Wevva: Demonstrating Game Design

Fluidic games blur the line between gameplay and game design, providing playful, non-technical, easy-to-use tools for users to design their own games. We introduce Wevva, our first fluidic game for iOS, which allows users to design and share their own games based on novel mechanics, entirely on a mobile device, with no need for programming skills. The development of such software is a significant challenge in user interface design, requiring a new design approach compared to the design of more traditional creative tools, and with much scope for mixed-initiative co-creation and other assistive AI technologies. Our aim with fluidic games is to democratise game design, allowing anyone and everyone to express themselves through the artform of digital games

Driftscape: maximize urban space uses in the context of densification

This study aims to explore a systematic method to stimulate and maximize the use of the urban space in the context of urban densification, expanding urban space usage in the dimension of time and space. In this context, urban space is reclaimed as the notion of overlap between public and private space in urban figure-ground. The research focuses on Providence as a study area that encompasses different transects of the urbanized American city and faces typical densification issues. It has strategically turned the issue of densification into opportunities for improving social interactions and space utilization. The “Driftscape” principle with its three dimensions: boundary, temporality, and connectivity has been proposed as a flexible strategy that rethinks the potential dimension behind existing areas and doubling their uses, which questions the power of the conventional “right of way,” provides a new understanding of the utilization of urban space

Do tablets cure the pedagogy headache?

Tablet devices have made a huge impact in schools and in 2015 they were predicted to outsell personal computers (Gartner, 2014). 70 per cent of UK schools are estimated to be using tablets (BBC, online) and across Europe, “laptops, tablets and net-books are becoming pervasive” (EU schoolnet, 2014). As these devices become established in schools they both support and develop existing practice (Burden, Hopkins, Male, Martin and Trala, 2012; Baran, 2014), but are also starting to challenge some existing models of thinking and pedagogy (Fullan and Langworth, 2014; Kearney, Schuck, Burden and Aubusson, 2012) and also teachers’ attitudes towards learning and teaching (Ertmer, 1999; Burden and Hopkins, 2015). In offering opportunities for learning to become more authentic, personal and collaborative (Kearney et al., 2012) there are opportunities for teachers to start to redesign the ways in which learning is taking place (Puentedura, 2010; McCormick and Scrimshaw, 2001). Traxler defines mobile learning as “an educational process, in which handheld devices or palmtops are the only or dominant used technology tools” (2007: 2) and Kearney et al. (2012) argue that it has the potential to revolutionise the learning process in allowing individuals to determine their own independent paradigms and frameworks of learning. These devices are also sophisticated producers of digital artefacts and children and teachers are capable of being co-producers of learning materials

Rapid game jams with fluidic games: A user study & design methodology

We introduce rapid game jams, a style of game jam that takes only 1–2 h and is focused on design experimentation rather than on programming and technical implementation. To support that kind of rapid game-design experimentation, we have designed a class of games that we call fluidic games. These are mobile games in which the game mechanics and other aspects of the games are editable on the fly, directly on the device, allowing for frequent play/design context shifts. We have conducted four rapid game jams with 105 participants from a local Girlguiding organisation, in order to gain real-world experience with this concept. We analyse results from a survey instrument completed by 69 participants in two of these rapid game jams. In order to guide future work in addressing questions left open by this study, we did a qualitative analysis of the designed games to gain additional insights into participants’ design practice

Casual Creators in the Wild : A Typology of Commercial Generative Creativity Support Tools

Casual creators are a genre of creativity support tool that integrate a generative system into the creative process with the goal of empowering amateurs to engage in autotelic and enjoyable creativity. They have been posited as a unique means of democratising creativity through the support of user exploration via system generativity, yet little is known about what casual creators are actually available to wider audiences. We conducted a qualitative analysis of currently available casual creators on the App Store. We found three categories of interaction techniques in widely available casual creators, which we describe in their exploration potential, feedback speed, and user autonomy

Biomachines, metal bodies and masochistic masculinity in post-war Japan

Advances in technoscience and biotechnology have blurred the boundaries between body and matter, emphasising the urgency of rethinking the intertwining of anthropocentrism, Eurocentrism and androcentrism. This repositing also involves the relationship between the subject and technological otherness. For example, in the representation of cyborgs, Donna Haraway identifies the metaphor of overcoming biological determinism. Simultaneously, in cinematic and literary imagery, cybernetic bodies end up representing contemporary society’s changes, fears and desires, exploring new paradigms of subjectivity. This paper focuses on cyborg identities in Japanese imagery through the novels Kachikujin Yapoo (Yapoo the Human Cattle, 1956) by Shōzō Numa, Nippon Apacchi Zoku (The Japanese Apache Tribe, 1964) by Komatsu Sakyō and the film Tetsuo (Iron Man, 1989) by director Tsukamoto Shin'ya. Each of these works presents the search for transhuman and post-human subjectivities in Japanese science fiction imagery from the post-war to the postmodern period and share a masochistic representation of male bodies deeply interwoven with the question of identity. Starting from Tatsumi Takayuki’s theorization of «creative masochism» and referring to the Deleuzian view on masochism, the aim of this paper is to investigate the connections between male masochism and Japanese cyborg imagery of the post-war period