The Power of Critical Play

Speaker 1 Entering into this magic circle and and really kind of understanding that something is different here. I've there's a new world. Well, isn't that what we need to be thinking about right now? Don't we need to reinvent some of our broken stuff? So and I'm saying that generally, I could get down to specifics about economies, about value, about the environment, about climate, about we have some broken things, divided people. Right? So we have we have broken things, and I I I'm I'm really an advocate for using games as a a one place, at least, to experiment and try something different and try something new.

Speaker 2 Hey there. Nick here at Human Restoration Project. We all grew up playing games. I fondly remember playing Go Fish with my grandma and her next door neighbor. As a nineties kid who grew up with an NES, it felt like every console generation was a leap forward in graphics and game quality. And regardless of who you're cheering for, tomorrow's World Cup final will be watched by an estimated 2,000,000,000 people. Even though at some point many of us stop playing games, even if we don't stop paying attention to them, we hold on to the experiences, the feelings, and the lessons. What they taught us about ourselves, each other, and the world around us. And it's because games play an important role in human and tell us so much about societies and cultures at large, the relationship between play, games, and learning has always been a focus of our work. And it's been the lifelong interest of my guest today, game designer, artist, author, and researcher, doctor Mary Flanagan. Mary Flanagan is the founder of Tilt Factor Game Studio, whose tabletop and digital games intentionally tackle a number of social issues. The tagline on the Tilt Factor homepage reads, game design for social change. With the challenge, can you make a more just and equitable world with games? At Tilt Factor, we believe we can. Mary has also coauthored several incredible books, including the pivotal Critical Play about radical game design and co authored Playing Oppression, The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games. So given Mary Flanagan's unique and consequential focus, I wanted to sit down with her to see what we can learn at the intersection of play and critical pedagogy. Doctor Mary Flanagan, thanks so much for joining me today. Thanks Nick for reaching out. It's nice to meet you. I think a lot of people might call your bio, artist, author, got academic work, game designer. They might call that living the dream. So how in the world did you come to make game design the focus not just of social change and artistic expression, but academic analysis as well?

Speaker 1 I blame my ADHD.

Speaker 2 So so there's hope for us yet is what you're saying. There's hope. That's correct. That's correct. You know, I never could decide

Speaker 1 on any particular path because I like to do so many things, and I I've just spent my life doing that. The things you know, one question leads to another. Sometimes things end up being books, you know, and you share an idea through books. Like, for example, playing oppression arose from archival research I was doing. I was at the Getty Museum, and I stumbled across these really weird historical games that I thought, oh, wow. These actually are doing a lot more than just your simple roll and move around the track thing that I had unfairly kind of categorized them in my head. Is this like, oh, well, there those are really simple games for simpler times and woah, Game and all that, you know. Yes. The game of the goose is bad on me. Bad on me because, of course, as soon as you like, oh, that, you know, that's those game mechanics aren't really complicated. Well, that that kind of thinking will will never will never stand

Speaker 2 because history always has things to teach us. Yeah. I was just looking at, like, the BGG top 100 or whatever. I guess the I was just looking at that whole list and I saw that on the very bottom, like ranked 30,382 is chutes and ladders, which I'm making the connection now. Like in playing oppression, you talk about like the importance for religious instruction of, you know, the cultural importance of snakes and ladders or whatever it was called in its own historical context. And I'm thinking, my gosh, yeah, removed from all of that mechanically, yeah, it's gonna be on the bottom of the BGG 30,000 or whatever. So just a wild,

Speaker 1 again, ADHD connection. My brain just made something you talk about in your book there. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a that's a classic example of the of how you can be a detective in going into history and really understanding about how, oh my, a game that was about contemplation, snakes and ladders, and moral vices, and and thinking through different religious practices, by the way, of the Indian Subcontinent. There are Gayan Chauper boards actually in representing Muslim, Jain, and Hindu faith. So, like, the the format was used across several religions to kind of think about spiritual enlightenment. And, wow, that was completely stripped of any meaning and cultural context as it was appropriated during the British colonization when things could just be taken and repurposed and packaged and sold.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And now you can get enlightenment for $10 at Target or Yeah. There's more enlightenment there.

Speaker 1 So to be fair, I will say even simple games like Game of the Goose where you're rolling, you know, and a euro gamer might say, well, that's this is not for me. This is not my kind of game. You know, there's it's all chance. This is the worst. You know? Where's my meaningful choice? But on the other hand, you know, they served as a lot of purposes. They were about enculturation. They were they were things to talk about. They were they were subject they weren't people weren't bombarded by the Internet. So these gave a focused point of a conversation. People could spend time arguing and debating. There's game of the geese. Like, I have this really great book of of very thick book that was in the from the nineteen fifties where a French scholar collected a lot of game of the geese. And there are games on shoes, you know, in the in the in the eighteenth century. You can go play all about different shoe styles and fashion and wigs and all these so and as well as politics and literature was represented in this. So so the themes actually were a a way in which group interactions were being designed, but but, you know, in a very different focus on mechanics.

