Beyond the Recipe: A Critical Analysis of Craft in Games

This paper examines craft as represented in digital games, arguing that existing taxonomies of game crafting systems fail to capture the values and principles that define craft in the real world. Its central thesis is that the tension between material systems and their digital representation tends to reduce craft to recipe-like mechanics, stripping away the material specificity, communal practice, and social dimensions that give craft its meaning. The authors draw on feminist and cultural critiques of how craft is valued relative to art, noting that craft traditions are often associated with women's labor and marginalized makers, and that craft outcomes depend heavily on precise material choices that most game systems fail to represent.

The paper situates its analysis against two existing frameworks. Grow et al. (2017) define crafting in games as the thoughtful manipulation of materials by players to create something new, and, based on a large-scale survey of crafting systems, identify seven axes for comparing them, including fidelity of action, variable outcome, progression, and recipe definition. King (2015) offers a practitioner-oriented taxonomy of five crafting system types, ranging from "money by another name" to "anything is possible." The authors argue that both approaches are mechanics-first and therefore miss the underlying values of craft itself.

To address this gap, the paper reframes game crafting through Glenn Adamson's (2007) five principles of craft: supplemental, material, skilled, pastoral, and amateur. The analysis is primarily conceptual and theoretical, grounded in craft scholarship and game design literature rather than empirical data, and it proposes these principles as a lens for identifying new design possibilities in game crafting.