Critical Play

For many players, games are entertainment, diversion, relaxation, fantasy. But what
if certain games were something more than this, providing not only outlets for entertainment but a
means for creative expression, instruments for conceptual thinking, or tools for social change? In
Critical Play, artist and game designer Mary Flanagan examines alternative games
-- games that challenge the accepted norms embedded within the gaming industry -- and argues that
games designed by artists and activists are reshaping everyday game culture.

Flanagan provides a lively historical context for critical play through
twentieth-century art movements, connecting subversive game design to subversive art: her examples
of "playing house" include Dadaist puppet shows and The Sims. She looks
at artists' alternative computer-based games and explores games for change, considering the way
activist concerns -- including worldwide poverty and AIDS -- can be incorporated into game
design.

Arguing that this kind of conscious practice -- which now constitutes the
avant-garde of the computer game medium -- can inspire new working methods for designers, Flanagan
offers a model for designing that will encourage the subversion of popular gaming tropes through new
styles of game making, and proposes a theory of alternate game design that focuses on the reworking
of contemporary popular game practices.