DataPlay: Early Experiments in the ”Ludic Century”

Colleen Macklin

Wed., June 09, 3:30–4:30, Old Madison

If information can be visualized, can it also be played? Do strategies for information visualization (mapping, graphs, charts and dynamic modeling) have their counterparts in game mechanics? What’s the difference between playing a relational dataset and a hierarchical one? Does playing with the “mechanics” of a system reveal new forms of knowledge about the nature of that system and others like it?

The research initiative “DataPlay” asks these questions through the development of experimental digital and mobile games exploring different large datasets. From the historic ecological “Muir Webs” of Manhattan Island in 1409 in the mobile and locative game Mannahatta: The Game to the physical (and fiscal) sport “BudgetBall”, designers at Parsons the New School for Design’s PETLab (Prototyping, Evaluation, Teaching and Learning lab) have collaborated with scientists, economists and information designers to chase what famed game design Eric Zimmerman calls “The Ludic Century”.

In this session, the challenges, failures and successes of this initiative are examined to ask the question: can data be fun while maintaining its integrity? What does that look (and feel) like? What role does abstraction, narration, or supplementary content play? Many examples from PETLab’s work as well as other experiments will be shown to frame these questions and begin to point to some new and exciting directions in the intersection between real-life information and imaginative play.