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Earlier this month I stepped outside of my usual disciplinary (and transdisciplinary) spaces and attended the big conference of another discipline: the American Anthropological Association. I arrived in DC not quite sure what to expect, invited by the team behind AnthropologyCon: a game design workshop bringing together anthropologists interested in, or already actively engaging, games in their research and teaching. The conversation and game-making followed turned out from my disciplinary outsider perspective to be a great example of the type of productive, communal conversation that game design needs, particularly for those of us seeking to find new ways to engage and collaborate with our students.
In the introduction to the workshop, the team (including Samuel Collins, Edward Gonzalez-Tennant, Krista Harper, Matthew Durington, Marc Lorenc, Fiona McDonald, and Nicholas Mizer) discuss the appeal of serious games for anthropology in terms that I definitely relate to even as a anthropology outsider:
Game designer Eric Zimmerman recently proclaimed the 21st century to be the "Ludic Century." Jane McGonigal has written that "reality is broken" and games may be the solution for helping people think through social problems. The American Museum of Natural History recently featured "Social Impact Games", based on social science, to explore concepts of race and issues of sweatshop workers. Anthropologists can and should be more involved in this emerging field, because of our role in studying and imagining different ways of engaging with the world, and our interest in exploring multimodal platforms for the dissemination of anthropological ideas.
The team produced a creative commons licensed booklet with resources from the event, Gaming Anthropology. The booklet is inspired by a zine approach to sharing reflective research and pedagogy (not unlike what we strive for here at ProfHacker), and includes reflections on teaching, design, and research that suggest models for those thinking about "serious" games. Several games that might be of interest to those looking to build games with and for their students and research were featured at the event and highlighted in these resources, including Cards Against Anthropology, a mod set of the very popular Cards Against Humanity designed in collaboration with students. Cards Against Humanity itself is a fascinating social game with its own somewhat serious game initiative making headlines right now, Cards Against Humanity Saves America. The game is also a compelling example of a hyper-flexible set of mechanics that can be applied to a number of different situations. For more context on Cards Against Humanity and some of the challenges its cardset can present, I highly recommend Edmond Chang's essay "Cards Against Humanity is ____," in which he notes: "much of the humor in Cards Against Humanity is really about playing with and playing up race, gender, sexuality, stereotypes, and difference. Often cards combine all of these logics and identities together." Remixing and building upon these game models can be a powerful way for students to see and address the assumptions encoded in the original game mechanics and cards.
Conversations like those I enjoyed at AnthropologyCon, which brought together experimenters in games from around the country, are an invaluable chance to find ideas and rethink one's own assumptions about what serious games and games in the classroom might bring to the field. It's also a reminder of how much you can accomplish if you can get a few people committed to sitting down and planning out a game.
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