instrumental in educating intentional designers who understand their own impact. A tool of such intentional design is empathy. However, empathy should be carefully framed in the game design classroom. The authentic representation of diverse lived experiences and identities cannot always be achieved with only good intentions. As Place (2023) highlights in Feminist Designer,

[w]hen designers employ methods to produce empathy, they may mistake the appropriation of the experience of the person emphasised with as their own. For example, an able-bodied designer donning a wheelchair in simulation exercises does little to reveal the nuance of a disabled person’s experience. Empathy becomes a mechanism through which designers demonstrate their professional judgment by responding to their own personal reactions and, in turn, subverting the experiences they intended to uplift (2023: 79).

This misunderstanding of empathy is also one of the pitfalls in the game classroom. A very simple example is the production of personas as target audiences without conducting enough research. Hence, as these personas are produced based on students’ personal understanding of others, and collectively structured through their interactions with the gaming community from their own positions, producing personas falls short in having educational impact as a method. Loban suggests a triangulation method of community participation, cultural immersion and rigorous research while adding that ‘[c]ultural immersion and gaining experiences themselves—[are] tainted by their own [the game designers’] cultural understandings’ (2023: 13). While this triangulation is inspiring for more professional settings, it might not be always possible for the classroom settings due to time limitations. Hence, in the toolkit I propose a more time efficient approach, while still conveying the importance of having multiple data points when making design decisions. While students’ subscriptions to existing gaming communities affects their identities, and perspectives as designers, it is also possible to create communities of practice through pedagogical tools such as the one I present in this article. ‘Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly’ (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner 2015: 1). Therefore, education through and around games can become a tool for building communities of practice.

Through building a community of feminist design practices in the classroom, educators can contribute to the collective identity of the student groups as well as helping them engage with different types of collective identities within digital spaces. ‘Collective identity can be defined as an individual’s cognitive, moral, and emotional connection with a broader community, category, practice, or institution’ (Polletta & Jasper 2001). In digital gaming, this identity development stems from collective engagement about gaming narratives and personal experiences, shared with each other through that space.’ (Gray 2020: 41). Hence, this tool allows for constructing a collective designer identity, stemming from a deeper understanding of digital gaming communities, perspectives and identities, that aligns with the feminist concerns regarding intentions and impact of design decisions. Like understanding the histories behind existing community-based opinions and design traditions, being intentional with how designers position themselves while creating authentic representation of diverse lived experiences, creating communities of practice as well as understanding collective identities, are present in all steps of the toolkit. Specifically, the first two steps and the final step: identifying goals, social values, and understanding the future of the game are where this heavily happens. This is because the feminist intentions are established and discussed in the first two steps, and the final step requires a good understanding of the types of communities the game can exist in, contribute to and create.

Designing Through Feminism: Creating Room for Everyone

In this section I share another, connected, pedagogical concern: the flattened ideologies of feminism including issues such as representation, over-sexualization, and the damsel in distress. Based on my observations, most students understand the more popularised issues in social media, such as the problems with over-sexualised female characters, lack of diversity in characters, gender, and sexuality representations at a theoretical level. However, this understanding does not always transfer to practice, often feeling performative, as a socio-political rule we all now agree on at some level without having a deeper understanding. In this sense, intersectionality, and conversations around it, are especially important for conveying the intricate relationships between video games and social injustices that feminist design inquiry focuses on. As Collins and Bilge describe, ‘in a given society at a given time, power relations of race, class, and gender, for example, are not discreet and mutually exclusive entities, but rather build on each other and work together; and that, while often invisible, these intersecting power relations affect all aspects of the social world’ (2020: 2). Ruberg and Phillips (2018) also write:

[a]ddressing these complexities [the late-twentieth-century global crises that have configured historical relations among political economies, the geopolitics of war and terror, and national manifestations of sexual, racial, and gendered hierarchies] in video games requires attending to many layers of gamic systems, including but not limited to representation, procedural logics, hardware, player communities, and economic concerns. It also requires bringing together multiple methodologies and approaches to making meaning (Krzywinska, 2006). Holding these varied factors in tension with one another is an important step toward understanding how power flows through video games as assemblages and overlapping systems.

