User:Giulla/Graduation Proposal GdG

What Do You Want to Make?

For my graduation project I’m working on designing a game that questions the value of law domination and explore practices of active-collaboration within a playground setup. My research and practice got very inspired by the discovery of “Nomic, a Game of Self Amendment”, and I used it as reference for the concept of the game I will build. This game, invented by Peter Suber, is based on the axiom that changing the rule of the game is a move in the game itself. The gameplay involves propositions of amendments to the set of existing regulations and a random points system as score to ratify the amendments. As in Nomic, I’m interested in creating a game as system that allows improvisations within their regulations and predefined roles. Showing how fragile systems (as the law for examples) are when confronted with a group of individuals, a community, that acts and behave within this system. To push my game in a different direction from Nomic, I want to add an extra layer of roles: as in RPG games (role player games) the players are characterized by individual features and skills. These characteristic will influence the movements and strategies of the players during the game: the players under specific power constraints will act and try to bend the regulations of the game by their own will or the collective will. The game will act act as playground for the creation of a fictional macro-society: a group of individuals that forms a community and behave under constitutional constraints that can enjoy of particular privileges or oppressions.

“Public institutions such as the law or commerce, which proceed in and by agreements among their participants, public and private institutions such as governments, clubs, corporations, and universities, are all characterized by the way their participants and stakeholders make and remake the rules of play, and sometimes challenge or avoid them.”