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The Power of Critical Play w/ Dr. Mary Flanagan
301 Plays4 days ago
We all grew up playing games — I fondly remember playing Go Fish with my grandma and her next door neighbor, as a 90s kid who grew up with an NES, it felt like every console generation was a leap forward in graphics and game quality, and, regardless of who you’re cheering for, tomorrow’s World Cup final will be watched by an estimated 2 billion people.
But even though at some point many of us stop playing games—even if we don’t stop paying attention to them—we hold onto the experiences, the feelings, and the lessons: what they taught us about ourselves, each other, and the world around us. And it’s because games play an important role in human development and tell us so much about societies and cultures at large, the relationship between play, games, and learning has always been a focus of our work. It’s also been the lifelong interest of my guest today, game designer, artist, author, and researcher, Dr. Mary Flanagan.
Mary Flanagan is the founder of Tiltfactor game studio, whose tabletop and digital games intentionally tackle a number of social issues. The tagline on the Tiltfactor homepage reads “Game design for social change” with the challenge, “Can you make a more just and equitable world with games? At Tiltfactor, we believe we can.” Mary has also authored several incredible books, including the pivotal Critical Play about radical game design, and coauthored, Playing Oppression: The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games. Given Mary Flanagan’s unique and consequential focus, I wanted to sit down with her to see what we can learn at the intersection of play and critical pedagogy.
Playing Oppression : The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games
Critical Play: Radical Game Design
Critical.play on Instagram
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Transcript
Introduction and Purpose of Games
00:00:00
Speaker
Entering into this magic circle and and really kind of understanding that something is different here. There's a new world. Well, isn't that what we need to be thinking about right now? Don't we need to reinvent some of our broken stuff? um So, and I'm saying that generally, I can get down to specifics about economies, about value, about the environment, about climate, about, we have some broken things, divided people, right? So we have we have broken things. And i i'm I'm really an advocate for using games as a ah one place, at least, to experiment and try something different and try something new.
00:00:43
Speaker
Hey there, Nick here at Human Restoration Project. We all grew up playing games. I fondly remember playing Go Fish with my grandma and her next-door neighbor. As a 90s kid who grew up with an NES, it felt like every console generation was a leap forward in graphics and game quality.
00:01:02
Speaker
And regardless of who you're cheering for, tomorrow's World Cup Final will be watched by an estimated 2 billion people. Even though at some point many of us stop playing games, even if we don't stop paying attention to them, we hold on to the experiences, the feelings, and the lessons.
00:01:20
Speaker
What they taught us about ourselves, each other, and the world around us. And it's because games play an important role in human development and tell us so much about societies and cultures at large, the relationship between play, games, and learning has always been a focus of our work.
00:01:37
Speaker
And it's been the lifelong interest of my guest today, game designer, artist, author, and researcher, Dr. Mary Flanagan. Mary Flanagan is the founder of Tilt Factor Game Studio, whose tabletop and digital games intentionally tackle a number of social issues.
00:01:54
Speaker
The tagline on the Tilt Factor homepage reads, Game Design for Social Change, with the challenge, can you make a more just and equitable world with games? At Tilt Factor, we believe we can.
00:02:06
Speaker
Mary has also co-authored several incredible books, including the pivotal Critical Play about radical game design and co-authored Playing Oppression, the Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games.
00:02:20
Speaker
So given Mary Flanagan's unique and consequential focus, I wanted to sit down with her to see what we can learn at the intersection of play and critical pedagogy. Dr. Mary Flanagan, thanks so much for joining me today.
00:02:35
Speaker
Thanks, Nick, for reaching out. It's nice to meet you. I think a lot of people might call your bio artist, author, got academic work, game designer. They might call that live in the dream. So how in the world did you come to make game design the focus not just of social change and artistic expression, but academic analysis as well?
Mary Flanagan's Career and Interdisciplinary Exploration
00:02:57
Speaker
um I blame my ADHD.
00:03:00
Speaker
so So there's hope for us yet is what you're saying. There's hope. That's correct. That's correct. You know, I never could decide um on any particular path because I like to do so many things. And i I've just spent my life doing that. um The things, you know, one question leads to another. Sometimes things end up being books, you know, and you share ah an idea through books. Like, for example, playing oppression arose from archival research I was doing. I was at the Getty Museum and i stumbled across these really...
00:03:29
Speaker
weird historical games that I thought, oh, wow, these actually are doing a lot more than just your simple roll and move around the track thing that I had unfairly ah kind of categorized them in my head as this like, oh, well, there those are really simple games for simpler times. And whoa, you know. Game and all that, you know. Yes, The Game of the Goose. met Bad on me, bad on me, because, of course, as soon as you like, oh that, you know.
00:03:54
Speaker
that Those game mechanics aren't really complicated. Well, that that kind of thinking will will never will never stand. History always has things to teach us. Yeah, I was just looking at like the BGG top 100.
00:04:08
Speaker
hundred or whatever. I guess I was just looking at that whole list and i saw that on the very bottom, like ranked 30,382 is and ladders, which I'm making the connection now, like in playing oppression, you talk about like the importance for religious instruction of, you know, the cultural importance of snakes and ladders or whatever it was called in its own historical context.
