Meaningful Play 2018 Talk

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Games of Fellowship: Affection, Empathy and Making Friendship Games

Meaningful Play conference 2018 Talk

Authors:

Casey O’Donnell is a queer CIS white guy [he/him]. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University. His research examines the creative collaborative work of videogame design and development. His book, “Developer’s Dilemma” is published by MIT Press. Casey is an active game developer, releasing “Kerem B’Yavneh,” in 2016 and “Fellowship of Fools: The (Friendship) Game” in 2018. You can find him on twitter @caseyodonnell.

Hermi(one) Banger is a non-binary [they/them] writer, game developer, farmer and witch. They released their first non-digital game, “Fellowship of Fools: The (Friendship) Game” in 2018. You can find them on twitter @hermionebanger.

Keywords: Friendship Games, Relationship Games, Affinity Games, Fellowship of Fools, Affection Games, Empathy Games

Abstract

Various monikers have been used to designate games outside of the traditional “entertainment” space – Serious Games, Persuasive Games, Games for Impact, Games for Change, Learning Games, … – with an even smaller subset of those games focused explicitly on what might generally be referred to as “relationships” or “friendships” under the the name Affection Games (Grace, 2013; Grace, 2017) or Empathy Games (Lankoski, 2007; Hromek et al., 2009; Belman & Flanagan, 2010). However, little has been done to look explicitly at games designed to foster new connections and friendships, with one recent exception (Cook et al., 2017). In this presentation we examine the range of games that might be broadly categorized as “relationship games,” not specifically focused on romantic or sexually themed games, but rather examine the category broadly. We do this through the context of the development of a non-digital card game, Fellowship of Fools, a conversation/relationship game. We then propose a very specific category of relationship games that we label, “Affinity Games” which we also trace the contours of.


While it might be stated that, “many games can foster friendship,” with players learning or working together (Steinkuehler & Duncan, 2008; Taylor, 2009; Chen, 2011) or players using games to spend time with family members (Nardi, 2010) the focus has not been explicitly on games designed for creating or fostering new or old friendships. Fellowship of Fools (XXX, 2018) is a game designed to help guide players through developing a friendship with someone new, or deepening an existing relationship. The game prompts players for situations to role play together in which they must choose what are the best topics to explore in that given situation. Some topics may be too personal to ask too early in getting to know someone, or not appropriate for the situation at hand. In the game, players will navigate these possibilities and share feedback on how we choose to play and respond. The more time players spend in the game building experience, the deeper those relationships become.


The presentation will focus on the evolution of the game and its background as well as how its design was built around various research focused on fostering intimacy and closeness (Aron, et al., 1997) as well as personal experiences in building and fostering relationships. This explicit goal of fostering friendships and closeness, while not “tested” in this presentation, is instead presented as an alternative kind of game format made explicitly for this purpose. The concept of “affinity games” is presented as a broad category of games designed around the definition of affinity, “a spontaneous or natural liking or sympathy for someone or something” (Oxford, 2018).

References


Aron, Arthur; et al. 1997. The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness: A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 23(4) 363-377.
Belman, Jonathan; Flanagan, Mary. 2010. Designing Games to Foster Empathy. Cognitive Technology. 14(2) 5-15.
Chen, Mark. 2011. Leet Noobs: The Life and Death of an Expert Player Group in World of Warcraft. New York, NY: Peter Lang Inc.
Cook, Daniel; et al. 2017. Game Design Patterns for Building Friendships. http://www.lostgarden.com/2017/01/game-design-patterns-for-building.html. Accessed, July 1, 2018.
Grace, Lindsay. 2017. Love, Lust, Courtship and Affection as Evolution in Digital Play. Proceedings of DiGRA 2017.
Grace, Lindsay. 2013. Affection Games in Digital Play: A Content Analysis of Web Playable Games. Proceedings of DiGRA 2013.
Hromek, Robyn; et al. 2009. Promoting Social and Emotional Learning With Games: “It’s Fun and We Learn Things”. Simulation & Gaming. 40(4) 626-644.
Lankoski, Petri. 2007. Goals , Affects, and Empathy in Games. Proceedings of The Philosophy Of Computer Games 2007.
Nardi, B. A. (2010). My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Author 1 & Author 2. 2018. Fellowship of Fools. Madison, WI: The Game Crafter.
Oxford Dictionary. 2018. Definition of Affinity in English. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/affinity. Accessed: July 1, 2018.
Steinkuehler, C., & Duncan, S. (2008). Scientific Habits of Mind in Virtual Worlds. Journal of Science Education and Technology.
Taylor, T. L. (2009). The Assemblage of Play. Games and Culture, 4(4), 331-339.

