DATAPLAY: Mapping Game Mechanics to Traditional Data Visualization

The DataPlay paper, presented at the DiGRA 2009 conference, investigates whether traditional data visualization, dominated by printed and static two-dimensional charts, can be complemented or challenged by game-based forms that let people learn data through play and direct experience. Its central premise is that games, as rule-based systems that reveal the dynamics of complex structures, may offer a learning modality distinct from the short-term visual memory demands of reading charts. The authors frame this around two questions: whether data can generate "choice molecules" that make play possible, and whether play can reveal new insights in data.

The authors present three digital game prototypes developed at Parsons The New School for Design. Kimono Colors maps a cross-referenced table of 217 colors from traditional Japanese kimono dyes onto a fishing mechanic, in which lures attract dye colors according to the ingredients they share. Mannahatta: The Game is an augmented-reality iPhone game based on Eric Sanderson's reconstruction of 1609 Manhattan's ecology, asking players to build ecological webs block by block. Trees of Trade: Biodiversity and Extinction is an arcade puzzle game built on a pair of directed graphs linking Brazilian Atlantic rainforest species with commercial timber and medicinal uses. The paper candidly reports that early abstractions often produced engaging play with little learning, and that choice design, interface clarity, and data accuracy remained major hurdles.