“Putting into play” is about how our thinking and understanding work when putting the thoughts into play towards the desired goal in the making of an engaging and dynamic game system. The series is a part of a project whose goal is to offer a hands-on approach to the design of a motivating and meaningful experience from a narrative and cognitive perspective which illuminates how our thinking, learning, and emotions interplay.
“Putting into play” is part of more than a one-year-long project which goal is to explain from a cognitive and narrative perspective the mind and hands-on approach to the design of an engaging and dynamic game system. With help from cognition-based models, the focus is on the opportunity to explore how our thinking, learning, emotions work when setting out from scratch towards the desired goal.
To make the most of the post, I recommend reading Part 2 and 3 of the series Putting into play, which provides an orientation.
The title Putting into play is inspired by the term mise-en-scene, which means “putting into the scene” (or “put on stage”). The term had its origin in theatre and was later picked up by film scholars to have a way of referring to the practice of directing, planning, and controlling the elements for the desired effect on a stage or in a frame of a film. Since the term isn´t established in games but where the concept could provide an overlook of the stylistic elements that are to be organized and arranged in the creation of a form, my intention is not to put a new term into play. What I will “put into play” are the thoughts that precede the choice of elements that are to become the parts of the desired form of an engaging and dynamic game system.
In an interview for a position as a narrative director, I was asked what I would do if there were conflicts in the team about individual preferences. I could tell by their looks that they didn’t believe me when I replied that there are no conflicts where I work. To explain what I meant, I´d like to straighten out the concept of conflicts.
How the game industry understood narrative, wasn’t really a big issue (the problems should be found somewhere else). As I always worked within entertainment, I never thought of a narrative from any other perspective than to deliver a feeling of something worth spending time on and where the goal was to give something people didn’t know they were missing. Continue reading
KATARINAGYLLENBÄCK 
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