Presentation Slides and Presenter Notes:

  • CO: Casey O’Donnell, MSU, Anthropologist of Technology and Game Designer. We will be talking about our first non-digital game together.
  • HB: Hermione Banger, Farmer, Writer, Hedge Witch, community organizer and game designer.
  • CO: So… We are going to start this presentation talking a bit about what lead us to the creation of our friendship game: Fellowship of Fools.
  • CO: Once we’d made the game, we became interested in what other work had been done on friendship games. We will discuss the relative dearth of work in the area.
  • CO: We will also discuss how friendship games relate to and differ from related categories of games like Affection Games and Empathy Games.
  • CO: Next, we will transition into a discussion of the broader category of “Affinity Games” and the theoretical underpinnings of this category of game we are proposing. And, finally, how that relates to our game.
  • CO: The game we created and will be talking about, Fellowship of Fools, is included in the game showcase taking place tonight, so if you’d like an opportunity to play the game, we’d love to have a chance to chat and get to know you better then.
  • HB: In February of 2017 we set out to make a relationship building game. At the time it was more focused on roleplaying romantic and intimate situations and topics, but we rapidly came to the realization that to get to such a space to role-play these topics a backbone of friendship development was needed.
  • HB: As we started to focus on a friendship development version of the game, what was interesting to us was just how difficult it can be for adults to find and make new friends. So, what if we could facilitate people making new friends through a game? Were there any other games that focused on this as a particular set goal? We of course knew of Cards Against Humanity and The Meta Game, but neither crass humor nor pop culture knowledge seemed to us the best foundation for a friendship.
  • CO: And because we’re nerdy like that, we became curious if anyone else had done work specifically in the area of friendship games…
  • CO: What we found was really super sparse… This is quite literally the only thing specifically about friendship games. Which isn’t to say that people can’t be friends or find new friends in games, but specifically thinking about games that foster friendship is lacking.
  • CO: In the report, written by Donk the Duck (or Daniel Cook), the problem is framed as, “In many online multiplayer games, players enter as strangers and remain strangers. Due to a variety of unquestioned logistics, economic and social signaling choices, other human beings end up being treated as interchangeable, disposable or abusable. We can do better.” We couldn’t agree more.
  • CO: But we do find their initial breakdown of the model interesting and productive. The four major factors that they explore are: Proximity, Similarity, Reciprocity and Disclosure. Unfortunately they then bracket that discussion to digital games explicitly: Online, Mediated and Synchronous. This is not a critique, however, all design discussions must at some point bracket complexity. Again, we see this not as a limitation, but as an opportunity to explore further.
  • CO: There has also been significant work in and around empathy games. But you can have empathy for someone who isn’t your friend. Empathy and friendship are certainly linked, but not one and the same.
  • CO: While the definition of empathy games isn’t entirely clear, it would be important to point to the work in this area by Katherine Isbister, Petri Lanoski, Mary Flanagan and our own Beth LaPensee. And of course another paper presented today deals precisely with this topic.
  • CO: It is also important to note the work done in Affection Games: for example Lindsay Grace’s work. But we are saying that while these games may make affection an aspect of their underlying systems and mechanics… or outright goal.
  • CO: But, affection is different from friendship… And a game about making out isn’t really about making out with someone you really care about… And even if you care about a game’s character, that’s different from another person.
  • CO: But… What makes a friendship game, or an “affinity game,” different? Why are affinity games that foster friendship needed?
  • HB: Rather than affection and romance and sex, we see the need for affinity games, which in part is rooted in the idea of Relationship Anarchy, which is rooted in a friendship ethic.
  • From the Thinking Asexual, a Relationship Anarchist writer: “Friendship leans away from interpersonal coercion by default and can’t survive under the burden of it for long. Mutual aid and cooperation are in friendship’s very nature; you could even define friendship by those qualities: helping and supporting each other out of desire and not duty. And when friendship is committed, that commitment is done in a spirit of communication, not drawn up as a contract, which is what marriage is: a legal contract binding romantic partners.”
  • Affection games prioritize and commodify romance and sexuality. These things are needed and they are fulfilling a need for many players, but they ignore the autonomy of the characters that players fall in love with and provide a facsimile of reality. They sell us an easy dream but don’t help us achieve those things in real life.
