Designing the Unconventional

Designing the Unconventional brings together scholars and practitioners to ask what it means to make games strange. Combining analysis, design philosophy and reflective case studies, the volume examines how the unconventional subverts players’ expectations, shapes designers’ practice, and challenges social norms. Its contributors consider digital, analogue, locative, tabletop and networked games and their design, from walking simulators, poetic videogames and harsh noise games to ecogames, board-games and netprov.Rather than treating the unconventional solely as an end in itself, the book explores how games can defamiliarise familiar gameplay, unsettle inherited genres, open up new modes of participation, and address social, political and ecological questions. The chapters combine theoretical clarity with practice-based insight, offering designers conceptual tools as well as examples of experimental design processes. By including responses between contributors, the collection stages a dialogue between radically different perspectives, which, when brought together, can provide new insights into the design and functioning of the unconventional in games. This volume is an essential resource for game designers, students, teachers, researchers and practitioners interested in experimental play, critical design, game studies and the creative possibilities of the unconventional across media, platforms, communities and classrooms today.