Historical Context of Game Mechanics
00:04:34
Speaker
And I'm thinking, my gosh, yeah, removed from all of that,
00:04:38
Speaker
Mechanically, yeah it's going to be on the bottom of the BGG 30,000 or whatever. So just a wild, again, ADHD connection. My brain just made ah something you talk about in your book there.
00:04:49
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's ah that's a classic example of the of how you can be a detective in going into history and really understanding about how, oh my, a game that was about contemplation, snakes and ladders and moral vices and and um thinking through different religious practices, by the way, of the Indian subcontinent. There are Gayaan Chowper boards actually in um ah representing Muslim, Jain, and Hindu faith. So like that the the format was used across several religions to kind of think about spiritual enlightenment. And wow, that was completely stripped of any meaning and cultural context as it was appropriated during the British colonization when things could just be taken and repurposed and packaged and sold.
00:05:43
Speaker
Yeah, and now you can get enlightenment for $10 at Target or whatever. Yeah, there's no enlightenment there. but To be fair, I will say even simple games like Game of the Goose where you're rolling, know, and a Eurogamer might say, well, this is not for me. This is not my kind of game. You know, there's it's all chance. This is the worst, you know, where's my meaningful choice? um But on the other hand, you know, they served as a lot of purposes. They were about enculturation. They were, they were things to talk about. They were, they were subject, they weren't, people weren't bombarded by the internet. So these gave a focused point of a conversation. and People could spend time arguing and debating. There's Game of the Geese. Like I have this really great book of, of, very thick book that was in the, from the 1950s where a French scholar collected a lot of game of the geese and their games on shoes, you know, in the, in the, in the 18th century, you can go play all about different shoe styles and fashion and wigs and all these. then as well as politics and literature was represented in this. So, so the themes actually were a way in which, um,
00:06:57
Speaker
group interactions were being designed, but, but you know, in a very different focus on mechanics. Putting on my social studies teacher hat, so I taught high school history for 10 years or whatever, and i as I was reading through your book, I was thinking, God, I would love to just get my hand on a copy or something of those games as as something of like ah like a primary source or like a historiographical, you know, Yes. Artifact so that students could play through to see how people at the time understood concepts or they saw themselves from the role of, you know, the colonists or my goodness, I love the small section on like how.
00:07:40
Speaker
It's how we get like the modern German Euro game today is like them fleeing from, you know, the war games of the past is how we get, you know, the Canizias and I guess everything else today. But um those, the the ones that depict, you know, the the German expansion and conquest and depict...
00:07:57
Speaker
ah you know, the racial differences and everything else, just that to really seal the, I guess, seal the deal on how enculturation, you know, to use your word there, how enculturated those things were through play in all of these different cultures for better and for worse in a lot of
Games Reflecting and Challenging Societal Biases
00:08:14
Speaker
cases.
00:08:14
Speaker
Yeah, i it is fascinating how um we don't necessarily, as players of contemporary modern board games, we don't we don't we don't always think about the roots of of there of of the thought behind it, right? Like, why is strategy so important? Well, you know, strategy was very important in Prussian war games. Yeah.
00:08:37
Speaker
and And really linking to to past ah to to the past. But it also shows you what other kinds of biases are built into um our current games, beloved games that we have. For example, often they're just like infinite resources.
00:08:54
Speaker
in a game, you know, okay, I need more wood in my set, in my Catan, right? I need more wood i got to get my wood. You know, that no one, no one's, no one's taking a round to grow. This is one of the reasons I like Agricola, for example, because you have to actually wait for the little sheep to multiply. You know, but I actually, there are, there are ways to bring mechanics that are a little bit different, but, um but really questioning my my whole thought about games and And my art practice actually is looking at play and power. How how do we approach power-laden situations? Everyday life, the internet, which started off as this utopian, um well, first it started off as military ah as military ah as safeguards. And then it start it became this utopian place. And then now it's like this d dystopian, data-stealing, systemic, um
00:09:50
Speaker
Blight. It's a nightmare. Yeah. Yes, I read a lot of Cory Doctorow, of course, so um yeah. yeah Yeah, which I think it balances out like the, I don't know, knowing more about that makes me more angsty and upset, but also his take on it is both like humorous and like empowering. So I like his his take on it too. Sometimes it can be a little bit too Doomer for my taste, some of some of that critique, but Doctorow threads that needle pretty well.
00:10:21
Speaker
Yes, there's a new one out. I've just started, i don't know i don't know where it is, but there's a new one about um the centaur and whether AI is being used for the human or whether the human is being used for the AI. And so there's this, he's trying to get more nuanced, I think, about this kind of thing. So, um so you know, to be to be determined. but um But the whole, you know, the context of play in this particular moment is is both rife and it's also urgent. Yeah.
00:10:50
Speaker
Because we need to be able to look at... i mean what the The most interesting thing, I think, about games are the way that games model not only player interactions, they give us a structure for player interactions, but they give us a logic of a whole world.
00:11:07
Speaker
So we enter into this world. Johan Huizinga, Magic Circle, I know some people don't like that, but I'm totally into it because he's the first person who ever talked about magic in games. Ha ha ha. Anyway... Like entering into this magic circle and and really kind of understanding that something is different here. There's a new world. Well, isn't that what we need to be thinking about right now? Don't we need to reinvent some of our broken stuff? um So, um and I'm saying that generally, I can get down to specifics about economies, about value, about the environment, about climate, about we have some broken things. Yeah.
