Urbanism and Minecraft: Designing a game jam to reimagine the city | Intellect Skip to content
1981
Volume 16, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 1757-1898
  • E-ISSN: 1757-1901

Abstract

This article presents a theoretical–methodological experience that combines a card game and a game jam in to re-imagine cities. A game jam workshop was designed for the City and Science Biennial 2021 held in Barcelona with three central components: (1) the identification of urban space problems in the chosen environment, (2) the co-creation of stories about the future and improvements for the city areas using speculative storytelling techniques based on cards, and finally (3) the creation and modelling of urban spaces and the resulting actions in the environment, in which the participants are both designers and players. This experience is an original combination of game jam methodologies and research in the field of digital and non-digital storytelling. The results show that adding the speculative narrative dynamic in the form of a card game to the co-designing of an environment in a video game world generates a creative methodological environment that allows participants of different ages to become involved.

Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • City Council of Barcelona (Award 22S03379-001)
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/cjcs_00085_1
2023-06-16
2024-05-01
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Acharya, D. and Wardrip-Fruin, N. (2019), ‘Building worlds together: Understanding collaborative co-creation of game worlds’, in Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, San Luis Obispo, California, August 26, Article No. 45, New York: ACM, pp. 15.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Barandiaran, X. E., Calleja-López, A. and Monterde, A. (2019), ‘Decidim: Political and technopolitical networks for participatory democracy’, Barcelona: Decidim’s project white paper, https://ajbcn-meta-decidim.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/decidim/attachment/file/2005/White_Paper.pdf. Accessed 21 March 2024.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Borries, F., Böttger, M. and Walz, S. P. (eds) (2007), Space Time Play. Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level, Basel: Birkhäuser.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Candy, S. (2018), ‘Gaming futures literacy: The thing from the future’, in R. Miller (ed.), Transforming the Future: Anticipation in the 21st Century, London: Routledge, pp. 23846.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Choi, J. H. (2010), ‘Playpolis: Transyouth and urban networking in Seoul’, Ph.D. thesis, Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Colossal Order (2015), City Skylines, Stockholm: Paradox Interactive.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Cook, M., Smith, G., Thompson, T., Togelius, J. and Zook, A. (2015), ‘Hackademics: A case for game jams at academic conferences’, in Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, New York: ACM.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Cristie, V. and Berger, M. (2016), ‘Game engines for urban exploration: Bridging science narrative for broader participants’, in A. Nijholt (ed.), Playable Cities: The City as a Digital Playground, New York: Springer, pp. 87107.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Cuzzocrea, V. and Mandich, G. (2016), ‘Students’ narratives of the future: Imagined mobilities as forms of youth agency?’, Journal of Youth Studies, 19:4, pp. 55267.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Eberhardt, R. (2016), ‘No one way to jam: Game jams for creativity, learning, entertainment, and research’, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Game Jams, Hackathons, and Game Creation Events, San Francisco, CA, March, New York: ACM, pp. 3437.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Eklund, A. (2016), Gaming the Real World, Sweden: Luckyday.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Foth, M., Bajracharya, B., Brown, R. and Hearn, G. (2009), ‘The second life of urban planning? Using NeoGeography tools for community engagement’, Journal of Location Based Services, 3:2, pp. 97117.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Glaveanu, V. P. (2018), ‘The possible as a field of inquiry’, Europe’s Journal of Psychology, 14:3, pp. 51930.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Gordon, E. and Koo, G. (2008), ‘Placeworlds: Using virtual worlds to foster civic engagement’, Space and Culture, 11:3, pp. 20421.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Huizinga, J. (2007), Homo Ludens, Madrid: Alianza.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Kankainen, A., Vaajakallio, K., Kantola, V. and Mattelmäki, T. (2012), ‘Storytelling group: A co-design method for service design’, Behaviour & Information Technology, 31:3, pp. 22130.