#ResistJam Workshop: Subversive Game Design Transcript

Welcome to the resistance! [Does the Anarchy Hand sign]

I'm Rob Jagnow,the founder of Lazy 8 Studios. You may already be familiar with some of my games like Cogs or Extrasolar, but what you may not know is that I also enjoy making what I call "Queer or Subversive Games." I'll talk a little bit more about those later. I also currently work at Google but I want to make it clear up front that the views expresed here are my own & shouldn't be construed to represent Google in any way. Now if you're watching this video, chances are you're interested in figuring out how you can use your skills as a game developer to help make the world a better place. Before I launch in to my 10 recommended strageties for subversive game design, I want to spend a little more time talking about the psychology of how people got to be so divided in the first place.

THE PYSCHOLOGY OF DIVISION
Research has shown that when people are presented with facts that don't fit into their worldview they'll tend to cling even more tightly to their established view than to adapt their mental model to make room for the new information. This tendency doesn't just exist within particular religious groups or political ideologies, it's human nature & we're all vulnerable. Now it used to be that most of our news came from dependable newspapers or TV channels, these sources presented facts in a non-judgmental way, they gave us time to digest these new ideas without feeling threatened. Anymore, a lot of our news comes to social media & often come from either a friend or media source with an agenda. It doesn't feel like non-judgmental facts anymore, it feels like an attack. When it doesn't through our world view, we immediately go on the defensive. When we're trying to pull people closer, we end up just pushing them further away. I know the situation sounds bleak, how do we get people to open up to new ideas? I believe games can play an important role.

GAMES FOR CHANGE
There are a couple of reasons why games can be more effective than other media at changing political attitudes. A well-designed game can provide the non-threatening space we need to process facts & ideas with our rational mind. Rather than being put into a space where we're told the facts & forced to either accept or reject, a good game can give us the space to discover the facts on our own through game mechanics & storytelling. Rather than feel like we've been challenged by an opponent, we instead feel like we're challenging ourselves & that's the recipe for growth. The other place where games can excell is in conveying empathy. Hearing the heart-wrenching story of refugee can already help us humanize issues like immigration. A game can take that to the next level by allowing us to live the life of that refugee. In fact, games are one of the only media forms where we can describe our experiences in the first person. We don't say "Mario kicks Bowser's butt", we "I kicked Bowser's butt." This connection with the characters that we play, opens doors to a more personal sense of empathy.

10 STRATEGIES FOR SUBVERSIVE GAME DESIGN
Now just because we are conveying a political message to a game doesn't mean that it will be effective, we've still have to be thoughtful about our design & give our players the space to grow on their own. I've analyzed some of my favorite games & put together a list of ten strategies that I think you may want to use for making your own subversive games. For all the games that I mentioned, I'll provide a link in the video description.  Before watching strategy number one, let's do a quick exercise: Pick a game you've been thinking about making, now if you don't have an original game in mind, think about a game that you loved in the past & would like to remake with your own characters, now take a moment to picture the protagonist of that game in your head, can you see them?

#1 DIVERSE CHARACTERS
This brings me to my first strategy for subversive game design, use diverse characters. If the image in your mind is a young white heterosexual cisgender man, well it won't come as a surprise, but the thing is, you probably didn't really explicitly take a white guy, we just think of it as the default because we see it everywhere. To be a better designer, don't just make the default choices. Ask yourself "Will the story I'm trying to tell be just as good if the lead character was an elderly black woman? Will that story be even better?" When we pop you in our worlds, do it in a way that represents the breadth & diversity in the real world. Try to remember the vast number of dimensions of diversity: Age, Race, Sex, Sexual Oritetation, Gender Identity, Gender, Gender Expression, Religion, Disability Signs, Nationality, everyone deserves to see themselves represented in games.

#2 STAND IN MY SHOES
Games can give the player a first hand simulation of what our life is like for someone else. There's some great games that do this really well including Mainichi, Dysphoria, & Coming Out Simulator.

#3 THE SLOW REVEAL
When gay & transgender people come out, they're in a position to change prexistancing attitudes of people around them. This works for game characters to build empathy with a story that others can relate to and slowly reveal the internal struggles of your game character. Now some people have attacked games that do this as 'Bait and Switch' don't accept that criticism. When your childhood best friend comes out of the closet, they're still the same person they always were, it's just that we made assumptions about them & turned out to not be true, the same rules apply for fictional characters.