  • HB: Another quote from the Thinking Asexual: “The capitalist, heteronormative, patriarchal state promotes relationship hierarchies based on romance supremacy and amatonormativity. It endorses treating sex like a product, protects heterosexual men in their consumption of female bodies as sexual objects, promotes the buying and selling of women’s sexualized bodies. The capitalist heteronormative patriarchal state WANTS you to invest all of your free time, energy, resources, and emotion into romantic couplehood, into marriage, into sex. It WANTS you to devalue friendship, to stay isolated from everyone who isn’t your romantic partner, to be a self-interested individual with no ties or commitments to anyone but your spouse. Why? Because friendship could lead to community and community could lead to collective political action, which could turn into revolution. And because friendship and community are almost impossible to commodify and harness for the purpose of feeding into the capitalist economy and creating bigger profits for the wealthy elite. Sex and romance make rich people money all day every day. They sell it to you every waking moment. They can’t use friendship and community to sell you shit. They can’t turn friendship and community into products. If they could, they would’ve spent the last century doing so, instead of teaching the public that friendship is worthless and money is more important than community.”
  • HB: In Donk’s report, they define a friend as, “another person with whom you have a mutually beneficial long term relationship based off trust and shared values.” This is nice start, but we still believe we can do better and we think affinity games are at their core about forging new friendships.
  • HB: An Affinity Game (AG) is a game that places as a core game mechanic or system two or more of these foundational tenets: Mutual Aid (freely given and freely taken gifts), Solidarity (associating together to satisfy common interests and needs) or as Richard Sennett writes in Together: “The connection between everyday social bonds and political organization”, Autonomy, Voluntary Association, Self-Organization and Direct Democracy.
  • What would a game like this look like?
  • CO: Enter… Fellowship of Fools
  • CO: Fellowship of Fools is a game designed to help guide players through developing friendships with someone new, or deepening existing relationships. The game prompts players for situations to role play together in which they must choose what are the best topics to explore in that given situation. Some topics may be too personal to ask too early in getting to know someone, or not appropriate for the situation at hand. In the game, players will navigate these possibilities and share feedback on how they choose to play and respond. The more time players spend in the game building experience, the deeper those relationships become.
  • CO: Now, if you recall, we define affinity games as those that places as a core game mechanic or system two or more of these foundational tenets: Mutual Aid, Solidarity, Autonomy, Voluntary Association, Self-Organization and Direct Democracy.
  • CO: Does FoF meet this particular call?
  • CO: Well, to begin with, all good games are optional. One must voluntarily associate with those that you play with. Going back to Callois, this has been a primary component of what makes a game a game.
  • CO: In fact, the only way to lose at FoF is if someone tells you that they don’t want to play with you any more.
  • CO: Multiple prompts within the game ask players to think about what they need in their life, or what they might have to offer others. Here are a sample of prompts that encourage players to think about how they might work together or help one another, speaking to the idea of Mutual Aid.
  • CO: The game currently has nine ways to play, you can play solo, 2 player and multi player. Players can also experiment with the game and submit their own ways to play. This speaks to self-organization. People are often playing with how the game is played.
  • CO: Multiple modes in the game call for players to reach consensus. In the Lightening Mode players agree on which Situation Topic to play together. In the In-Depth Mode players first describe how they would play the Situation Prompt themselves, and then come to a consensus on how they could play it all together.  This speaks to Direct Democracy.
  • CO: Even more central, consent plays a major role in the game. The ability to say yes, no and maybe play a prominent role in the game. They are actually the categories for awarding experience in one mode of the game.
  • Players do not have to answer a topic prompt if they do not wish to, players can also exit the game at any point. Players can choose between prompts, and even play inconsiderately, though it will likely have ramifications throughout the game. These game mechanics speak to the goals of autonomy and being voluntary.
  • CO: One way to play the game uses this character sheet that encourages not only these kinds of interactions, but note-taking and experience giving based on these interactions.
  • CO: Numerous game play modes feature the giving and receiving of feedback as a game mechanic. This helps players improve their conversation skills, as well as providing help or advice in responses. The goal is to help your fellow players, Mutual Aid.
