Mutazione
Game
4 documents in the library are about Mutazione, from writers such as Game Developers Conference, Replay. The Polish Journal of Game Studies and University of Sydney. Each has a summary and key insights with the page they come from.
Connections
Each row is a game or company named alongside Mutazione, each column a document, oldest first. A mark means that document names it. Select a row to see those documents.
Documents about Mutazione
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.
- The SPIRAL framework is introduced as an analytical tool to evaluate how digital games function as feminist artefacts by tracing how values are embedded within design systems.
- The framework extends the traditional MDA (Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics) model by incorporating feminist ethics, affect theory, and decolonial epistemologies to assess the ethical depth of game systems.
- The analysis emphasizes that visibility and representation alone do not guarantee equity, warning that such approaches can often slide into tokenism or reinforce normative assumptions.
Feeling the Narrative Control(ler): Casual Art Games as Trauma Therapy
Casual art games, characterized by their non-competitive nature and focus on aesthetic immersion, function as potent instruments for trauma therapy.
- Casual art games like Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus Games, 2020) and Mutazione (Die Gute Fabrik, 2019) function as therapeutic tools by providing non-competitive, low-stakes environments that allow players to process grief and trauma.
- These games utilize specific aesthetic strategies, such as calming pastel color palettes, non-harsh musical scores, and 2D art styles, to create a physiological sense of safety that encourages emotional engagement.
- Player agency is central to the therapeutic value of these titles, as mechanics like choosing when to let go of characters or deciding how to respond to traumatic disclosures allow users to practice emotional regulation without the risk of failure.
Multiple Middles & Mutazione
The narrative design of the 2019 game Mutazione utilizes a structural approach termed multiple middles to facilitate an ensemble-driven, soap opera-style narrative.
- The 'multiple middles' narrative design approach prioritizes exploration-based discovery over traditional branching dialogue or multiple endings, allowing players to engage with an ensemble cast at their own pace.
- By structuring the game around mandatory 'A-plots' and optional 'B' and 'C' subplots, the narrative ensures that all characters receive development while allowing players to choose which interpersonal dramas to investigate.
- To maintain transparency and player agency, the game uses a diegetic journal system that clearly distinguishes between mandatory story-advancing actions and optional content, giving players control over when to trigger the next time-of-day transition.
Kill the Hero, Save the (Narrative) World
The traditional hero’s journey, a narrative structure inherited from cinema, frequently fails to sustain meaningful stakes or thematic focus within the extended timeframes of modern video games.
- Modern video games should transition from traditional, singular hero-centric narratives to ensemble-based models to better sustain thematic focus and complex social dynamics over extended playtimes.
- Adopting structural rhythms from long-running television soap operas allows developers to foster genuine narrative jeopardy and represent interconnected human relationships more effectively than the standard hero’s journey.
- The game Mutazione demonstrates the efficacy of an A, B, and C plot system, which prioritizes character-driven exploration and intergenerational themes over traditional, objective-based problem solving.
Companies behind it
As the documents state it.