00:11:46
Speaker
um divided people, right? So we have we have broken things and i i'm I'm really an advocate for using games as a ah one place at least to experiment and try something different and try something new. And I think if we have a whole bunch of gamers trying to trying to invent new mechanics and thinking about new economies. And it's it's a really interesting time, I think, to to be able to invent this kind of new way of thinking. and And it can start with a game because games reflect culture, but also games are designed. So can we use games too ah to impact you the world around us? I i think it's worth a shot. Yeah. Well, I think what's wild about that is that I don't think people would balk at the idea that we were just talking about these more historical games, you know, that would reflect the the greatness of the French Empire or whatever to enculturate, you know, young people into thinking of ah these these new distant foreign lands or the greatness of the French Empire wanting to contribute to that. People would say, well, yeah, of course. But then when you take the the step to say, well, maybe if we design differently, then we could get both children and adults or whomever, right, thinking differently about systems and wanting to then build them differently in the real world, people will be like, wait, they're just games. they're you know They might put them in a separate category. It's not something that we should take seriously. And one thing one thing I love about Tilt Factor is you guys just wear that on your sleeve. I um copied the the vision over here for folks to to hear, and it says, their vision your vision is of an equitable and just world in which challenges such as biases and stereotypes, sexual violence, and unequal access to education and healthcare care are eradicated. through play. And i think we're getting to like, I don't know, like something of a thesis here in the first 10 minutes, which is just like, why does this matter so much for us to care about play in this way? This is really where I felt that critical pedagogy and play connection. Why should we care?
00:13:50
Speaker
Yes. Well, I mean, it's very interesting. to i'm I'm writing a, I'm writing something. I'm writing a a lecture that I have to give in in another land. and And I've ran across this really great quote from the 18th century Dutch poet, Hieronymus van Elfen.
00:14:09
Speaker
My playing is learning, my learning is play, and why should learning ever bore me? um so I think play is intrinsically tied to curiosity and wonder and ah and and the magic of being alive, right? So so that is a positive force. um You know, you could have negative forms of play, of course, you know, and people might cite um dark play, gambling, whatever, you know, there there there are there are other kinds of play and other than this kind of utopian rah-rah thing that I'm i'm on. But...
00:14:45
Speaker
But I do think that it's it's an overlooked place for serious work to too playfully get people thinking differently. let us Let us find new ways of seeing through the lens of play.
00:15:00
Speaker
I guess a quick personal anecdote when I was thinking about this conversation and thinking about, you know, what's reflected in critical play and playing oppression, like my own tabletop gaming journey with my family, right? I'm pretty new to it. It's something that I got into just as a break from work and screen time and wanting to get them into it. But realizing too that sometimes those were not super positive experiences because they're so competitive. you know at the end of playing card games or board games or whatever, like there's winners and losers. And like it felt really bad to have you know kids or somebody feeling really bad about it. So I was looking into, oh, this whole world of cooperative games. So we got Pandemic, we got Forbidden Island, and um and i got really into but the Kinfire universe from an Incredible Dream is and is awesome. I just love everything they do. It's basically all co-op too. So it's just such a cool such a cool world to build in there. But right that I was thinking about that too, like how can we have more positive experiences as a family playing games? Because we're all against the same team, you know taking on different roles, helping each other out, like playing to beat the game and win together. Like that seemed like such a fundamental shift in in my way of viewing, um i guess, the the role that games could play, not just to have winners and losers, but we could all be on the same team sharing a common experience together instead of somebody walking away feeling salty about it, you know? You're right. You're right. And that the I think it's interesting that you talk about that experience of walking away from a game because we don't yet have great language for that. Sometimes you you might feel guilty because you did this thing, but ultimately you're happy you won. Some games actually bring out very negative parts of us.
00:16:46
Speaker
So different mechanics and different game experiences actually do have ah embodied um effects. And we know, we know nothing. It's not, it's not really been studied as a whole area. Like it's, it's, it's, it's really interesting to look at that. I,
00:17:02
Speaker
You can even see this over in VR and everything where people are thinking, oh, you know, VR ah games are they're automatically built for empathy. Well, you know we need research on some of this stuff before we make assumptions because um you would think by being seen in someone else's shoes,
00:17:19
Speaker
it might be really
Games as Tools for Learning and Empathy
00:17:20
Speaker
moving, but maybe not. Maybe not because you are mediated. So there's a lot about ah there's a lot to be learned about the role of games in our everyday life and the way we learn, the way we see each other and how we can support each other. So that is why I think that any attempt for people to try experimenting with games, to shift the rule sets. You know, what happens if we try to play this co-op? Well, how do we do that? mar I don't know. Like, let us, let us play with the rules because we're really operating under some really old paradigms, you know, for, um, for gameplay, you know, winners and losers and a winner take all mentality. I mean, that's all in chess and that's, know, these are, these are some older, older games and, and,
00:18:07
Speaker
But some games weren't were not that way, right? and And then that might fall into more play than game. So that the line between play and game is also something that I'm very interested in because um some people have very strict rules about that. And I'm i'm not so strict about about it. I mean, if I'm making a commercial product, I have to take expectations of certain genres into account and whatever. But um but in general, I like to blur the lines and bring bring play into unexpected places as well.