Speaker 2 Putting on my social studies teacher hat, so I taught high school history for ten years or whatever, and I I as I was reading through your book, was thinking, god, I would love to just just get my hand on a copy or something of those games as as something of like a like a primary source or like a historiographical, you know Yes. Artifact so that students could play through to see how people at the time understood concepts or they saw themselves from the role of, you know, the colonists or my goodness, I I love the small section on like how it's how we get, like, the modern German euro game today is, like, them fleeing from, you know, the war games of the past is how we get, you know, the kinesias or, I guess, everything else today. But those the the ones that depict, you know, the the German expansion and conquest and depict, you know, the racial differences and everything else, just that to really seal the I guess, seal the deal on how enculturation, you know, to you to use your word there, how enculturated those things were through play in all of these different cultures for better and for worse in a lot of cases.

Speaker 1 Yeah. That I it is fascinating how we don't necessarily, as players of contemporary modern board games, we don't we don't We don't always think about the roots of the thought behind it. Right? Like, why is strategy so important? Well, strategy was very important in Prussian war games. And really linking to the past. But it also shows you what other kinds of biases are built into our current games, beloved games that we have. For example, often they're just like infinite resources in a game. You know? Okay. I need more wood in my settler, in my catan. Right? I need more wood. I gotta get more wood. Well, you know, that no one no one's no one's taking a round to grow. This is one of the reasons I like Agricola, for example, because you have to actually wait for the little sheep to multiply. You know? I actually there are there are ways to bring mechanics that are a little bit different. But but really questioning my my whole thought about games and and my art practice actually is looking at play and power. How how do we approach powerful power laden situations, everyday life, the Internet, which started off as this utopian well, first, it started off as military as military safeguards, and then it start it became this utopian place. And then now it's like this this dystopian data stealing systemic

Speaker 2 blight. It's a nightmare. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yes. I read a lot of Cory Doctorow, of course. So yeah. Yeah. Which

Speaker 2 I I think it balances out like the I don't know. Knowing more about that makes me more angsty and upset, but also his take on it is both, like, humorous and, like, empowering. So I I like his his take on it too. Sometimes it can be a little bit too doomer for for my taste, some of some of that critique, but doctor Rowe threads that needle pretty well. Yes. There's a new one out. I've just started I don't know I don't know where it is, but there's a new one about the centaur and whether AI

Speaker 1 is being used for the human or whether the human is being used for the AI. And so there's this he's trying to get more nuanced, I think, about this kind of thing. So so, you know, to be to be determined. But but the whole, you know, the context of play in this particular moment is is both rife and it's also urgent because we need to be able to look at I mean, what the the most interesting thing I think about games are the way that games model not only player interactions. They give us a structure for player interactions, but they give us a logic of a whole world. So we enter into this world. Johann Heisinger, magic circle. I know some people don't like that, but I'm totally into it because he's the first person who ever talked about magic and games. Anyway, like, entering into this magic circle and and really kind of understanding that something is different here. I've there's a new world. Well, isn't that what we need to be thinking about right now? Don't we need to reinvent some of our broken stuff? So and I'm saying that generally, can get down to specifics about economies, about value, about the environment, about climate, about we have some broken things, divided people. Right? So we have we have broken things, and I I'm I'm really an advocate for using games as a a one place at least to experiment and try something different and try something new. And I think if we have a whole bunch of gamers trying to trying to invent new mechanics and thinking about new economies, and it's it's a really interesting time, I think, to to be able to invent this kind of new way of thinking. And it and it can start with a game because games reflect culture, but also games are designed. So can we use games to to impact, you know, the world around us? I I think it's worth a shot.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, I I think what's wild about that is that I don't think people would balk at the idea that we were just talking about these more historical games, you know, that would reflect the the greatness of the French empire or whatever to enculturate, you know, young people into thinking of these these new distant foreign lands or the greatness of the French empire wanting to contribute to that. People would say, well, yeah, of course. But then when you take the the step to say, well, maybe if we design differently, then we could get both children and adults or whomever, right, thinking differently about systems and wanting to then build them differently in the real world, people will be like, wait, they're just games. They're just you know, they might put them in a separate category. It's not something that we should take seriously. And one thing one thing I love about tilt factors, you guys just wear that on your sleeve. I, copied the the vision over here for folks to to hear, and It says their vision your vision is of an equitable and just world in which challenges such as biases and stereotypes, sexual violence, and unequal access to education and health care are eradicated through play. And I think we're getting to like, I I don't know, like something of a thesis here in the first ten minutes, which is just like why does this matter so much for us to care about play in this way? This is really where I felt that critical pedagogy and play connection. Why should we care?