Hence, echoing Collins and Bilge, and Ruberg and Phillips, while games are systems themselves, feminist inquiry, including intersectionality, navigates the intricate relationship and tensions between diverse identities and requires a systemic understanding which dives deeper into the socio-political rules that students feel the need to perform. For instance, students do understand that it is negative to exclude female characters because of how women should be represented in more dimensional ways. However, as a part of their education, it is crucial to go beyond this surface-level understanding and help them gain a better, critical grasp of the societal systems and games’ role in them. This understanding should not just involve the fact that women (and any underrepresented community) should be represented at a visual level through characters, players, community members, etc. Instead, it should also include an interrogation of the impacts of this lack of representation, and what else this issue is connected to at a systemic level. For example, in classrooms, it should be more widely discussed why non-binary character creation options are limited in games, what happens if a black queer woman wants to create a character like themselves, which games do not allow these options, etc.

While these discussions do happen in academic circles, they do not always translate to teaching practices especially at the undergraduate level. Therefore, this teaching tool aims to create more space for these conversations and how to carry their outcomes into the design practices. Once again, while all steps of the toolkit involve these concerns, all systems-based aspects specifically focus on generation of these intentional discussions and design outcomes. These steps include social value, mechanics, narrative and visual representation as well as the design system. They navigate how the feminist social values are presented at the gameplay level as well as the signs of feminist design from a user experience side.

Games as Systems: Design Approaches to Produce a Whole

Naturally, an intersectional approach in design education involves systems thinking at a societal level. I see this as an asset for feminist game design pedagogies involving games that are systems themselves. It is an opportunity to help students understand cause-effect relationships which we already teach in game design education through more contained, controlled, lower stake environments that are the games students design and engage with. According to Ison, ‘[t]he word “system” comes from the Greek verb synhistanai, meaning “to stand together.” A system is a perceived whole whose elements are “interconnected”‘ (2008: 3). A system is not just any old collection of things. A system is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organised in a way that achieves something. If you look at that definition closely for a minute, you can see that a system must consist of three kinds of things: elements, interconnections, and function or purpose (Meadows 2008: 12). Hence, as large, complex systems (Akcaoglu & Green 2018; Squire 2011; Gee 2008), the design process of games can be guided to help students expand their systems focused thinking to have a more social justice-oriented, feminist framework. ‘The goal’ of the system that the students build through their games can and should go beyond the in-game goals. They should also have implications for larger-scale, meaningful goals that are significant at a societal level as I exemplified in the toolkit. Another important point that Meadows makes is the way systems are described. As they point out, ‘[t]here is a problem in discussing systems only with words. Words and sentences must by necessity come only one at a time in linear, logical order. Systems happen all at once. They are connected and not just in one direction, but in many directions simultaneously’ (2008: 5). The toolkit I present in this paper might also appear linear due to the nature of the medium I present it in. However, it should be read as contributions to an existing system that is far from having a linear nature. It therefore benefits from multiple design approaches and methods to help students understand a feminist approach to game design while thinking about it holistically and not as separate, disconnected elements.

To help students negotiate these approaches through their design processes, I identified guiding design methods for this toolkit. Similar to what Ruberg and Phillips (2018) established, this systemic approach requires overlapping methods and methodologies. The first one of these methods is critical play. Critical play has always been at the very centre of my own approach to design alongside my pedagogical philosophy. A critical approach to play aligns with the feminist pedagogical practices I deploy in the classroom.

Games ultimately create cognitive and epistemological environments that position the player or participants with the experiences previously described in meaningful ways. So, what does it mean to ‘play critically?’ Critical play means to create or occupy play environments and activities that represent one or more questions about aspects of human life (Flanagan 2013: 6).

This critical play approach invites students to further understand the impacts of their design decisions. Additionally, Flanagan’s Critical Play Game Design Model (2013: 257) has a significant impact on the way I conceptualised this teaching toolkit. It is one of the first actionable models that showcase the application of feminist, intersectional ideas could look like as a design method. As an educator, I find thoughtful design methods, models and toolkits extremely valuable as they contribute to our collective resources for instructional design. Hence, steps like Identifying the Goal, Social Value, finding experts with correct experiences and testing with diverse audiences are key steps from the toolkit aligning with Flanagan’s approach.

