A Systemic Approach to Systemic Design

[droqen]

I guess player character movement is also a system. I want gem-sized systems. Beautiful small things. Systems like paintings: that you can experience immediately. All at once, as one thing.

[droqen]

Last slide @ 29:16

- Systemic understanding is vital beyond games
- Systems must be experienced to be
   understood
- Game design is unique
     - Enables people to recognize, experience,
        understand, and inhabit systems
- Systemic design provides tools for making
   better games -- and better people

As a goal, I like the dream that playing systems-games lets people get better at systems-thinking. Seriously, can't we do that with actual systems?

[droqen]

29:18

To understand systems, to be able to think in systems, you have to experience them. And nothing else that we know of gives people the ability to experience systems like playing or designing games. So I believe that designing systems from a systemic point of view enables us to see more systems in our daily lives . . . I think that by . . . using systemic thinking in game design, we can make better games, and better people.

• +1000 points for 'see more systems in our daily lives'
• -1 point for 'game systems are the way to do that'

[droqen]

Great talk!