Games that Care: Lessons from Teaching Grief-Based Game Design

In this 2019 GDC session, University of Tampere’s Sabine Harrer introduces methods, risks, and outcomes of the development process, highlighting why care is an essential game design skill to be taught in contemporary classrooms.

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[jillybear]

I love this. I love having more and more conversations about game design as an art form and a way of exploring our own human experiences and telling stories. I think its becoming more and more important that we create games that reflect the human experience. I love love love this.

[AcrylicPixel]

I’m making a game about grief and this talk really helped. I have more perspectives to consider now. Thank you.

[nullvoid]

this is super neat, I hope this talk gets all the attention.

[wizardseven]

Eye opening and thought proviking. Fantastic talk!

[Lunareon]

Thank you for this thought-provoking talk. This is bordering the idea of games as a commission, which is an interesting concept in an of itself. Projects like this have the power to raise awareness in general, and develop the participants' empathy skills.

[gaeldefrance]

Super interesting talk ! Anyone knows if the game is accessible somewhere ? I'm very curious about the output, even if it's not the principale subject.

[Namesarealwaysathing]

Amazing talk.There are very few critical explorations of game making methodology that questions the common game design wisdom. But this talk goes a lot further suggesting great subversions of this methodology.

[ShadoFXPerino]

Game devs giving up on relationships do that because they are deeply emotionally connected with their project. The methods in this talk serve to increase those emotional connections even further. That will encourage devs to engage in even more severe self sacrifice for their projects. Therefore, the methods presented in this talk should be avoided, at least until the industry figures out how to reign in the rampant abuse of developers.