Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
id521554931
whose imaginations do we inhabit? Whose fantasies do we portray? What emotions and self-hood do we protect inside our simulated worlds? What do we take from our players while they are with us in our games, and what do we leave with them? What are our responsibilities to our players as human beings and not simply consumers? What purposes do we intentionally or unwittingly serve in our designing? Who do we make safe, and what do we endanger?
id521555188
We have to ask ourselves these questions, if we don’t want to be unwitting accomplices in the Anglo-American imperial project which I would also describe as capitalism-colonialism
id521559077
Capitalist-colonialist entities are designed to extract profit or attention or whatever is desired by the system from human beings and the world, with no regard for our integrity or needs.
id521559251
This type of design is only interested in the parts of us which can be consumed — our money, our attention, our engagement, our time — with no regard for the social, cultural, psychological effects that result
id521559780
Possessive design: games that guilt or punish you for leaving them, and reward you for engagement
id521561863
It is a white fantasy, and an imperial one — the fantasy of saving the world is in fact necessary to conquering it, and has provided “moral cover” for brutal conquests and wars in the real world.
id521562015
games in which the protagonist mass murders and brutalises their way into “saving the world” are a reflection of the types of fantasies which enabled white imperial conquest and continue to enable white global domination — the transformation of brutality, murder, domination, exploitation, subjugation of the “other”, into something noble, good, worthwhile, and even necessary.
id521562644
The systems that we struggle against in the contemporary world, that MUST be struggled against, will not be brought down by a lone hero. Structural racism will not be solved by a white saviour.
id521562632
These fantasies are so pervasive that the denial of the white saviour fantasy, the denial of the hero fantasy, the idea of a worthwhile struggle that is not structured like a war with its directly felt actions and consequences, winners and losers, and promised resolutions, feels like the denial of agency. The idea that the only worthwhile way to be in the world is a conqueror, that changing the world is the only interesting way of being within it, that freedom and agency for oneself necessitates choosing for others — all the way up the scale to choosing for the entire world.
id521563241
The white protagonist is the only entity that matters in the world, which is to say the only human in a world of objects
id521564287
the white protagonist who experiences oppression must overcome it — but that is not the experience most of us have of structural oppression, most of us learn to live within it, and find power, agency, meaning, success that is not reliant on the idea of “ending” our oppression. In a way this is a kind of oppression tourism, from which the white protagonist inevitably escapes, a dishonest fantasy.
id521564425
The white protagonist must act, and rarely be acted upon We could also say: The white protagonist will decide I think the specific idea here is that deciding is in itself pleasurable, and to be decided for is not pleasurable
id521566339
The white protagonist can commit no sins that cannot be redeemed, the possibility of future goodness must outweigh the evils of the past. I think it’s quite easy to see this as a fantasy of the white coloniser, who must believe in future redemption and an inherent goodness which can be reclaimed despite past actions, in order to rationalise the evils of empire, slavery etc etc and still maintain a sense of moral worth and even superiority
id521566971
Games that are about the impossibility of individual morality within abusive systems explore this idea richly: Lucas Pope’s Papers Please and Porpentine’s With Those We Love Alive are some of my favourites.
id521569070
It is convenient to colonialist-capitalist systems of extraction and profit to place moral responsibility and the burden for our own happiness and well-being onto the individual, and deflect responsibility away from their own operations
id521569460
The idea that we are responsible for protecting ourselves against vast and incomprehensibly powerful systems with infinite resources is maniacal. We simply do not have the resources or capability to do so as individuals. We are in fact extraordinarily powerless
id521570095
As a protagonist, her circumstances are not unique. Everyone in this world goes on this journey. Other people on this journey have the same powers and abilities. This makes the world warm and familiar, the protagonist’s experience is grounded in a shared one, a communal one, every adult she meets has gone through it, and has experiences and well-meaning or annoying advice. It is her journey, but she is not alone
✏️ A counter example to the colonial capitalist idea that protagonist has to be uniquely suited to be the protagonist first.. I.e. It’s not something everyone can do. 🔗 View Highlight
id521649905
the choices the player does make shape the experience of play as deeply as the choices that they do not make
id521650477
Trying to fill real but nonmaterial needs — for identity, community, self-esteem, challenge, love, joy — with material things is to set up an unquenchable appetite for false solutions to never-satisfied longings.
id521650671
One way I think of this is designing for inattention, designing systems with a kind of looseness which could allow players to care more or less over the course of play, or engage more deeply with certain systems than others — to explode the “model player” into a spectrum of potential players, all of whom are made as welcome as each other in our designs.
✏️ How to design for anti colonial capitalist 🔗 View Highlight
id521650784
design games where certain modes of play can recede or emerge into prominence without annihilating the game’s integrity or meaningfulness, which I suppose could also be seen as a kind of design which pulls away from authored, authoritarian wholeness — a creative mode of control — toward a looser, more fragmented, spacious type of design which makes room for different types of players, play, perspectives and abilities.
✏️ More design for anti colonial capitalist 🔗 View Highlight