Game Information
| Title | Movers and Shakers (student-created game) |
| Presenter(s) | Konstantin Mitgutsch, Sara Verrilli, Patrick Rodriguez (Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab) |
| Session | Play the Past: Where Meaningful Play and Digital Humanities Meet to Talk |
| Time | Thursday, October 18, 11:00a-12:00p |
| Location | Gold A |
| Format | Game Exhibition |
| Description | "Movers and Shakers" is a two-player tablet serious game created by the Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab in the summer of 2012. The game aims at offering two players an abstract and engaging playful environment that simulates conflicts in work environments. The game takes place in the middle of the earth where both players are in charge of managing workers who are "turning" the world. For player 1 the workers appear to be unnamed sources of production that need to be productive to increase the temperature of the machine running the world. The player hires and fires workers and tries to make them in relation to their skills as productive as possible. What seems like an easy task is hindered by player 2 whose goal is in opposition to player 1 and focuses on the workers subjectivity, emotions and communication structure. Player 2 - in the role of their adviser - changes the workers positions and cares about how their "natures" fit to each other. Her/His goal is to maintain the workers interaction and to reach their sympathy which is expressed through awards,
Both players manage the same workers and share the recourse for actions called "lava" - but their aims are in conflict and their perspectives are in opposition. Who is managing the workers better and is more success? But the game has a twist... if the players do not start to let go of their egoistic goals and cooperate throughout the game, the worlds movement gets out of balance and the planet is in danger. Thereby a meaningful conflict between two colliding perspectives on the workers is fostered. In "Movers and Shakers" the interaction between the players reaches beyond the players tablet screens... |