2 USING PLAY TO DISCUSS THE FUTURE OF BUIKSLOTERHAM In this chapter we focus on the medium of gaming, analyzing how the City Innovation Game allows players to collaboratively discuss opportunities and challenges for developing Buiksloterham into a circular city. This section is structured as follows: first we outline how games can be understood in terms of their mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics (MDA). After reporting about the game mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics, the report evaluates the event and ends with some reflections on the potential of games for ‘Hackable Citymaking’. With Hackable Citymaking we mean the practices in which various stakeholders organize themselves into collectives to break into the current workings of the city, with the goal of making it a better place.
The advantage of using this model is that it can serve as a way to evaluate and inform further prototyping. By highlighting designer and player agency the model helps to better understand how game development and play are connected. A game designer usually enters from the side of the game mechanics. This is the part of the game (s)he has the most influence on. Players enter the game from the side of aesthetics. To some degree players shape their own experiences by bringing in a playful attitude, expectations, and a measure of literacy what it takes to collectively create an experience of “the wellplayed game”.2 Game dynamics lie somewhere between what designers can do and what players can do, and is to a considerable degree an emergent phenomenon. Hunicke, Robin, Marc LeBlanc, and Robert Zubek. 2004. MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research. Paper read at Proceedings of the Challenges in Game AI Workshop, Nineteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI ‘04), at San Jose, California. http://www.cs.northwestern. edu/~hunicke/MDA. 2 De Koven, Bernie. 1978. The well-played game : A player’s philosophy. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 1
Approach: using the MDA model to understand games and city making The model used in this report is the so-called MDA model.1 This is a common way to understand (video) games in terms of their formal rules and game-play (Mechanics), the (social) interactions these systems afford (Dynamics), and the play experience players have of the game (Aesthetics). The model is helpful to break games down into separate elements that can be studied in more detail. I. Mechanics can be analyzed by understanding the formal rules and aims structuring the game. II. Dynamics can be analyzed by focusing on the execution phase of the game as a system that affords certain player interactions, e.g. who can take turns and how can players react on each other. III. Aesthetics can be analyzed by looking at experiential game components, observing player behavior during the game and people’s responses, e.g. is it fun to play?
Game mechanics: material setting and structuring elements The game is played around a huge table with a 1:300 scale model of the Buiksloterham. The game board consists of a 3D realistic map of the area that during the game is to be build up with all kinds of small physical models (houses, offices, solar panels, wind turbines, parks, roads, waterways). In this instance of the game, all participants played their own role. In this first public try-out there are no explicit rules and no true gameplay (no way to win or otherwise end the game). This does not mean that the game is totally without rules. For one, the game was heavily moderated and therefore lead to structured conversation rather than emergent game9