Inclusive Design

Here’s an interview with me and Thomas Munier, who has been developing materials and ideas in the Francophone-Anglophone overlap. The title term is his, and its meaning is quite broad. He prepared the ground as follows:

I would say that there are three parts to deal with which show an approach to inclusive design which is that of creating fresco-games:
– how to make different game desires coexist (quadriptic of the tactical / moral / aesthetic / social game) (to make the author mode and the character mode coexist)
– how to include large audiences (people from minorities, people with disabilities)
– how to quickly include beginners or people with cognitive overload without giving up the ambition of fresco (from the plug-and-play game to the world-system)

Surprising no one, we managed to focus on only one of them – the second bullet point – and another interview is scheduled to continue. I think you’ll see/hear that our rapport was very productive, and I’m looking forward to it.

Click here for the interview
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2 responses to “Inclusive Design”

  1. The second session is now available. The discussion turned out to be three in total.

    Thomas provided this outline for the discussion at this point:

    Second part is about stories and gameplay even if I assume that this dichotomy is superficial, espacially in case of freeform gaming which will be part of the subject

    1. Stories

    Cultural and gender neutrality in univers backgrounds or character creation

    Flexibility in character neutrality : the more open is character creation, the more inclusive is the game (even if a random character generator could avoid analysis / paralysis effect)

    Fresco games : diversity of thematics (fight, politics, mystery, drama, romance, daily life… from low stakes to hight stakes)

    2. Gameplay /setup

    Diversity of gameplays / game approaches :
    esthetic gaming / tactical gaming / moral gaming / social gaming

    In search for accessibility :
    The choice of structured freeform in place of barebone freeform or “math-form”
    + tree structure of situations
    + scene-driven systems / drama decks
    + unified resolution system

    Automatization : Chartopia, smartphone apps…

    The second session corresponds roughly to #1 above, and the third, currently in post-production, to #2.

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