Background

The Create-a-Critter game prototype represents the culmination of a 3-week course in value-sensitive game design at Aarhus Summer University. The course, Game.Play.Design: Values in Games & Valuable Games, was taught by Rikke Toft Nørgård and Claus Toft-Nielsen. During the first weeks we studied foundational game design theory, while workshopping and presenting our own team game designs each day. We also thought hard about what types of games we, as a team, wanted to make. Our team motto and values, shown below, are the result of a series of exercises promoting values discovery. During the second week, we began working on our final projects, beginning with a comprehensive introduction to and tour of Dokk1.

As we worked together, our team values emerged quite naturally. Our games tended to be non-competitive, in the traditional sense of a single winner, and were often cooperative. In Pebblehjem, a community of penguins are attempting to return home while water melts and refreezes around them. In Bystander, players are presented with choices in how to react to a series of common, stressful scenarios experienced by others. In Migration, a nightjar needs to fly to his wintering home within a certain timeframe, and in The Extended Garden, we attempt to recreate the sense of peace and unity with nature found in the Aarhus Botanical Garden.

For the final project, we needed to design a game that reflected our team philosophy while respecting the values of our stakeholders. In addition, the game was required to be a hybrid game, with both physical and digital components. Most importantly, perhaps, the game would be presented as a working prototype at Dokk1, in a section of the library that connected, in some way, to the game. In keeping with our team values, we accepted the challenge and set to work.