00:18:39
Speaker
Yeah. Talk more about that distinction because that's something that you get into like with critical play is just like, well, how do we define, you know, what is play and what is a game? And I guess expanding and contracting those to fit different to genres or, um you know, form types and things. So where where do you see that or how do you like to play with those confines?
00:18:59
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I was really inspired um learning about the fluxus movement, actually, and the surrealist movement, which I do talk about in critical play. But I learned about these things. And actually, when I was in graduate school, I worked at this computer lab um where we were actually digitizing fluxus materials so that people could interact with them. So they weren't just sitting in a museum because they were meant to be you know used and and and they were made of ephemeral materials because they weren't special objects. They were supposed to be
00:19:33
Speaker
engaged with. um And I had no idea who what that was. What is this flexus-y thing, you know? And then I realized that there was a bunch of artists who are making kind of absurd and interesting and provocative game and play experiences, like looking like sometimes they'd make a box, you open it up and it's just filled with nonsensical objects and and and it's kind of proposing the question on what is the difference between play and games? Can you make a game out of these playful things? um It's like Dadaist ah board game designers. Yes. it's So Dada, surrealism and fluxes are these moments where you have very interesting ah
00:20:13
Speaker
eruptions in the blurring of games and play. ah That's awesome. Yeah. and And I really think they they they came at very interesting times. You know, if you look historically, Dada was really a reaction to World War one Surrealism was really in that gap between World War I and World War II with the invention of psychology and the mainstream and like all kinds of development of of all kinds of really interesting stuff. And then Fluxus in the 60s and 70s when you had um student protests, empowerment, Vietnam War, at least in the United States. So
00:20:47
Speaker
So different different his history histories have are are forming these narratives as well, right? So being a history teacher, this probably is cool for you. I'm a closet historian myself.
00:20:59
Speaker
People can't see it. I'm grinning ear to ear because like this is hitting the intersection of games, history, again, like pedagogy play. It's just all right in that in that. weirdhouse well so So what do the games, I guess, that we engage with today? um You had mentioned VR. You know, my my own kids dabble in VR and it's not a world that is really i guess what's interesting is it's not very accessible to people without the headset, unlike, you know, couch co-op or other things that happen um on other virtual gaming consoles or online play or something like that. But um have you have you thought or um done any research or writing about what to date days games, just like those of the past said about the enculturation of of people and their reflection of values? What do today's games say Well, I do think we have some some borrowed histories that we haven't really dealt with. And I would think that like, and we touch on this in playing oppression, but I've recently been asked, point on, like, what are colonial mechanics that we're using right now?
00:22:00
Speaker
Like, tell me so I don't have to use them. And so I have to invent something else. I'm like, all right, let's think about this. you know Let's get a list going. you know And I already mentioned the the idea of collecting infinite resources, right? Or... um Or worker placement, is that, you know, is that, you could think of it as ah corporate, you know, like leadership, or you could think of it as slavery, right? So so there are lots of ah aspects of games that really um do ah get adopted. And that's one place to start anyway, in this in this exploration of how we, how how culture is reflected.
00:22:38
Speaker
because it's still being reflected. We still inherited and we're still operating and capitalism is operating under the laws of extraction that philosopher Nancy Fraser says capitalism is not ah an economic system, it's a social order. So once we understand that as a social order, that there always has to be some someone who's down to have someone up, and that's not that's not necessarily a natural scheme of things that is actually an invented scheme of things. So when we're thinking about how we can see that in our games, we, you know, as you talked about, like the invention of co-op is a new way of thinking around some of those problems. Like, so that is a very cool thing. So that, that the rise of, of new forms of play is something that excites me very much because it does show how culture and designers are thinking together
00:23:30
Speaker
in this really tricky time where we need creative answers. Yeah, I love it was that reframe. I opened it up to the book is like that four X, which is gosh, what are the all those explore, expand, exploit and exterminate sort of God. I mean, when you actually describe what those four X's are, it kind of makes that four X label seem a lot less appealing to me. and But you borrow from a game designer and Cherokee Nation, is it Will Thompson, who dubs the four C's, conservation, cultivation, continuation and competition, kind of keeping, i don't know, a game's got to have some different rules or something, but um just a reframe towards, i don't I don't even know, pro-social values or something like that.
00:24:18
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, so that's that's what my next book is on, actually. I'm writing a book. ah It's written. um We're just doing the final tweaks. It'll be out next year. I'm writing with um my collaborator, Laurel Carney. And we are writing a book for MIT Press again, and it is called Speculative Game Design.
00:24:35
Speaker
So this is where the the direction of my work is going is like, all right, we've got some problems. How do we keep intervening like the artists did in critical play? Right. All of those interesting examples of of intervention. um This is something i'm i'm very excited about trying to enable other people to to do. And, you know, here's a here's a funny thing. Like when i when I.
00:25:00
Speaker
Started that project, I did not think it was going to take me where I did. i And that's what projects do, right? Research is like that. In fact, when I was at the Getty Museum, and I started doing games in colonialism, I was actually studying artist books. I
The Transformative Potential of LARP
00:25:14
Speaker
was was not thinking about games at all. And then whoops, I can't help but talk about that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, just slipped into that.
