Language Games/Game Languages: Examining Game Design Epistemologies Through a ‘Wittgensteinian’ Lens

Recent theorizing around games and notions of play has drawn from a pool of mid-20th century scholars including such notables as Johann Huizinga, Gregory Bateson, Roger Caillois and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Through his articulation of the concept of language as a type of game, Wittgenstein has been both adopted and critiqued for purposes of circumscribing what are now commonly held as the necessary constituents of games including their systemic nature and the acquiescence of their participants to an agreed-upon rule structure: a set of rules which Wittgenstein likens to the ‘grammar’ of language (Salen and Zimmerman, 2001;Suits, 1978; Juul, 2005; Wittgenstein, 1953; Finch, 2001; Brenner, 1999). Although thus far Wittgenstein has served as a pillar of 20th and 21st century game theory canon, this paper adopts Wittgenstein’s notion of language-games not for purposes of examining games, but for purposes of examining the design of games.  The pursuit of this paper is to utilize Wittgenstein’s lens of the language-game to investigate what it is that informs and consequently shapes and reinforces game design epistemologies in an attempt to encourage a reflexivity about the design practices behind the games we create

Stacking the Deck for Learning: What Educational Game Designers Can Learn From Card Games Designed by Kids

This paper details the results of an exploratory informant design workshop in which nine 10-12 year olds were asked to design their own card games with the aim of having them incorporate information about West Nile Virus into their design. This paper details the workshop process in its entirety and considers the rule systems, allowable choices, artificial conflicts and conditions of victory incorporated by the children into their games. This paper concludes by evaluating the participants’ game design choices, the manners in which content was incorporated and their potential usefulness to future educational game design pursuits

Language Games/Game Languages: Examining Game Design Epistemologies Through a ‘Wittgensteinian’ Lens

Recent theorizing around games and notions of play has drawn from a pool of mid-20th century scholars including such notables as Johann Huizinga, Gregory Bateson, Roger Caillois and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Through his articulation of the concept of language as a type of game, Wittgenstein has been both adopted and critiqued for purposes of circumscribing what are now commonly held as the necessary constituents of games including their systemic nature and the acquiescence of their participants to an agreed-upon rule structure: a set of rules which Wittgenstein likens to the ‘grammar’ of language (Salen and Zimmerman, 2001;Suits, 1978; Juul, 2005; Wittgenstein, 1953; Finch, 2001; Brenner, 1999). Although thus far Wittgenstein has served as a pillar of 20th and 21st century game theory canon, this paper adopts Wittgenstein’s notion of language-games not for purposes of examining games, but for purposes of examining the design of games.  The pursuit of this paper is to utilize Wittgenstein’s lens of the language-game to investigate what it is that informs and consequently shapes and reinforces game design epistemologies in an attempt to encourage a reflexivity about the design practices behind the games we create

Play and the Private

Over the past half a century or more, historical, anthropological and philosophical examinations of the concept of play have remained largely situated in the arena of ontological discussion. In these previous interrogations of play, the notion of play has been assumed a priori, been defined stipulatively in relation to larger frameworks of games, or discarded altogether. This work adopts Wittgenstein’s Private Language argument as a lever to unpack the usefulness in looking at play from an epistemological perspective: paying special attention to linguistic cues, ostensive relationships and associated activities around those things players call ‘play’ within specific, behavioral, situational and linguistic contexts. This paper explores how unraveling the term ‘play’ in this way can potentially afford us a new perspective on play as an epistemologically dynamic phenomenon