Emerging Ideas and Perspectives
Lessons from Granny's Driveway: Dissecting Celeste's Prologue
Wellington Owen: DePaul University
Maddy Makes Games’ 2018 indie success Celeste is often cited as a high point of the modern platforming genre. Much analysis has gone into the game’s movement mechanics, down to the individual frames of the jump, the dash, and each of the various complex traversal techniques that come from combining those basic movements together. However, I have yet to see an in-depth analysis of the very opening moments of the Celeste, before the challenges of Madeline’s climb begin in earnest. I wish to remedy this by presenting an in-depth analysis of the structure of Celeste’s prologue.
This concept arose out of research into the scaffolding used in game tutorials. In particular, Anna Anthropy’s “To The Right, Hold Tight” inspired a critical reading of first levels and tutorials as a cross-section of the game’s approach to mechanical pedagogy. As an example for platformers, I began to red-line the layout of the opening two screens of Celeste in order to determine what it lessons it is asking the player to learn, what complications it presents to those lessons, and what affordances it makes for experimentation and failure in the earliest stages of the game.
What I discovered was that Celeste manages to pack a truly immense density into its very first screens without bombarding the player with new information. Simply through the layout of terrain and presentation of rudimentary obstacles, the game manages to offer indirect instruction in horizontal movement, jumping, and falling. This section foregoes engagement with the grabbing and dashing mechanics entirely in order to provide a pared down introduction to just these fundamentals of movement. There are considerations for both experienced platformer players—who may need next to no tutorializing—and novices who require safeties and scaffolding to gain their footing.
Even at this stage, however, where much of the level is built to be friendly and approachable, the game presents hazards that demonstrate one of the central concepts in Celeste’s platforming challenges, namely that sometimes you have to keep moving to make it through safely. This is the most pared-down version of the many elaborate gauntlets that the game presents as its levels go on. In many ways, the prologue uses its economy of space and movement to form a microcosm of the game’s ethos as a whole: you may need to learn and practice new skills, to try and fail in order to climb Celeste Mountain, but the game wants more than anything for you to succeed. In this presentation, we will explore together how it achieves that aim.
The Hidden Data in Play: Using Video Games to Measure Cognition
Ming Chen: Indiana University Indianapolis
Games are often used for fun, learning, or even training, but they can also give us surprising insights into how people think and make decisions. The idea I want to share is simple: the very mechanics that make games engaging (e.g., reacting quickly, switching strategies, avoiding mistakes, adapting to new challenges) can also tell us a lot about core thinking skills. Instead of wrapping traditional tests inside a game, what if the game itself were the test?
To explore this idea, I created three small Unity games: Dragon Tower, Magic Forest, and Lava Cave. Each one is inspired by a well-known psychology task, but reimagined as a playable adventure. In Dragon Tower, players slash the right enemies to advance, which taps into focus and inhibition. In Magic Forest, players match and switch rules on the fly, testing flexibility. In Lava Cave, players remember and respond to sequences, challenging their working memory. What makes these games different is that they don’t feel like tests. The challenge and measurement are built right into the gameplay, so players are both engaged and generating useful data at the same time.
Of course, game data is messy. Players don’t always behave in predictable ways. To make sense of this, I turned to methods like clustering and machine learning to look for patterns. For example, accuracy, reaction time, and errors during play often line up with the same skills those psychology tasks measure. This shows that player performance isn’t just noise, and it carries meaningful signals about how people think.
From a design perspective, this approach reframes assessment as part of the play experience. It’s not about hiding a test under a layer of graphics. It’s about creating mechanics that naturally connect to the abilities we want to measure. When designed this way, games stay fun, players stay motivated, and the data reflects authentic engagement.
Why does this matter for game makers and researchers? Because it shows that games can do double duty: they can be both enjoyable experiences and powerful tools for understanding players. Developers might see new opportunities to design mechanics that reveal something deeper about human abilities. Researchers might see new ways to collect richer, more natural data. And for players, it means measurement feels less like testing and more like playing.
In short, this perspective asks us to see games not just as entertainment or teaching tools, but also as instruments of insight. By blending thoughtful design with smarter ways of analyzing player data, we can imagine a future where play and measurement work hand in hand.
