Technology
Games make use of a lot of tools and materials in new and interesting ways. This is rooted in the special need to compete. Finding new ways to apply tools is part and parcel to what technology is. Game design uses technology as much in the classic meaning of the word (the study of revelation from the Greek techné: to reveal) as it does the tools available to the designer. As such, games uncover new uses for existing tools as much as they do the skill level of the players.
Game design pushes on the boundaries of existing technology and indirectly finds ways in which other fields can benefit from what is available in other arenas. This is an imaginative process and gives designers enough room to play with the materials and the concepts of their focus. During the design phase, designers learn new things about the tools used as well as their selves, albeit this is not always apparent. Each new design requires a new way of thinking either about rules, the game’s equipment, or about the information and objects subjected to rules paradigms.
Technology is predominantly the hardest element of STEAM to identify in game design as it is nebulous in form as often as not for the reasons above. It resists classification given the numerous ways that technology can be defined as well as in how each tool can be used and/or repurposed based on the skill set at the game’s core. Ironically, technology is more elusive than art in defining the pedagogy of teaching game design and relies on more examples of how technology interacts with and changes the paradigm games seek to create. To account for that, Learning by Design covers the core technical elements pertinent to each module that build off of or are in addition to the previous modules’ technologies.
Technology looks like it should be relatively straightforward, but it is not. Pen and paper are amongst the most flexible and cutting-edge technologies in existence, but writing implements and their media are quite old. This is fitting as games take the old and make it new again. From the drawing of the simple track game to the complexity and nuanced play of role-playing games, these two tools transform while retaining their core abilities. Our relationship with the objects is as important as their use. And this is what makes technology such an elusive element of game design. It drives and is driven by design.
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Learning by Design – The STEAM Model, Part 2
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Learning by Design – The STEAM Model, Part 4