Speaker 1 Yes. Well, I mean, it's very interesting to I I I'm I'm writing a I'm writing something. I'm writing a a a lecture that I have to give in a in another land. And and I've ran across this really great quote from the eighteenth century Dutch poet, Hieronymus van Elfen. My playing is learning. My learning is play. And why should learning ever bore me? So I think play is intrinsically tied to curiosity and wonder and and and the magic of being alive. Right? So so that is a positive force. You know, you could have negative forms of play, of course, you know, and people might cite dark play, gambling, whatever. You know, there there there are there are other kinds of play other than this kind of utopian rah rah thing that I'm I'm on. But but I I do think that it's it's an overlooked place for serious work to to playfully get people thinking differently. Let us let us find new ways of seeing through the lens of play.

Speaker 2 I guess a quick personal anecdote. When I was thinking about this conversation and thinking about, you know, what's reflected in critical play and playing oppression, like my own tabletop gaming journey with my family, right? I'm pretty new to it, it's something that I got into just as a break from work and screen time, and wanting to get them into it, but realizing too that sometimes those were not super positive experiences because they're so competitive. You know, at the end of playing card games or board games or whatever, like there's winners and losers and like it felt really bad to have, you know, kids or somebody feeling really bad about it. So I was looking into, oh, this whole world of cooperative games. We got Pandemic, we got Forbidden Island, and I got really into, but the Kinfire universe from Incredible Dream is awesome. I just love everything they do. It's basically all co op too. So it's just such a cool such a cool world to build in there. But, right, that I was thinking about that too, like how can we have more positive experiences as a family playing games because we're all against the same team, you know, taking on different roles, helping each other out, like playing to beat the game and win together. Like that seemed like such a fundamental shift in in my way of viewing, I guess, the the role that games could play, not just to have winners and losers, but we could all be on the same team sharing a common experience together instead of somebody walking away feeling salty about it. You know? Mhmm. You're right. You're right. And the the, I think it's interesting that you talk about that experience of walking away from a game because we don't yet have great language for that.

Speaker 1 Sometimes you might feel guilty because you did this thing, but ultimately, you're happy you won. Some games actually bring out very negative parts of us. So different mechanics and different game experiences actually do have embodied effects. And we know we know not it's not it's not really been studied as a whole area. Like, it's it's it's it's really interesting to look at that. I you can even see this over in VR and everything where people are thinking, oh, you know, VR games are they're automatically built for empathy. Well, you know, let's we need research on some of this stuff before we make assumptions because you would think by being seen in someone else's shoes, it might be really moving, but maybe not. Maybe not because you are mediated. So there's a lot about, there's a lot to be learned about the role of games in our everyday life and the way we learn, the way we see each other, and how we can support each other. So that is why I think that any attempt for people to try experimenting with games, to shift the rule sets, you know, what happens if we try to play this co op? Well, how do we do that? I don't know. Like, let us let us play with the rules because we're really operating under some really old paradigms, you know, for for gameplay, you know, winners and losers and winner take all mentality. I mean, that's all in chess and that's you know, these are these are some older older games and and but some games weren't were not that way. Right? And and then that might fall into more play than games. So that the line between play and game is also something that I'm very interested in because some people have very strict rules about that, and I'm I'm not so strict about about it. I mean, if I'm making a commercial product, I have to take expectations of certain genres into account and whatever. But but in general, I like to blur the lines and bring play into unexpected places as well.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Talk more about that distinction because that's something that you get into, like, with critical play. It's just like, well, how do we define, you know, what is play and what is a game? And I guess expanding and contracting those to fit different genres or, you know, form types and things. So where where do you see that or how do you like to play with those confines?

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, I was really inspired learning about the fluxes movement actually and the surrealist movement, which I do talk about in in in critical play. But I learned about these things and actually when I was in graduate school, I worked at this computer lab where we were actually digitizing fluxes materials so that people could interact with them. So they weren't just sitting in a museum because they were meant to be, you know, used and and and they were made of ephemeral materials because they weren't special objects. They were supposed to be engaged with. And I had no idea who what that was. What is this flexi thing? You know? And then I realized there was a bunch of artists who are making kind of absurd and interesting and provocative game and play experiences, like looking like sometimes they'd make a box, you open it up, and it's just filled with nonsensical objects. And and it's kind of proposing the question on what is the difference between play and games? Can you make a game out of these playful things?

