Welcome to Experimental Game Design

Welcome to the blog for Celia Pearce’s Northeastern University course, Experimental Game Design. This blog is for students to post projects, as well as additional research and content related to the class. The Course Description can be found below:

COURSE DESCRIPTION AND OBJECTIVES

An experiential learning course which focuses on the experimental uses of games in fine arts and activist practice, exploring how games created in such contexts interrogate traditional assumptions about both art and games to produce cultural, aesthetic and technical innovation.

The course will look at the historical subversive, activist, experimental and avant garde uses of both analog and digital games. Twentieth Century practices of games as fine art and activist media will be explored, and their connection to other related practices, such as scores, procedurality, performances, tactical media and public interventions, as well as art movements that explicitly included games as part of their oevre, such as Dada, Surrealism and Fluxus.

The course will include readings on the history of games in these alternative contexts, as well as a series of art-based studio assignments where students will engage practices of game-making in both analog, digital and hybrid forms. The course itself is experimental, and will include field trips, and innovative indoor and outdoor alternative play and game design exercises. Students will produce four completed art projects suitable for portfolios or public exhibition, and will be encouraged to submit their projects to festival and exhibition calls.