Curriculum

The Values at Play (VAP) project was conceived with the intent of investigating how video game designers consciously and unconsciously embed social values into video games through narratives and game mechanics. This curriculum, a corollary of the research project, will introduce designers to a systematic method for discovering, analyzing, and integrating values and meaningful, critical play into their design work. All of the materials associated with the curriculum are available on this page as downloadable documents.

If you would like further information on trying this curriculum segment in a course, please contact us: contact (at) tiltfactor (dot) org.

Teaching & Curriculum Guide

The guide contains a unit for introducing game designers to the concept of values embedded in games. The unit is divided into four lesson plans and covers the three segments of the Values at Play design methodology.
Values at Play — Curriculum

Design Journals

Design Journal prompts
(.docx)

Class Readings

Belman, J. & Flanagan, M. “Designing Games to Foster Empathy.” Cognitive Technology 14(2), 2009, pp. 5-15.
Belman, J. (2007). Game reviews. game_reviews.pdf
Bogost, I. (2006). Playing Politics: Videogames for Politics, Activism, and Advocacy. First Monday, 11(9), Special Issue #7: Command Lines: The Emergence of Governance in Cyberspace.
https://firstmonday.org/issues/special11_9/bogost/index.html
Flanagan, M. & Nissenbaum, H. (2007). A game design methodology to incorporate social activist themes. Proceedings of CHI 2007. New York: ACM Press, 181–190. vap-chifinal06sub.pdf
Frasca, G. (2004). Videogames of the oppressed.
https://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/Boalian
Friedman, B. & Nissenbaum, H. (1996). Bias in computer systems. ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 14(3), 330–347.
Latour, B. (1994). Where are the missing masses? Sociology of a door. In Wiebe Bijker and John Law (Eds.) Shaping technology/Building society: Studies in sociotechnical change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 225–259.
https://www.brunolatour.fr/articles/article/050.html
Mental Health Alliance Blasts Manhunt 2
https://kotaku.com/gaming/bang-your-head/mental-health-allianceblasts-manhunt-2-318129.php
Norman, D.A. (2004). Affordances and design.
https://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordances_and.html
Orr, M. (2005). User-centered design.
https://linuxgazette.net/116/orr.html
“Saving the World, One Video Game at a Time” (New York Times, July 23, 2006):
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/23/arts/23thom.html?ex=1185076800&en=2365cab8f8972ab8&ei=5070
Winner, L. (1988). Do artifacts have politics? In L. Winner, The whale and the reactor: A search for limits in an age of high technology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. pp. 19–39.
https://epl.scu.edu:16080/~stsvalues/readings/Winner.pdf
Zimmerman, E. (2003). Play as research: The iterative design process.
https://www.ericzimmerman.com/texts/Iterative_Design.htm