Analog Games, Playground Rules, House Rules, and the Point of Having Fun
Bradley Estacio: DePaul University
This presentation aims to remind us about childhood play, and how it’s still present through the way we play analog games today by trying to make them our own. Childhood games of pretend do not only have a set of unspoken rules, but a majority of their rules are played loosely. This allows for a liminal ruleset that affords flexibility in play. Even in non-cooperative games like Four Square, rules can be adjusted improvisationally to fit the collective goals of the players. For example, Rooie rules—observed by Linda Hughes—were created to maintain both personal enjoyment and group engagement in the game by discouraging purposeful “rough stuff” and being more forgiving of new players. In this way, the conception of these rules reinforce communal values of playing nice, playing fair, and having fun. A similar phenomenon can be seen in the creation of “house rules” among older groups of players, allowing them to personalize and take ownership of the games they play. “House rules” also introduce an aspect of play that not only highlights the relationship between players, but also between the players and the game, and between the players and the game designers. These relationships that occur in play and games as adults are a reflection of playground play; players add house rules, handwave certain plays, and interpret the base rules of the game differently in order to maintain communal values in the game space. In looking at “house rules”, we then see playground play reflected back at us. And so, this talk invites you to look back and return to the playground through a tabletop game created by the speaker. Because to return to the playground is to return to imaginary play. To return is to bring back a sense of joy and wonder. To play pretend is to get a little silly, and be okay with it being a bit weird at times. To play pretend is to go with the flow, and also sometimes go against it.
The Infinite Floorplan: Preserving Culture Through XR with the Luddyverse
Zeb Wood: Indiana University Indianapolis
Indiana University’s N420 Multimedia Project Development course has delivered more than 50,000 hours of community-engaged experiential learning, partnering with over 350 organizations ranging from nonprofits to startups. Students work as creative technologists designing, producing, and deploying solutions that address real-world needs. This hands-on educational model has expanded student portfolios, inspired entrepreneurial ventures, and strengthened campus-community ties.
The Extended Reality Initiative (XRI) at IU Indianapolis builds on this foundation by providing faculty and students with resources to explore immersive technologies in teaching, research, and applied practice. By connecting N420’s experiential learning pipeline with XRI support, projects now extend beyond traditional media production into VR/AR prototypes, interactive simulations, and immersive environments that prepare students to adapt in rapidly evolving digital industries.
A compelling example of a client in need is the MARLA Museum, a video game archive nd museum of gaming artifacts, original artwork, and creature creations at IU. While the physical collection continues to grow, MARLA faces the challenge of limited exhibition space. To address this, students and faculty are designing an “infinite floorplan” by leveraging augmented and virtual reality. Coined currently as the ‘LuddyVerse,’ This digital museum XR prototype allows artifacts to be preserved and displayed in perpetuity, offering visitors immersive galleries unrestricted by the boundaries of a physical space.
Together, these initiatives demonstrate how experiential learning, when combined with extended reality, can transform both student education and community impact. N420 and XRI not only challenge students to adopt new skills but also illustrate how universities can partner with cultural organizations to reimagine space, (game) preservation, and engagement through immersive technology.
In this presentation, we will outline the challenges MARLA is facing, the initiatives and resources at Luddy and IU that are available to classes and faculty, the opportunity and probolem space presented to the N420 students, and the fruits of their first semester of effort creating the LuddyVerse.
Valorie Rimmer: DePaul University
This presentation explores the potential for video games to serve as tools for conflict resolution, focusing on post-conflict Northern Ireland. It will cover the design process of Something to Share, a narrative game in development, from its concept and research phase to the designing of the maps and characters in the game. The research done during a trip to Belfast in June of 2025 investigates how lived experience, political identity, and community narratives can inform the game development process. This was done by conducting interviews with politicians, community leaders, peacebuilding organisations, and academics. This shifted the game's direction from a game that focuses on sectarian violence to one that focuses on fostering empathy, reflection, and discussion. The result of said research is Something to Share, focused on a postal worker who lives in a post conflict society inspired by Belfast, Northern Ireland. The player will deliver letters in neighborhoods divided by peace walls, learning about the lives, perspectives, and stories of the cities residents. The game questions the boundaries of storytelling, looking into whether someone from the outside of a post conflict society should even represent it.
How Board Games Influenced American Culture
Jeramiah Envoy: Ball State University
American board games reflect and influence shifting political, economic, and moral values from the 19th century to the modern era. Focusing on three key games The Mansion of Happiness (1843), The Game of Life (1860/1960) and The Landlord’s Game (1904) which eventually became monopoly. This study examines how these games mirror broader societal transformations. The Mansion of Happiness emphasized Protestant virtues and spiritual fulfillment, reflecting early American moral ideals. In contrast, The Landlord’s Game, originally created as a critique of capitalism, was later commercialized into Monopoly (1935), promoting capitalist values like competition, risk-taking, and wealth accumulation. Similarly, The Game of Life evolved from a game celebrating moral perseverance to one centered on financial success and material gain. This abstract argues that board games are more than entertainment they serve as cultural catalyst that shape and reinforce dominant ideologies. They are a filter through which the adolescence of a population travel and are therefore molded through, shaping the perspective of future adult citizens in any given region. Ultimately, this analysis aims to reveal a broader societal shift from communal, faith-based values to individualism and materialism in America, offering insights into how leisure activities both reflect and shape national identity.