Procedural Feminism Through Game Design: Towards an Analytical Framework for Situating Games as Feminist Artefacts

The SPIRAL framework serves as a novel analytical tool designed to evaluate digital games as feminist artifacts, moving beyond simple representational analysis to examine how game mechanics and systems encode ideological values. By synthesizing feminist technoscience, decolonial theory, and affect theory, the framework challenges the notion that game design is neutral. Instead, it posits that rules, constraints, and player interactions are inherently political, capable of either reinforcing patriarchal and colonial structures or fostering environments of care, repair, and relationality.

The methodology employs a qualitative, thematic approach to close reading, applying the SPIRAL framework to three distinct titles: Mutazione, Flower, and Stardew Valley. These case studies demonstrate how game design can move past tokenistic representation to embed feminist epistemologies directly into the player experience. The analysis highlights that while visibility is a component of equity, true procedural feminism requires an examination of how labor, agency, and intergenerational community repair are structured within the game’s internal logic.

Ultimately, the research concludes that game design functions as a form of situated production. By extending traditional models like the Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics (MDA) framework, the SPIRAL approach provides scholars and designers with a rigorous method to trace how values become embedded in digital systems. This work advocates for a shift toward design practices that prioritize plurality and ethical engagement, ensuring that the systems governing player choice and constraint actively contest, rather than reproduce, normative and exclusionary power dynamics.