#4 ABSTRACTION
We're all affected by prejudice because we don't live in a vacuum. We can depoliticize social issues by removing the words or symbols that tend to immediately put us on the defensive. If we can get someone to understand the social issues symbolically, then maybe they'll be open to applying those lessons to real social issues. This is the approach that I took in my own game called "A game about Star" which is the star on some game characters represent. By forcing the player to figure it out on their own, the games more effective at engaging the rational minds in a judgment-free environment. Limb is another great game that use abstraction effectively. Abstraction can also leave a game open to interpretation and create conversations that also leave space for players to apply the meaning to the specifics of their own lives.

#5 ROLE REVERSAL
Consider a world where heterosexuality is considered an abomination or where women are expected to be the primary wager. Games are at their heart simulations. What parallel universe should we experience to help us think differently about our own?

#6 PLAY BOTH SIDES
Real-world conflict doesn't usually come from an evil antagonist butting heads with the pure-hearted protagonist, real conflict comes from two well-intentioned people with different motivations and value systems. With games, we can ask players to play both sides, forcing them to see the complex impact of well-intended actions. Imagine the game where you play the role of a refugee desperately doing whatever you can to get your family to safety. Now you're the border control agent, you show sympathy and then the rules change when your job might be at stake. Molleindustria has done a ton of fantastic subversive games, one of my favorites, Unmanned, uses a variant of this rule. The game takes place in alternating scenes, one where you're controlling a military drone, followed by one where you're playing a video game with your son. The parallels are deliberately uncomfortable.

#7 CONSEQUENCES
Consider non-traditional game consequences. For instance in the game, Mook is Murder, theres a globally finite supply of enemies. When they're all dead, they're extinct. I could give a link to the game, but all the Mooks are long gone. All you can do is wander around aimlessly through an empty world. In the game, You Only Live Once, you can literally only play the game once. After that, you can reload your browser button, but you just keep getting the same game over screen. This makes your choices more pressing as the Apocalypse closes in, then when you spend time with your family, or attempt to find a cure for a deadly plague.

#8 SATIRE
Satire isn't just for literature, it works in games too. Molleindustria made a McDonalds-themed video game that uses classic Freemium Game mechanics to simulate the life of a meal from clearing the rainforest for your fields all the way to the satisfied customer. The satire may not be immediately apparent at the start, but over time you'll be forced to choose between profits and ethics.

#9 RULES ARE FOR BREAKING
It's easy to draw a parallel between game rules and laws or societal norms. Consider a game in which the only way to win is to break the rules, many subversive movements were started by people who decided that the rules were unjust & that they would no longer cooperate. Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Oskar Schindler, imagine the game where the rules are deliberately unjust, you have to choose to do what's right or what's permitted. To learn more about one of my favorite games that takes this approach, read up on Brenda Romero's non-digital game, Train. The game, September 12th, uses a variant of this idea. The stated goal is to fire missiles at terrorist, but with each shot fired, innocent victims are inevitably caught in the crossfire. Those who stopped to morn turn into terrorists themselves. Ultimately the only way to win is not to play. My own game, Karma High, take a similar approach. In the game, it's made clear that you're expected to punch other kids to get to class on time, but in the last level, you're the student whose the target of the attacks. The only way to win is to go back to the beginning and play the whole game without using violence.

#10 HUMOR
Often times game designers described political games as being in the category of "Serious Games." But that doesn't mean the players can't have fun. Serious Topics can put people on the defensive, but careful use of humor can be disarming and help people open up to new ideas.

A WORD ABOUT PROPAGANDA

To wrap up, I want to preempt the discussion that is almost certain to come up. Since this is being shared on the internet, someone's bound to characterize what I'm saying as a strategy for creating propaganda. So let me be absolutely clear: Propaganda aims to bypass the rational mind whereas your goal should be to engage. One more time, propaganda aims to bypass the rational mind, your goal is to engage it. Propaganda works by delivering misinformation, creating a space for doubt to creep in, instilling fear, stoking our tribal instincts, or building an impression of truth through repetition. You are better than those tactics. Your goal should be to share the truth in a non-judgmental way that gives players the latttiude to engage the rational minds & come to their own conclusions. Now I won't pretend that will be easy, so now get out there and use your powers for good. I look forward to seeing your creations.