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Klapproth, D. (2009), ‘The narrative sharing of words: Storytelling as communicative interaction’, Narrative as Social Practice, Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 87136.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Lefebvre, H. and Nicholson-Smith, D. (1991), The Production of Space, Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Moezzi, M., Janda, K. B. and Rotmann, S. (2017), ‘Using stories, narratives, and storytelling in energy and climate change research’, Energy Research & Social Science, 31, pp. 110.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Mojang (2009), Minecraft, Sweden: Mojang and Xbox Game Studios.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Mueller, N., Rojas-Rueda, D., Khreis, H., Cirach, M., Andrés, D., Ballester, J., Bartoll, X., Daher, C., Deluca, A., Echave, C., Milà, C., Márquez, S., Palou, J., Pérez, K., Tonne, C., Stevenson, M., Rueda, S. and Nieuwenhuijsen, M. (2020), ‘Changing the urban design of cities for health: The superblock model’, Environment International, 134, pp. 10532.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Muriel, D. (2017), ‘La videoludificación de lo social en la era digital y la cultura del videojuego’, in D. Muriel and R. San Salvador del Valle (eds), Tecnología digital y nuevas formas de ocio, Deusto: Deusto Digital, pp. 3958.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Musil, J., Schweda, A., Winkler, D. and Biffl, S. (2010), ‘Synthesized essence: What game jams teach about prototyping of new software products’, in Proceedings of the 32nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering, vol. 2, May 2–8, Cape Town, South Africa, New York: ACM, pp. 18386.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Myers, C., Piccolo, L. and Collins, T. (2019), ‘Game jams as a space to tackle social issues: An approach based on the critical pedagogy’, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Game Jams, Hackathons and Game Creation Events, San Francisco, CA, March, Article No. 2, New York: ACM, pp. 18.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Parra-Agudelo, L., Choi, J. H. and Foth, M. (2016), ‘The city as a canvas for change: Grassroots organisations’ creative playing with Bogota’, in A. Nijholt (ed.), Playable Cities: The City as a Digital Playground, New York: Springer, pp. 189210.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Pivec, M. (2018), ‘Fostering co-creation with games: Transforming formal into non-formal learning and vice versa’, in Proceedings International Conference on Learning and Teaching in Computing and Engineering (LaTiCE), Auckland, New Zealand, April, New York: IEEE, pp. 4243.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Roig Telo, A., Pires de Sá, F. and Cornelio, G. S. (2018), ‘Future story chasers: An experience with co-creation of fiction in the classroom through a collaborative storytelling game’, Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies, 10:2, pp. 27989.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Roig Telo, A., Hofman, V. and Pires, F. (2021), ‘Cazadores de historias’, Revista ICONO 14: Revista Científica De Comunicación Y Tecnologías Emergentes, 19:2, pp. 23560.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Sools, A. (2020), ‘Back from the future: A narrative approach to study the imagination of personal futures’, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 23:4, pp. 45165.
    [Google Scholar]
  30. Sutton-Smith, B. (1997), The Ambiguity of Play, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  31. Tóth, E. (2015), ‘Potential of games in the field of urban planning’, in T. Bártek, J. Miškov and J. Švelch (eds), Proceedings of the Central and Eastern European Game Studies Conference, Brno: Masaryk University, pp. 7191.
    [Google Scholar]
  32. Veland, S., Scoville-Simonds, M., Gram-Hanssen, I., Schorre, A. K., El Khoury, A., Nordbø, M. J. and Bjørkan, M. (2018), ‘Narrative matters for sustainability: The transformative role of storytelling in realizing 1.5°C futures’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 31, pp. 4147.
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Walz, S. and Deterding, S. (2015), ‘Position statement: Manifesto for a ludic century’, E. S. P. Walz and S. Deterding (eds), The Gameful World: Approaches, Issues, Applications, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 1922.
    [Google Scholar]
  34. Westerberg, P. and Heland, F. von (2015), Using Minecraft for Youth Participation in Urban Design and Governance, Kenya: United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT), pp. 124, https://unhabitat.org/books/using-minecraft-for-youth-participation-in-urban-design-and-governance/. Accessed 1 February 2023.
    [Google Scholar]
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journals/10.1386/cjcs_00085_1
Loading
/content/journals/10.1386/cjcs_00085_1
Loading

Data & Media loading...

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error