00:25:22
Speaker
Whoops. But in in in this particular case, I started ah doing research on you know games for social change and games that are i' like, ah but the most interesting stuff I was finding was in the LARP community.
00:25:36
Speaker
And of course, having LARP and our RPGs, you know, i was surprised that that became the the mechanics and the kind of interactions that are are being invented in those spheres are highly interesting for idea of social transformation and and personal transformation. So this is really a a very exciting thing because LARP is...
00:26:00
Speaker
you know, ah it's still, unless you're in in in in the known, it's seen as kind of like buffing people on the ah in medieval garb, right? but but But really, the power of these transformative performances um and really ah ah the attention to personal experience and and creation is is really awesome. So ah ah ah the book covers a lot of that territory.
00:26:31
Speaker
I cannot wait for that. We'll have to have you back on after that book because that's that is ah so right up our alley too. um I think that that point about LARPing and not just that live action role play, but also I think in like that that indie TTRPG itch IO space is just so...
00:26:51
Speaker
um it's got such like a ah ah vitality to it. There's just so much life and I'm always just pouring through and finding like, oh, this, the aesthetics, the art design, like the whole package built in with mechanics and I just love um I think the ones that just use like found materials or decks of cards or tarot or you're gonna need, you know, this specific three dice because you're gonna be, every dice roll is gonna be, i know, building a, you're discovering botany or something the exclusion zone botanist, you know, or in this one, you're running a tea shop and you need to roll to figure out your customers and meet their orders and everything else. There's just, I'm just, i sometimes I wonder, are all the ideas gone because Everybody has surely has thought of everything already, right? um But they are these invitations just to, I don't know, ah take on different perspectives, right? To step outside of yourself and and really and empathize and see the world in different ways in part because of you know that magic circle that you had talked about earlier, you're stepping into.
00:27:57
Speaker
not just um a game with mechanics, but a different way of thinking, you know, about the world and its organization through these mechanisms and and the rules and and the art experience, I suppose.
00:28:08
Speaker
That's right. And it also gets us out of the echo chamber that has become the internet, right? it it The algorithms have have have not enriched our lives with diverse ah surprises, logics, and priorities. you know what i mean? Like it the the people go down their particular...
00:28:28
Speaker
community and sometimes the interesting things are happening on the margins, right? um So how do we, how do we, you know, have the margins become centered? That's something that people have been trying to do for a long time, but there are ways that that you can do that. I mean, I remember, I think,
00:28:46
Speaker
reading feminist literature many years ago. And I think it was a big push. like how do How did the marginal critiques actually get to a center where it's helping everybody function as ah as a society? And I think it's really the only... i cannot press enough that it's the only antidote to really the losing um hope, actually. Yeah.
00:29:12
Speaker
Because it's ah you know when we see people becoming trillionaires and and you know many of us are just don't bat an eye because that's the way things are. That is not the way things have to be.
00:29:24
Speaker
And we have to come up with new ways of of really under and interpreting our unwritten and unspoken thoughts. assumptions about everyday life, right?
00:29:36
Speaker
And really try to prioritize people, each other, and also interspecies and non-species, right? Our relationship to the earth. I was just writing today about this town in Norway that has, ah has since the 80s, has had an interspecies council, right?
00:29:53
Speaker
they completely take every major decision in this town and they think about the water and the fish and the trees and the rocks and will the mountain. and the but So they they think about the whole picture, which of course we need to do.
00:30:10
Speaker
but that So there are these cool examples where um where where people are doing it. So so let's let's go find them and let's learn. Again, that sounds like a wonderful TTRPG game design, which is the interspecies council, right? Like you have to put on the hat and here's a card that has I don't know, the agenda item or the action item and you have to put on the hat of all of these. Actually in this video, you should look up the Southampton council because they, it's in England, and they actually had people dressing up as species coming to the town council. There are people with deer heads on, I'm telling you.
00:30:48
Speaker
Okay. was this Was this like in rebellion or resistance or was this like a built-in part of it? This is this is a new way of trying to raise awareness about about conversations that need to happen and and decisions, new new kinds of decisions that have to be made because, of course, a non-decision is a decision, right?
00:31:08
Speaker
so And consumers are not have not feel felt ah super empowered to be able to control the supply chain and the the destruction of the environment very much. so So I think it's it's ah it's a pushback.
Tilt Factor's Mission and Projects
00:31:23
Speaker
And it's a playful pushback. There's a lady dressed like a, you know, ah some kind of exotic flower and there's stuff coming off of her head for like three feet. so Good for her. Love it. Yeah. I would have just gone with like, I don't know, the you can get those inflatable animal costumes or something at the Halloween store. Oh, no, no. These are all handmade, I'm pretty sure. oh my goodness. Okay, I'll have to we'll have to look that up and and plug a link for it for listeners. um Well, speaking of plugging it, let's plug in Tilt Factor into this too, because like it feels like we're kind of talking about like around all of these. But again, if the if the goal if the mission of Tilt Factor is to provide a model for doing this, how how have you all tried to like live those values and like I guess implement or iterate on them in gaming spaces?
