This is a blog post from my Masters work which was conducted in 2018-19. It is a re-post from the original site where the blog was held and was only slightly adjusted to the new website. If you are interested in the larger project you can read the thesis here.
I began this blog as a means to document my escape room design, yet my first posts were baked in a definitional debate on filter bubbles and echo chambers. While those posts were important, they were merely frames through which I can now jump into design. I have been meeting with various scholars and stakeholders, and after gaining a handle on what we mean by filter bubbles and echo chambers, I can consider how they might fit into a game.
Based on what I have done, I have already updated my initial thoughts for the game. Rather than explicitly focus on filter bubbles and echo chambers, the game will pivot to the overarching theme of personalization. It is an encompassing term, which refers to the individual specific curation of content on a platform. Surprise, surprise! Your social media feed is different than mine. But this argument extends beyond what we scroll. Search engines, online shopping sites, and news organizations can all personalize content. While sometimes beneficial, this process can quickly create mini echo chambers or filter bubbles. One example could be the recent claims linking Youtube’s platform and pedophile rings (see Fisher & Taub, 2019). These systems are complex, hard to understand, and hard to even research. From here, I can consider design.
The project's goal was to explore digital issues in an analog space. But how do you personalize a stagnant space?
A central goal of the project was to present digital issues within an analog space. This objective raises its own set of questions in the context outline above such as: How do you personalize a stagnant space? How do you make a game feel unique to each player if you physically construct it? How do you represent an algorithm in a real-world setting? The list is seemingly endless, but fodder for the brainstorming process I have begun on (and write about in another post).
Creating an analog game that is personalized to its players requires a negotiation of red herrings reflecting personal things and designed puzzles and mechanics doing so. The escape room genre offers a strong setting, an investigative story, and controls focused on piecing together parts. Yet, they are rarely malleable, and typically have predetermined victory pathways (like most published analog games). In this manner, the space needs to feel personalized but balance a design that is somewhat prescribed. Rather than total player autonomy, I had to remember that the game can have explicit restrictions that provide some agency but ultimately get the players to do what I want. While I am still working on some specifics, the environment offers a distinct space to have users see their experience reflected back to them.
Moving forward, the blog posts will be discussing specific design choices, questions I came across, and my overall methodology. As I prepare to playtest next month, I have a lot to solve in a short time frame.
References:
Fisher, M., & Taub, A. (2019, June 3). On YouTube’s Digital Playground, an Open Gate for Pedophiles. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/world/americas/youtube-pedophiles.html
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