Gaming for the commons: check out the serious game repository, based on the Common play with us evenings!
Can serious games help us to reimagine our political and economic system? How can we use them to make social themes tangible? Can we transform our city while playing? During our Common Play With Us! game nights we aim to discover the potential of serious games to help us reclaim the urban commons.
In previous editions, the enthusiasm of the participants and the potential of serious games were strongly evident. Serious games raise awareness about specific topics, foster critical thinking and facilitate rational decision making and group consensus. We want to play games and share the tools that we discover by co-creating an online repository of serious games in order to talk about the urban commons.
What dynamics will emerge if we reclaim ownership of public assets? How can we work together in a convergent way? And how do we make sure all of this is fun? These questions will be centre stage in the new editions of Common Play With Us! Starting this January, we will use our events to play-test and discuss games that could fit this curated game repository. During these evenings, we will focus specifically on games that help us organise the city as a commons.
In this edition, we aim to create a common language to collaboratively design the public space. What are your desires for transforming your neighborhood? How can we describe our dreamed city by using as few words as possible? We will play-test REDESIRE, a serious game developed by Rezone and We Are Muesli, to try to answer these and more questions. Are you ready to explore a new language to describe your desires? Common play with us on the 20th of February! The doors are open to everyone!
Programme
20:00 – Welcome by Socrates Schouten (Chamber of Commons)
20:10 – Introduction to REDESIRE by the co-founders of Rezone: the artist Tessa Peters and the architect Rolf van Boxmeer
20:20 – Game time!
21:20 – Reflections on game experiences
21:40 – Talk & drinks
English is spoken during this event (but not exclusively).
Limited places are available for this game night.
Admission is € 5, including a drink.
Redesire is a digital interactive multiplayer game, developed to help various urban stakeholders understand and engage with each other's desires, wishes and expectations in fictional or actual area (re)development processes. During the game, players sit around a table and use individual tablet computers in a series of turns, in order to tease out and evaluate different ideas for the redevelopment of an urban site. Players are scored based on their performance both individually and as members of a stakeholder group. Their desires are evaluated and scored by other stakeholders. The main idea of the game is based on playing with common words and concepts.
Rezone creates open designs, methods and strategies in which the influence of the end-user is big. With new technologies, it is possible to create personalized designs and methods for everybody. For Rezone, experimentation is an important aspect of the working flow. Rolf van Boxmeer has a background in architecture and Tessa Peters has a background in the arts. The crossover of art and architecture brings new insights and it is an activist method that can change the status quo in different urban fields.
These are some of the games we have played at previous Common Play With Us! game nights:
• Commonspoly
• Digitale Identiteit Ganzenbord
• Pandemic
• Arbor
• Working process urban game by Roos Groothuizen
• Peak Shaving Time game by Pink Pony Express
• Le Grand Jeu
If you have a game, or ideas for a game, that discuss or emulate urban commons, do let us know! Please contact gro.gaaw@ram.
About Commons
Commons are shared resources, managed by a community from the perspective of sustainability, inclusiveness and public added value. They offer room for bottom-up initiative and citizens' own directing. In the Commons Lab, Waag generates insight into contemporary commons and brings new forms of commons into practice. 2020 Common play With Us! game nights are mainly focus on Urban Commons. These commons aim to reimagine the spaces of the city as sustainable places for collaboration and collective ownership.
This edition of Common Play With Us! is financed by European Cultural Foundation and BankGiro Loterij Fonds.