00:32:11
Speaker
Well, so so I am you know a scholar. I'm writing all these books and stuff. And I'm also an artist making this stuff. And Tilt Factor is ah kind of a different aspect of my practice where I work collaboratively with different specialists and students to um create and study games that ah like that literally address a social issue.
00:32:34
Speaker
So I started working on this stuff in 1999. Yeah. I got my first National Science Foundation grant for a web, of ah the first internet adventure game for girls, which was called The Adventures of Josie True. And it um had math and science activities and you meet all these historical figures and um women um and like Bessie Coleman was in there. and Anyway, so this it was this cool thing about trying to and trying to um support, especially young girls in um in science, math and STEM fields, in part because studies show around fifth grade is where a lot of girls, and I haven't looked this up recently, so.
00:33:15
Speaker
At that time, around fifth grade, a lot of it was a time when a lot of girls felt like science and math weren't for them anymore. So there's like turning points where you can look at the research data. And so I ended up getting um through the years working with social psychologists um and social scientists and actually having postdocs in my lab who know how to run a social science study with, you know,
00:33:40
Speaker
randomized control trial, this kind of thing. um But we, but we're creating and then we're testing to see if our creations do anything. So, um and sometimes they didn't, right? We had a, we have a paper called failed games where we talk about this process, but yeah, we, we've had so many interesting projects over the 20 years that I have, ah is it 20 years? I think it's like 20 years ish.
00:34:07
Speaker
Hopefully is not more that I've run this game resource lab because um you know there there are a lot of questions to be asked, but like, for example, can you make a game that makes you less less biased or less racist, right? Can you make a game that does something like that? you know That's a hard that's a hard ask right?
00:34:28
Speaker
But we we did find we did find ways to do some of this stuff. We did find ways to to um lower people's scores and of like discrimination after playing the game Buffalo for 20 minutes based on two vetted social science scales of how people measure bias and discrimination. So if you really dig down into into the social science as as a form of evidence, you get it gets very interesting and designing from psychological principles. um So I had a whole chapter of my existence. Really ah enjoying the ah ah how much we do know about how people understand the world from psychology. And wow, it's really interesting like how swayable we are, um even when we think our identities are pretty fixed.
00:35:15
Speaker
Yeah, and and putting those in ah in a space, making those things visible and putting them in a space where I guess play is the objective. And we're not necessarily thinking first and foremost about those transformations, but just thinking in terms of the rules of the game. But upon reflection, you know walking away from it, um realizing that we're going to be thinking about, I guess, umm I'm looking at the summary for Buffalo here, but challenging those biases or hacking those those prejudices and those preconceptions about scientists and superheroes, perhaps around gender race and gender, for example. um
00:35:53
Speaker
And i guess playing a game, but changing your biases at the same time and leaving the game differently than when you entered. That's such a cool, cool idea. Yes. And I, the interesting thing about it though, is that it works better if, if it's not, if you're not told that's what's happening. Okay. So you're you're just playing, oh, we're going to play a game of Buffalo. We're going to play a party game. it actually is called as a party game. It's one of my bestselling games. Yeah.
00:36:21
Speaker
Well, that's so interesting because I think too, gosh, when you know when I was a classroom teacher, the way that we approached the issues you know of of of bias and especially around COVID 2020 in the wake of Black Lives Matter was like to confront it with like this level of seriousness and this level of like gravitas um that like if you weren't already bought in, you know, to need the need to change on those issues in education, I think made it maybe more difficult to do that. And I'm thinking like, is this a way that we can broach hard conversations about challenging personal identity or, you know, ah socialized biases? Like, again, through play and games to get to serious issues in healthcare and society and labor relations, um as opposed to like your parents sitting down and say, come have a seat, we need to talk a kind of thing, you know, and you immediately get your hackles up.
00:37:19
Speaker
That's right. That's right. It's called psychological reactants. um Okay. Hackles. Your hackles. That's what that is. Okay. Good to know. Your hackles are are psychological reactants. And um and we ah experience it a lot when we feel like we're being told what to do. it And it can actually shut down our um our our interest and ability to process it. And as a teacher, you probably saw this all the time.
00:37:44
Speaker
it's like a doing to model rather than like a doing with kind of thing, right? The more a person thinks that they're teaching themselves, they're gonna be more successful than if they are passive recipients of you as the learned master, you know? They're gonna learn more. And it is hard because of course, grave problems do require the gravitas to be humble about them. But on the other hand,
00:38:10
Speaker
And there's an argument to be made about clear communication ah and and and really exposing things for what they are, right? um But then there's another way to do it. And there is a way to do it that is actually what advertising is doing and um all kinds of, you know,
00:38:28
Speaker
nefarious media makers are doing as well, which is, you know, so persuading. and These techniques are not only in the social sciences, they're in advertising. um Advertisers don't necessarily sit down and say, you know, when you buy this Nike shoe, here are the costs, right?
00:38:44
Speaker
ah you you know environmental impact of one shoe. um And these many people were only paid this much to work. That's not, we they don't really lead with the facts. They lead in a different way to get you to think about stuff.