Speaker 2 It's like, game desires.

Speaker 1 It's it it dot so data surrealism and fluxes are these moments where you have very interesting eruptions in the blurring of of games and play. That's awesome. Yeah. And and I I really think they're they they came at very interesting times. You know, if you look historically, Dada was really a reaction to World War one. Surrealism was really in that gap between World War one and World War two with the invention of psychology and the mainstream and, like, all kinds of development of of all kinds of really interesting stuff. And then fluxes in the sixties and seventies when you had student protests, empowerment, Vietnam War, at least in The United States. So so different different histories have are are forming these narratives as well. Right? So being a history teacher, this probably is cool for you. I'm a closet historian myself.

Speaker 2 People can't see it. I'm grinning ear to ear because it like, this is hitting the intersection of games, history, again, like pedagogy play, it's just all right in that in that warehouse. Well, so so what do the games, I guess, that we engage with today? You had mentioned VR, know, my my own kids dabble in VR and it's not a world that is really I guess what's interesting is it's not very accessible to people without the headset, unlike, you know, couch co op or other things that happen on other virtual gaming consoles or online play or something like that. But have you have you thought or done any research or writing about what today's

Speaker 1 games, just like those of the past said about the enculturation of of people and their reflection of values? What do today's games say about I I do think we have some some borrowed histories that we haven't really dealt with, and I would think that, like and we touch on this in playing oppression, but I've recently been asked point on, like, what are colonial mechanics that we're using right now? Like, tell tell me so I don't have to use them and so I have to invent something else. I'm like, alright. Let's think about this. You know? Let's get a list going, you know, and I I already mentioned the the idea of collecting infinite resources. Right? Or or worker placement. Is that, you know, is that you could think of it as corporate, you know, like leadership or you could think of it as slavery. Right? So so there are lots of aspects of games that really do get adopted, and that's one place to start anyway in this in this exploration of how we how how culture is reflected because it's still being reflected. We still inherited and we're still operating, and capitalism is operating under the laws of extraction that philosopher Nancy Fraser says, capitalism is not a a economic system. It's a social order. So once we understand that as a social order that there always has to be some someone who's down to have someone up, and that's not that's not necessarily a natural scheme of things. That is actually an invented scheme of things. So when we're thinking about how we can see that in our games, we you know, as you talked about, like, the invention of co op is a new way of thinking around some of those problems. Like, so that is a very cool thing. So that that the rise of of new forms of play is something that excites me very much because it does show how culture and designers are thinking together in this really tricky time where we need creative answers.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I love it was that reframe. I I opened it up to the book is like that four x which is gosh, what are the all those explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate sort of god. I mean, when you actually describe what those four x's are, it kind of makes that four x label seem a lot less appealing to me. But you borrow from a game designer in Cherokee Nation, is it Will Thompson who dubs the four c's, conservation, cultivation, continuation, and competition, kind of keeping, I don't know, a game's gotta have some different rules or something, but just a reframe towards, I don't I don't even know, pro social values or something like that. Right. Right.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So that's that's what my next book is on. Actually, I'm writing a book. Oh, well, it's written. We're just doing the final tweaks. It'll be out next year. I'm writing with, my collaborator, Laurel Carney, and we are writing a book for MIT Press again, and it is called speculative game design. So this is where the the the direction of my work is going. It's like, alright. We've got some problems. How do we keep intervening like the artist did in critical play? Right? All of those interesting examples of of intervention. This is something I'm I'm very excited about trying to enable other people to to do. And, you know, here's a here's a funny thing. Like, I when I started that project, I did not think it was gonna take me where I did. I I and that's what projects do. Right? Research is like that. In fact, when I was at the Getty Museum and I started doing games in colonialism, I was actually studying artist books. I was I was not thinking about games at all, and then whoops, I can't help but talk about that. Gotcha. Whoops.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Just slipped into that. Whoops.

Speaker 1 But in in in this particular case, I started doing research on, you know, games for social change and games that are like but the most interesting stuff I was finding was in the LARP community. And, of course, having done LARP and r RPGs, you know, I I I was surprised that that became the the mechanics and the kind of interactions that are are being invented in those spheres are highly interesting for a idea of social transformation and and personal transformation. So this is really a very exciting thing because LARP is, you know, is it's still unless you're in in in in the node, it's seen as a kind of like boffing people on the in medieval garb. Right? But it but but really the power of these transformative performances and really the attention to personal experience and and creation is is really awesome. So I I'm that the book covers a lot of that territory.

