In this week’s reading, Sicart starts off talking about the art of game design. He discusses the definition of design for several paragraphs, and places his own perspective of what he thinks about design. I’m not going to lie, I got lost reading Chapter 7 because of how repetitive Sicart seemed to be when he repeats ideas that he spoke about in previous chapters (although now that I type that, I think about how he, as an author, was attempting to be playful in terms of his writing. I guess I just wasn’t too thrilled about it). Sicart talks about how game design involves materiality, people, economics, politics, aesthetics, creation, production, consumption, and distribution – pretty much what this class is about.
After elaborating on game design, game designers, and play, he goes on to talk about how game design has been sometimes compared to architecture. In the end, he kills the notation of game design, and states, “Long live the architecture of play.” To be honest, I didn’t understand why “game design” and “architecture of play” couldn’t be synonymous to him. Both game designers and architectures of play create space for people to explore and express themselves, and the space to play. To him, the difference is that architects of play “make people play” and game designers do not..? To me, game designers make people want to play. Like what Sicart said, design involves materiality, people, economics, aesthetics, and etc., so game designers should know how to make people want to play. Sure, this is not exactly the same thing as architectures of play making people play, but it’s close enough to be almost the same thing from my perspective, and not enough to say that “Game design is dead.” Game design is well alive in our society. Look at young children making up games for fun in the park. Log into Steam and see all of these games created by countless people. If both are not in your agenda, look on your phone and go on the app store to see trending games. If I’m not mistaken, game designers are the people who brought both those gaming applications to life. As an aside, yes, I see children who make up their own games as amateur game designers because they used their creative minds to think of the idea of play, came up with rules, and put it into action for the sake of enjoying themselves. And if it seems dead to Sicart, maybe he just needs to look Beyond Triple-A.