00:38:58
Speaker
And you guys we've seen facts where facts are having ah having a hard time right now. um So, but our feelings are also having a hard time. So ah is there a way that we can, yes, bridge somehow through these mutual understandings. I, I don't know. it, it, uh, it's a, it's a huge, it's a huge and timely problem, um, with a divided country. Um, but also even you could say more so in, in, in the whole world, it's not just the United States that's having, um,
00:39:30
Speaker
really difference of really big differences of opinions on stuff. it It is a global phenomenon, but it's really exacerbated right now by technology, echo chambers, hackers.
00:39:44
Speaker
We need to be the pro-social hackers. We can we can do ah social engineering in a positive direction instead of for the worse. Yeah,
Game Design as Pro-Social Hacking
00:39:52
Speaker
I mean, when people ask me, ah you know, well, if your techniques can could be used for good, can't they be used for evil? And I'm like, yes, but they already are.
00:40:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's you do the Uno switcheroo, right? The reverse card on them is what that is. That's the yeah it's already bad. We're trying to make it worse. There's already, you know, bad, bad, you know, self image and self all kinds of Yeah, we've got challenges galore. So um let's figure out ways to keep kind the conversation going and and and really try to have encounters and change our mindsets and be open and not be just in our little dungeon of psychological reactants where we are not changing our thing. Yeah, that's such a great point. Like, kind of kind of thinking about that, I remember, i think there was a period, i don't know, like, again, like the 2010s, maybe through 2020, that decade of
00:40:44
Speaker
where sort of the the technology um had and the interest in technology, but not necessarily the the critical consciousness to rally it effectively um had quite landed yet. um And I just remember all of these, I don't know, there were sometimes questions on social studies, Facebook groups or something else, like all these different simulations popping up, right? And still you'll get news stories sometimes of teachers who get a lot of trouble because they held a slave auction simulation or something, right? Where they're like role playing the racism that a lot of students already experience in their day to day, a lot of really inappropriate um things. And I think that might be an example, again, of sort of cart before the horse gamification without the critical consciousness. But I wonder if you can think of any
00:41:31
Speaker
Other ways that we get wrong about gamification and education that you'd like to see differently. Again, like maybe we could hack in a in a way a need to, i guess, infuse some more play alongside a more critical role, you know, for games and education in ah in the direction that we've been talking about.
00:41:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think that one particular direction that has struck me over the years is the power of fiction. And fiction sits uncomfortably for fact-based people. Like, I'm a mathematician. Fiction doesn't really work here. Yeah. I'm a historian. I don't want fiction about my history. We have to tell the truth. you know We have to you know get to the point. I'm not talking literature studies where fiction is fine. But the power of fiction. And so so um in in one one project, we had a game and we re-skinned the game um to be a zombie game.
00:42:26
Speaker
And it was for public health. And it was like the same, kind it's exactly the same game, but the zombie version engaged people more. And we we theorize that it lowered people's psychological reactance because it wasn't about immunity and vaccinations and all these words of everyday life. It was about zombie, in ah you know, vaccination. And you're like, oh yeah, I want that.
00:42:49
Speaker
Oh, that's such a smart way to do it. So fiction so taking ah some of the structural problems and putting them in a fictional place so we can look at them and not feel implicating our our colleagues, our friends, um not putting one group on the spot, but making it an objective situation. i We've used alien worlds for it to substitute for frat parties. Yeah.
00:43:14
Speaker
Okay, that that is, that my imagination has to stretch a little bit for that one. Well, there are these like future kids who go on ah ah like ah a spring break trip and they, you know, and it's it's a project to um raise awareness about sexual assault prevention through bystander intervention. But if you tell a bunch of college students, okay, now we're going to do bystander intervention training, of course, some people will be very engaged or some people will really check out and say, look, this is this is dumb. you know This is not for me. I know this already or whatever they may think. But if you change the context and put it in this weird alien situation and you end up having to do bystander intervention, but this is like alien stuff and you're at a sporting event and like...
00:44:05
Speaker
so So just using using fiction is is an interesting tool, or at least to experiment with um ah and not making something you know um right on the nose that might be heart hurtful.
00:44:22
Speaker
Yeah, and tough for people to process. Like all of the things that we had been talking about with through LARPing and the the magic circle, right? It creates safe structures, psychologically safe structures and physically safe, hopefully, structures for people to explore ideas that they might not otherwise be um amenable to. um i love kind of bringing those things full circle.
00:44:45
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. and And that is true. Like some and and the the standards that could, you know, the difficulties that could happen in the classroom game, ah could also happen, you know, with a LARP where whoever's running the LARP needs to. Luckily, the LARP community has this issue.
00:45:02
Speaker
toolkit of safety standards, which is really helpful. But again, if you are not from that community and you try some of these things, you know, you might not really know to bring the toolkit of safety along. Right. So so it's that's one of the things that I'm trying to do in this ah forthcoming book is to kind of introduce several different areas speculative design community with games, games with, um you know, the the kind of the digital people to role playing and tabletop to acting and um really try to bring um that kind of literacy together in this idea of speculative game design.
00:45:42
Speaker
Oh, that's so amazing. I cannot wait for that. Kind of trying to land the plane here a little bit. I just I need to know, like, um what are games in the tabletop or digital space that you're playing or that you're excited about now? Like what they could be academic interests or for research purposes or like, what do you play and what do you read and what are you into?