Speaker 2 I cannot wait for that. We'll have to have you back on after that book because that's that is so right up our alley too. I think that that point about LARPing and not just that live action role play, but also I think in, like, that that indie TTRPG itch io space is just so it's got such like a vitality to it. There's just so much life and I'm always just pouring through and finding like, oh, this, the aesthetics, the art design, like the whole package built in with mechanics and I just love, I think, the ones that just use like found materials or decks of cards or tarot or you're gonna need, you know, this specific three dice because you're gonna be every dice roll is gonna be, I don't know, building a you're discovering botany or something in the in the exclusion zone botanist, you know, or in this one, you're running a tea shop and you need to roll to figure out your customers and meet their orders and everything else. There's just I'm just I sometimes I wonder, are all the ideas gone? Because everybody has surely has thought of everything already. Right? But they are these invitations just to, I don't know, take on different perspectives, right, to step outside of yourself and That's right. And really empathize and see the world in different ways in part because of, you know, that magic circle that you talked about earlier. You're stepping into not just, a game with mechanics, but a different way of thinking, you know, about the world and its organization through these mechanisms and,

Speaker 1 and the rules and and the art experience, I suppose. That's right. And it also gets us out of the echo chamber that has become the Internet. Right? It it it the algorithms have have have not enriched our lives with, diverse surprises, logics, and priorities. You know what I mean? Like, it's the the people go down their their particular community and sometimes the interesting things are happening on the margins. Right? So how do we how do we, you know, help the margins become centered? That's something that people have been trying to do for a long time, but there are ways that that you can do that. I mean, I remember, I think, reading feminist literature many years ago, And I think it was a big push. Like, how do you how did the marginal critiques actually get to a center where it's helping everybody function as a as a society? And I think it's really the only I cannot press enough that it's the only that's the only antidote to really losing hope, actually. Because because it's you know, when we see people becoming trillionaires and and, you know, many of us are just don't bat an eye because that's the way things are. That is not the way things have to be. And we have to come up with new ways of of really under interpreting our unwritten and unspoken assumptions about everyday life. Right? And we try to prioritize people, each other, and also interspecies and nonspecies. Right? The our relationship to the earth. I was just writing today about this town in Norway that has a since the eighties has had an interspecies council. They completely take every major decision in this town, and they think about the water and the fish and the trees and the rocks and will the mountain and the so they they think about the whole picture, which of course we need to do. That that so there are these cool examples where where where people are doing it. So so let's let's go find them, and let's learn.

Speaker 2 Again, that sounds like a wonderful TTRPG game design, which is the the interspecies council. Right? Like, you have to put on the hat, and here's here's a card that has the the I don't know. The agenda item or the action item, and you have to put on the hat of all of these. Actually, in this video, you should look up the Southampton

Speaker 1 council because they it's in England, and they actually had people dressing up as species coming to the town council. There are people with deer heads on. I'm telling you. Okay.

Speaker 2 Was this was this like in rebellion or resistance, or was this like a built in part of it? This is this is a new way of trying to raise awareness about,

Speaker 1 about conversations that need to happen and and decisions new new kinds of decisions that have to be made because, of course, a nondecision is a decision. Right? So and consumers are not have not feel felt super empowered to be able to control the supply chain and the the destruction of the environment very much. So so I think it's it's a it's a pushback, and it's a playful pushback. There's a lady dressed like a, you know, some kind of exotic flower and there's stuff coming off of her head for like three feet. So Good for her. Love it.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I I would have just gone with like, I don't know, you can get those inflatable animal costumes or something at the Halloween going Oh, no. No. No. These are all handmade, I'm pretty sure. Oh, my goodness. Okay. I'll have to I'll have to look that up and and plug a link for it for listeners. Well, speaking of plugging it, let's plug in tilt factor into this too because, like, I it feels like we're kind of talking about like around all of these, but again, if the if the goal if the mission of tilt factor is to provide a model for doing this, how how have you all tried to like live those values and like, I guess, implement or iterate on them in gaming spaces?