The second method I highlight is Activity Centered Design (ACD) by Norman (2005). Norman is also known for his introduction of Human Centered Design (HCD), which is well used among designers and even more popularised by companies like IDEO. However, as Norman explains in their paper ‘Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful’ (2005), HCD is not always the most beneficial tool. While it has a significant role in challenging the idea that the ‘designer knows it all,’ it should still not be used as an umbrella method with which to approach all design challenges. With ACD, Norman explains that designers should focus on activities they want their users to perform and defends that the design problem lies in the actions and not what people have come to know over the years. Based on the scholarship around intersectionality (Collins & Bilge 2020; Weldon 2008; Cho, Crenshaw, & McCall, 2013 Crenshaw 1989), race and game studies (Gray & Leonard 2018; Gray 2020) feminist media and game studies (Fenton 2000; Watkins & Emerson 2000; Payne 2014; Keller & Ryan 2018: Philips 2020), and queer game studies (Anthropy 2013; Shaw 2014; Ruberg 2019), it is clear that current status of game industry needs improving. Therefore, echoing Norman’s ACD approach, the existing practices and user experiences are not ideal precedents for design research as they are an extension of the current status of the game industry. In that sense, the toolkit I present is more focused on actions and activities (specifically through the steps of social value and establishing mechanics, narrative and visual elements) designed for players to perform, contrasting what they are used to seeing and experiencing in most games. In the toolkit, the focus on users and diverse experiences and needs are explored through participatory design practices and inquiries which are implemented at all stages of the design work and not just the early research. These data points are used to structure the activities that a game encourages.

In light of the theoretical framework, approaches and guiding design methods I have presented, the way this teaching method approaches feminism includes, but is not limited to, women’s rights. It deals with the holistic, systemic understanding of social injustice and the role of the design and methodologies we teach in the classroom. There are invaluable methods available for more intentional professional design and development processes, such as Flanagan’s model mentioned previously (2013). Yet, the required timelines, resources, and the level of designer expertise do not always align with the classroom limitations. While they can be benefited from in the classroom, most of these models are not specifically designed as instructional tools with feminist pedagogical concerns. The toolkit I present is an instructional tool for teaching through making. The feminist, intersectional, and critical pedagogical elements are intertwined into this teaching approach as a hands-on active learning tool. While it is heavily informed by the previous methodological interventions, it takes one step further to help position these thinking and making ways as instructional tools. The toolkit aims to educate designers about systemic, critical issues through designing and making with feminist design practices in mind. This is especially valuable as it aligns with one of the gaps I have identified, namely the lack of available educational resources to guide students in the project-based game classes. In educational institutions, the transfer between more theoretical and practice-based concepts is expected to naturally occur with the right sequencing within the curricular design. However, for students who are not used to transferring knowledge between different contexts or are only exposed to the current industry trends and practices, a more structured approach to making is necessary for meaningful impact.

To conclude, this toolkit is an invitation. I have demonstrated how diverse fields can contribute to feminist pedagogies in the game design classroom. To this end, I introduced this toolkit, which is designed through a combination of methods and approaches, including systems thinking, activity-centred design, and critical play. The goal was to introduce a flexible teaching tool that accommodates various feminist teachings in the design classroom. Another objective of this toolkit is to raise students’ awareness of what feminism entails and how feminist inquiry addresses a variety of societal issues. It also emphasises the importance of designing feminist games.

Games teach, encourage behaviours, and create experiences with significant takeaways. Thus, teaching young designers the importance of adopting a feminist approach and asking the right questions during the design process is crucial for challenging the toxic conventions within the game industry. This toolkit relies on conversations and communities to ask questions about how different game elements come together and what they signify. This questioning, with feminist inquiry in mind, promotes an intentional and aware design process, avoiding the pitfalls of existing tropes.

Game design education needs more feminist teaching methods, tools, and approaches. This toolkit contributes to the shared, collective knowledge that continues to develop in and around feminist pedagogies in game design education. We need more voices, methods, and toolkits. Therefore, I do not claim that what I offer is a solution to all issues we face in and around games. I believe in collective effort, making space for more voices, and continuing to resist and challenge the existing systems. I invite readers to experiment with this toolkit: use it, break it, mix it, challenge it. Create new systems and new toolkits from it. This crucial pursuit of knowledge is how we can enrich our ideologies, collective knowledge, and presence as feminist game scholars.


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