00:46:01
Speaker
i I have this weird um set of French animated bingo cards from the turn of the 20th century. Whoa. That are like you you have these little animations to uncover. Like there's these really cool little paper doll things. and um But there's some really ah unusual caricatures of... um ah implying sexual activity and um and incriminating racial views. And so I want to unpack this whole thing. That's a longer term project. um
00:46:34
Speaker
I hauled out my um my working um ah dark tower and I was i was jamming with that. um Okay. I know all the sound effects. I've known them my whole life. It's like very weird.
00:46:49
Speaker
like it's it's so it's So it's like nostalgic for you too, just that stepping back into that? I guess so. I guess. Well, I'm i'm also interested in that ah that cusp when when digital games were fascinating and um you know that moment when when when it wasn't.
00:47:07
Speaker
yeah I'm interested in that cultural moment, actually. And then um I have sitting outside my office right here, I have ah Unconscious Mind.
00:47:18
Speaker
Oh, cool. Which I am very excited to play. I've wanted to play it for years. I got a demo of it in Essen one year um before it was actually kickstarted. And it's just so beautiful. And the the linking between, the at least what I think is going to happen, is the linking between the the content and the and the mechanical um elements. is I think it it looks really tight and very well thought out.
00:47:43
Speaker
Yeah, I haven't had a chance to play that, but we have one of our full time. We're only three full time staff and one of them. That's her new favorite game. She got it pretty recently. It's her absolute favorite. So, yeah, it's just hopefully you'll be signed with it. And, you know, being also a professor, it's like, oh, like research, you get books and oh. Oh, yeah. Well, you get to like role play as Freud and Jung and like at that cusp of like psychology and the metaphysical. It's just such a cool space for play. I love that idea. Yeah, it is. It is. It is. And also I'm doing I'm a visiting artist at the Nemo Science Museum in Amsterdam. So not this summer, but but many times during the year I go for a chunk of time and I'm making games and dealing with the public in this crazy, wonderful science museum.
00:48:33
Speaker
which is so cool for me because it's a a totally different way to, and to, to meet audiences. Yeah. I'm working on like, kind of, kind of like escape roomy things where like more poetic interventions in that kind of space.
Current Projects and Historical Interests
00:48:46
Speaker
Oh man. So, so you're saying next summer, I need to go to the Nemo museum in Amsterdam so I can go through a Mary Flanagan escape room is what you're saying? Pretty much. Yeah. pretty much yeah i'll but I'll get my tickets booked. I'm not, I'm not doing that one alone. um But yes, there's, there's, there's, there's fun to be had.
00:49:04
Speaker
Oh, that's Where would you fly out of? I would fly out of Des Moines. Oh, you're in Des Moines. Yeah, yeah. Where where are you at? I was thinking about that earlier, like time zone wise. i'm I'm right now in um in New Hampshire, but I went to school in Iowa and I am from Milwaukee. I could hear your Midwestern thing, yes. I appreciate that. um Yeah, do you go to like U of I or what? Yeah, University of Iowa, yeah. I did my MA and MFA there, yeah.
00:49:31
Speaker
Oh, I was going to say with the with the writing background, I was just thinking, yeah, the... the No, I actually did a film. film Oh, oh, wait. and Okay. Yeah, I did film. I did film. That's amazing. Yeah, go Hawks.
00:49:45
Speaker
Mary, if people wanted to follow up on any of these wild threads that we've been chasing through this conversation, what's the best place that people can, i guess, find or connect with you, connect with your work?
00:49:56
Speaker
Well, I'll tell you a few things. First of all, I am still on Instagram um under critical play, critical dot I have the research lab, which has some of our studies um included in the website and under the research area that is called tiltfactor.org.
00:50:15
Speaker
And my website, which shows some of my board games and my art games and art playful stuff maryflanagan.com. And my game company, Resonim, is resonim.com. And in the last 10 years, we've published 10 board game, card game things. so Oh, my gosh. You know, I didn't even talk about Resonim. I know. It's fine.
00:50:38
Speaker
there anything you want to mention about that while we have the time? You see how great of a capitalist I am. Yeah, right? You got to pitch those games. Oh, I apologize. I had the tilt factor thing up. But ah what's going on with Resonim?
00:50:53
Speaker
Well, we're actually in a little bit of a hiatus because it's really complicated to be printing right now and um and things are so expensive. Oh, no doubt. But our games are going all over the place. I think Phantom Inc. is now in um ah maybe 13 countries or something like that. oh see I feel like I've seen this game on the shelf. Well, wasn't Target and in Barnes & Noble and game stores and stuff. that's ah it's a really it's It's one of my faves. It's it's ah it's very good.
00:51:23
Speaker
Oh my gosh. I will have to check that out. Oh, I'm kind of embarrassed now that i I just like space that out. No worries. No worries. We'll have to pick that up for the speculative game design. We'll have to pick that up again. We have, we have things to talk about things.
00:51:39
Speaker
We'll have things. All right. Well, my goodness, Mary, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me on your ah cast.
00:51:52
Speaker
Thank you again and for listening to our podcast at Human Restoration Project. I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to start making change. If you enjoyed listening, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast player.
00:52:03
Speaker
Plus, find a whole host of free resources, writings, and other podcasts all for free on our website, humanrestorationproject.org. Thank you.