  • HB: So, the elephant in the room….We are using the Tarot! •HB: The Tarot has a long history of being used for personal reflection, divination, playing games and storytelling. Just because modern culture looks down on it, does not mean it’s not a useful tool.
  • For those of you who don’t know much about the Tarot, it’s a playing card deck much like our common playing cards, with four suits that vary by region, but with the addition of an extra face card in each suit, the Knight, this part of the deck in the Tarot is often called the Minor Arcana. In addition to these 56 cards, are 22 trump cards, known as the Major Arcana.
  • HB: Though many people associate the Tarot with European culture, it originated from the original playing cards brought to Europe by Islamic soldiers invading northern Italy and Spain in the 1300s. The playing cards were called Mamluk, the game played na’ib, the “game of lieutenants.” These are the origin of all Western card games, from bridge to poker and the tarot.
  • The calligraphic texts along the tops of the cards consist of rhyming aphorisms which are often very enchanting, sometimes strange, but always interesting:
  • “O thou who hast possessions, remain happy and thou shalt have a pleasant life.”
  • “Rejoice in the happiness that returns, as a bird that sings its joy”.
  • HB: Once introduced to Italy, Italian noble families co-opted the cards and added the “trump” cards known today as the major arcana, for a game called “carte da trionfi” or cards of triumph, an early form of the card game bridge.
  • HB: They were also used for a game called tarocchi appropriati, or Appropriated Tarot, where cards from the Major Arcana were dealt randomly or chosen by an opponent and the game consisted of writing poems to make inside jokes, or associate themes or ideas with themselves and others. It was a game of creativity, verse, wit and flattery.
  • HB: In parallel to this people began to consult the cards for divination, which was then more systematized and professionalized in the 17th century in France by occultists. This is what the Tarot is most known for today.
  • But the Tarot deck is still used today in Europe to play games, in English speaking countries it is more commonly used for divination and self reflection.
  • The Tarot has a history of being used for creativity, from W.B. Yeats, to Piers Anthony, to Stephen King. Italo Calvino described the Tarot as “a machine for constructing stories.”
  • HB: The Major Arcana are picture cards for allegorical subjects and large turning points in our lives such as Justice, Death, the Devil, the Magician and the Fool. The Minor Arcana are more subtle, representing day to day insights and details surrounding the larger life changes of the Major Arcana. •
  • HB: In our game, the artwork used is from a 17th century French deck known as the Tarot de Marseilles. We’ve taken the Minor Arcana and used the upright and reversed meanings for the cards to construct Topic Prompts for players, whereas for the Major Arcana we have used the allegorical meanings to construct Situation Prompts to play those Topic Prompts in.
  • HB: This game has been co-opted again and again, has morphed again and again, according to players needs and interests. We are simply carrying on that tradition and using this tool for our common need.
  • CO: We are also drawing on the political philosophy of Anarchism. This should be differentiated from its more colloquial use, particularly here in the United States as synonymous with “chaos” and the Hobbesian Leviathan of “all against the all.”
  • CO: Rather, we are using this term quite deliberately and in conversation with a wide array of scholars that have studied egalitarian societies and communities. In particular we draw heavily upon David Graeber’s work on the topic.
  • CO: Our very definition of what makes up an affinity game draws from Graeber’s definition of Anarchism: mutual aid, solidarity, autonomy, voluntary association, self-organization, direct democracy
  • CO: From his work, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, “Anarchism is primarily concerned with forms of practice; it insists, before anything else, that one’s means must be consonant with one’s ends (6-7)…it is also a project, which sets out to begin creating the institutions of a new society “within the shell of the old,” to expose, subvert, undermine structures of domination but always, while doing so, proceeding in a democratic fashion, a manner which itself demonstrates those structures are unnecessary. ”
  • •HB: Also from Graeber, “We are talking less about a body of theory, then, than about an attitude, or perhaps one might even say a faith: the rejection of certain types of social relations, the confidence that certain others would be much better ones on which to build a livable society, the belief that such a society could actually exist.”
  • HB: Not to put too fine a point on it, Affinity Games are about friendship, but they are also about something much more revolutionary.
  • CO: And in the spirit of the conference’s theme this year, we offer this quote from one of the most renowned witches (which is a non-gendered term!): Aleister Crowley [READ QUOTE]
  • HB: We intentional game developers, who use our powers to cause change in conformity with our will are all witches, and we’re doing magick, bitches.
  • •BOTH: Thank you
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