Speaker 1 Well, so so I am, you know, a scholar. I'm writing all these books and stuff, and I'm also an artist making this stuff. And tilt factor is a kind of a different aspect of my practice where I work collaboratively with different specialists and students to create and study games that, like, literally address a social issue. So I started working on this stuff in 1999. I got my first National Science Foundation grant for a web the first Internet adventure game for girls, which was called the Adventures of Josie True. And it had math and science activities and you meet all these historical figures and women and like Bessie Coleman was in there. So it was this cool thing about trying to trying to support especially young girls in science, math, and STEM fields. In part because studies show around fifth grade is where a lot of girls and I haven't looked this up recently. So at that time, around fifth grade, a lot of was a time when a lot of girls felt like science and math weren't for them anymore. So there's, like, turning points where you can look at the research data. And so I ended up getting through the years working with social psychologists and social scientists and actually having postdocs in my lab who know how to run a social science study with, you know, randomized control trial, this kind of thing. But we but we're creating and then we're testing to see if our creations do anything. So and sometimes they didn't. Right? We had a we have a paper called failed games where we talk about this process. But, yeah, we we've had so many interesting projects over the twenty years that I have is it twenty years? I think it's like twenty years ish. Hopefully, it's not more. That I run this game resource lab because, you know, there there are a lot of questions to be asked. But, like, for example, can you make a game that makes you less less biased or less racist? Right? Can you make a game that does something like that? You know? That's a hard that's a hard ask. Right? But we we did find we did find ways to do some of this stuff. We did find ways to to, lower people's scores and of, like, discrimination after playing the game Buffalo for twenty minutes based on two vetted social science scales of how people measure bias and discrimination. So if you really dig down into into the social science as as a form of evidence, you get it gets very interesting in designing from psychological principles. So I had a whole chapter of my existence really enjoying the the the how much we do know about how people understand the world from psychology and wow, it's really interesting, like how swayable we are even when we think our identities are pretty fixed.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And and putting those in a in a space, making those things visible and putting them in a space where, I guess, play is the objective. And we're not necessarily thinking first and foremost about those transformations, but just thinking in terms of the rules of the game. But upon reflection, you know, walking away from it, realizing that we're gonna be thinking about, I guess I'm I'm looking at the summary for Buffalo here, but challenging those biases or hacking those those prejudice and those preconceptions about scientists and superheroes, perhaps around gen race and gender, for example, and I guess playing a game, but changing your biases at the same time and leaving the game differently than when you entered. That's such a cool cool idea.

Speaker 1 Yes. And I the interesting thing about it though is that it works better if if it's not if you're not told that's what's happening. Okay. So you're you're just playing, oh, we're gonna play a game of Buffalo. We're gonna play a party game. It actually is called as a party game. It's one of my best selling games.

Speaker 2 Well, that's so interesting because I think too, gosh, when, you know, when I was a classroom teacher, the way that we approach the issues, you know, of of, of bias and especially around COVID twenty twenty, in the wake of Black Lives Matter was like to confront it with like this level of seriousness and this level of like gravitas, that like if you weren't already bought in, you know, to the need to change on those issues in education, I think made it maybe more difficult to do that. And I'm thinking like, is this a way that we can broach hard conversations about challenging personal identity or you know, socialized biases like again, through play and games to get to serious issues in healthcare and society and labor relations, as opposed to, like, your parents sitting down and say, come have a seat, we need to talk kind of thing, you know, and you immediately get your hackles up. That's right. That's right. It's called psychological reactants. Okay. Hackles.

Speaker 1 Your hackles. That's what that is. Okay. Good to know. The hackles are are psychological reactants, and and we, experience it a lot when we feel like we're being told what to do, and actually it shut down our, our our interest and ability to process it. And as a teacher, you price out this all the time.

Speaker 2 It's like a doing to model rather than like a doing with kind of thing. Right? Yes. Or a person thinks that they're teaching themselves, they're gonna be more successful than if they are passive recipients of you as the learned master, you know, the goer And it is hard because, of course, grave grave problems do require,

Speaker 1 the the gravitas to to, to be humble about them. But on the other hand, then there's an argument to be made about the clearer communication and and and really exposing things for what they are. Right? But then there's another way to do it, and there is a way to do it that is actually what advertising is doing and all kinds of, you know, nefarious media makers are doing as well, which is, you know, persuading. These techniques are not only in the social sciences, they're in advertising. Advertisers don't necessarily sit down and say, you know, when you buy this Nike shoe, here are the costs of new, you know, environmental impact of one shoe. And and these many people were only paid this much to work. That's not they don't really lead with the facts. They lead in a different way to get you to think about stuff. And you guys we've seen facts where facts are having a having a hard time right now. So but our feelings are also having a hard time. So is there a way that we can, yes, bridge somehow through these mutual understandings? I I don't know. It it it it's a it's a huge it's a huge and timely problem with a divided country, but also even you could say more so in in in the whole world. It's not just The United States that's having really difference of really big differences of opinions on stuff. It's it it is a global phenomenon, but it's really exacerbated right now by technology, echo chambers, hackers.

Speaker 2 We need to be the pro social hackers. We can we can do social engineering in a positive direction instead of

Speaker 1 for the worst. Yeah. I mean, when people ask me, you know, well, if your techniques can could be used for good, can't they be used for evil? And I'm like, yes, but they already are.

