By Prof. Eric Zimmerman, NYU Game Center
This session is part lecture and part play-based workshop. It is based on my recently published book The Rules We Break (Princeton Architectural Press, 2022) - a compendium of the ways that I use games and play to teach design. The talk will explore fundamental ideas of what games are, how they function, and the way that games offer a model for understanding how meaning is made.
The format of the session will be slightly different than most of the other talks in the conference. After a short lecture, we will be convening for a session of live online interaction to play together and try out some of the exercises. These exercises emerge from teaching all kinds of students - from kids in after school programs to university students to veteran game scholars and developers. They leverage classics like Rock Paper Scissors and games from Bernie DeKoven and the New Games Movement to weave together active, social play with discussions of what games are and why players find them meaningful.
I hope you can join us for a highly participatory session as we explore what games have to teach us about how play creates meaning, how social interaction generates unexpected patterns of play within the context of a game, and how players find creative ways to bend and break the restrictions of rules. See you there!
Time:
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