New Design Methods for Activist Gaming

This paper, authored by Mary Flanagan, Daniel C. Howe, and Helen Nissenbaum and presented at the 2005 DiGRA conference, proposes a practical methodology for embedding social and ethical values into the design of games and other technical systems. Its central argument is that while designers increasingly recognize that technologies embody political and moral commitments, there is a shortage of systematic methods for putting such values into practice. The authors position their approach as an augmentation of established game design and human-computer interaction practices rather than a replacement for them, and they frame values-oriented design as a form of activism aimed at social change.

The proposed method consists of three iterative phases. Discovery identifies relevant values by drawing on four sources: definition values stated in project goals, collateral values arising from specific design choices, designer values rooted in team members' backgrounds, and user values revealed through prototyping and usability testing. Translation converts these values into concrete design specifications, illustrated by a code-sharing and reward mechanism in the RAPUNSEL game that operationalized cooperation. Conflicts between values are handled either by dissolving them through redesign, when they stem from material constraints, or by negotiating trade-offs, when they reflect genuine incompatibility. Verification then tests whether values were realized without undermining earlier decisions, relying on prototypes, usability studies, and stakeholder feedback.

The methodology is grounded in the authors' experience developing RAPUNSEL, a National Science Foundation-funded project to teach Java programming to middle-school girls through a networked game. The paper is a short framework rather than an empirical study, so its evidence consists of illustrative examples from that single project rather than systematic data or sample-based findings. The authors acknowledge that a fuller treatment is forthcoming and that further work is needed to connect the method with general design methodologies.