Speaker 2 Yeah. That's you you do the Uno switcheroo.

Speaker 1 Right? The reverse card on them is what that is. That's the Yeah. It's already bad. We're trying to make it worse. There's already, you know, bad bad, you know, self image and self all kinds of yeah. We've got challenges galore. So let's figure out ways to keep calm the conversation going and and and really try to have encounters and change our mindsets and be open and not be just in our little dungeon of psychological reactants where we are not changing our thing.

Speaker 2 Yeah. That's such a great point. Like, kind kind of thinking about that, I remember, I think there was a period, I don't know, like, again, like the twenty tens, maybe through 2020, that decade of where sort of the the technology had and the interest in technology, but not necessarily the the critical consciousness to rally it effectively had quite landed yet. And I just remember all of these, I don't know, there were sometimes questions on social studies, Facebook groups, or something else, like all these different simulations popping up. Right? And still, you'll get news stories sometimes of teachers who get a lot of trouble because they held a slave auction simulation or something, right, where they're like role playing the racism that a lot of students already experience in their day to day, a lot of really inappropriate things. And I think that might be an example again of sort of cart before the horse gamification without the critical consciousness, but I wonder if you can think of any other ways that we get wrong about gamification in education that you'd like to see differently. Again, like maybe we could hack in a a way a need to, I guess, infuse some more play alongside a more critical role, you know, for games and education in a in the direction that we've been talking about.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I think that one particular direction that has struck me over the years is the power of fiction. And fiction sits uncomfortably for fact based people. Like, I'm a mathematician. Fiction doesn't really work here. I'm a historian. I don't want fiction about my history. I we have to tell the truth. You know? We have to, you know, get to the point. I'm not talking literature studies where fiction is fine, but the power of fiction. And so so in in one one project, we had a a game and we reskinned the game to be a zombie game. And it was Republic Health, and it was like the same it's exactly the same game, but the zombie version engaged people more, and it it we we theorized that it lowered people's psychological reactions because it wasn't about immunity and vaccinations and all these words of everyday life. It was about zombie in a you know, vaccination. And you're like, oh, yeah. I want that. Oh, that's such a smart way to do it. So so taking the the some of the structural problems and putting them in a fictional place so we can look at them and not feel implicating our our colleagues, our friends, not putting one group on the spot, but making it objective situation. I we've used alien worlds for it to substitute for frat parties.

Speaker 2 Okay. That's it. That is

Speaker 1 that that my imagination has to stretch a little bit for that one. Well, there are these, like, future kids who go on a, like, a spring break trip, and they you know? And it's it's it's a project to raise awareness about sexual assault prevention through bystander intervention. But if you tell a bunch of college students, okay. Now we're gonna do bystander intervention training, of course, some people will be very engaged, or some people will really check out and say, look. This is this is dumb. You know? This is not for me. I know this already or whatever they may think. But if you change the context and put it in this weird, you know, alien situation and you end up having to do bystander intervention, but this is, like, alien stuff and you're at a sporting event and, like so so just using using fiction is is an interesting tool or at least to experiment with and not making something, you know, right on the nose that might be hurtful.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And tough for people to process, like all of the things that we had been talking about with through LARPing and the the magic circle, right, it creates safe structures, psychologically safe structures and physically safe, hopefully, structures for people to explore ideas that they might not otherwise be, amenable to. I love kind of bringing those things full circle.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. And and that is true. Like, some and and the the standards that could, you know, the difficulties that could happen in the classroom game, it could also happen, you know, with a LARP where whoever's running the LARP needs to luckily, the LARP community has this huge toolkit of safety standards, which is really helpful. But, again, if you are not from that community and you try some of these things, you know, you might not really know to bring the toolkit of safety along. Right? So so it's that's one of the things that I'm trying to do in this forthcoming book is to introduce several different areas, speculative design community with games, games with, you know, the the kind of the digital people to role playing and tabletop to acting and really try to bring

Speaker 2 that kind of literacy together in this idea of speculative game design. Oh, that's so amazing. I cannot wait for that. Kind of trying to land the plane here a little bit. I just I need to know, like, what are games in the tabletop or digital space that you're playing or that you're excited about now? Like what they could be academic interests or for research purposes or like what do you play and what do you read and what are you into?

Speaker 1 I I have this weird set of French animated bingo cards from the turn of the twentieth century that Woah. That are like you you have these little animations to uncover. Like there's these really cool little paper doll things and but there's some really unusual caricatures of implying sexual activity and and incriminating racial views. And so I I I wanna unpack this whole thing. That's a longer term project. I I hauled out my my working dark tower and I was I was jamming with that. Okay. I know all the sound effects. I've known them my whole life. It's like very weird.

Speaker 2 Like it's it's so it's so it's like nostalgic for you too. Just that Yeah.

Speaker 1 Stepping back into that. I guess so. I guess so. Well, I'm I'm also interested in that that cusp when when digital games were fascinating and, you know, that moment when when when it wasn't yeah. I I'm interested in that cultural moment actually. And then I I have sitting outside my office right here, I have unconscious mind. Oh, cool. Which I am very excited to play. I've wanted to play it for years. I got a demo of it in Essen one year before it was actually kick started and I it is just so beautiful and the the the linking between the at least what I think is gonna happen is the linking between the the the content and the and the mechanical elements is I I think it it looks really tight and very well thought out.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I haven't had a chance to play that, but we have one of our full we're three only full time staff, and one of them, that's her new favorite game. She got it pretty recently. It's her absolute favorite. Yeah. It's just Hopefully, you'll be able sign with it. And, you know, being an OSMO professor, it's like, oh, like research. You get books and you know. Oh, yeah. Well, you get to, like, role play as Freud and Jung and, like, at that cusp of, like, psych psychology and the metaphysical. It's just such a cool space for play. I I love that idea. Yeah. It is. It is. It is. And and also, I'm

Speaker 1 doing I'm I'm a visiting artist at the Nemo Science Museum in Amsterdam. So not this summer, but but many times during the year, go for a chunk of time, and I'm making games and dealing with the public in this crazy wonderful science museum, which is so cool for me because it's a totally different way to to to meet audiences.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, so I'm working on, like, kind of kind of like escape roomy things or, like, more poetic interventions in that kind of space. Oh, man. So so you're saying next summer, I need to go to the Namo Museum in Amsterdam so I can go through a Mary Flanagan escape room is what you're saying? Pretty much. Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'll I'll get my tickets booked in I'm not I'm not doing that one alone. But yes, there's there's there's there's fun to be had. Oh, that's so Where would you fly out of? I would fly out of Des Moines. So that would Oh, you're in Des Moines? Yeah. Yeah. Where where are you at? I was thinking about that earlier, like, time zone wise. I'm I'm right now in in New Hampshire, but I went to school in Iowa, and I am from Milwaukee. I could hear your Midwestern thing. Yes.

Speaker 2 That's I appreciate that. Yeah. Do you go to, like, U of I or what? Yeah. University of Iowa. Yeah. I did my MA and MFA there. Yep. Oh, I was gonna say with the with the writing background, I was just thinking, yeah, the the No. I actually did a film film. Oh. Oh, wait. Okay. Jeez. I did film. I did film. That's amazing. Yeah. Go Hawks. Mary, if people wanted to follow-up on any of these wild threads that we've been chasing through this conversation, what's the best place that people can, I guess, find or connect with you, connect with your work?

Speaker 1 Well, I'll I'll I'll tell I'll tell you a few things. First of all, I am still on Instagram under critical play, critical.play. I have the research lab, which has some of our studies included in the website and under the research area. That is called tiltfactor.org. And my website, which shows some of my board games and my art games and art playful stuff is maryflanigan.com and my game company Resonim is resonim.com. And in the last ten years, we've published 10 board game card game things.

Speaker 2 Oh my gosh. You know, I didn't even talk about Resonim. I know. It's fine. Is there anything you would have mentioned about that

Speaker 1 while we have the time? Did you see how great of a capitalist I am?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Right? You gotta you gotta pitch those games. Oh, I apologize. I had the tilt factor thing up, but what's going on with Resonim?

Speaker 1 Well, we're actually in a little bit of a hiatus because it's really complicated to be printing right now and and things are so expensive. Oh, no doubt. But our games are going all over the place. I think Phantom Inc. Is now in maybe 13 countries or something like that. I feel like I've seen this game on the shelf. Well, it wasn't Target and in, Barnes and Noble and game stores and stuff. That's a it's a really it's I I it's one of my faves. It's it's, it's very good.

Speaker 2 Oh, my gosh. I will have to check that out. Oh, I'm kind of embarrassed now that I I just like space that out.

Speaker 1 No worries. No worries. Will have to pick that up for the speculative game design. Pick that up again. We have we have things to talk about. Things.

Speaker 2 We'll have things. Alright. Well, my goodness, Mary. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me on your,

Speaker 1 cast.

Speaker 2 Thank you again for listening to our podcast at Human Restoration Project. I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to start making change. If you enjoyed listening, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast player. Plus, find a whole host of free resources, writings, and other podcasts all for free on our website, humanrestorationproject.org. Thank you.