Katie Salen is a game designer, interactive designer, animator, and design educator. In 2009 she founded the first ever digital school for grades 6-12, Quest 2 Learn (Q2L) in New[…]
The game designer was tasked with creating games to be played very, very slowly. When the last fax (ever) is sent, someone will be a big winner.
Question: What was the first game that you designed?
rn
rnKatie Salen: I actually designed a Hobbit board game when I was rnprobably eight years old, in my closet because I was slightly rnembarrassed at the time. And so I had been reading the Hobbit and I rnthink at the time I was less interested in that it was a game and I was rnmore interested in drawing the characters and sort of imagining this rnincredible world that I’d been reading about. So that was my first gamern that I designed way back when.
rn
rnThe first sort of digital game I designed was really, back in 2003, and rnit was the game called The Big Urban Game, that was commissioned by the rnDesign Institute in Minneapolis. And it was a game that used these rngiant inflatable game pieces that people raced around the city over the rncourse of five days as a way to get the people of Minneapolis and St. rnPaul to think about the design of their city. And so the digital rncomponent of that game was a kind of Web site where people called in andrn voted. And so that was really the first big game that I designed.
rn
rnQuestion: What are "slow games?"
rn
rnKatie Salen: Metropolis Magazine, which is a design magazine, wasrn having a 25th anniversary issue a couple of years ago and they asked rnmyself and Frank Lance, who I mentioned, and Nick Fortuno, another game rndesigner in New York, to develop a set of games for the magazine. And rnso we began to think about, well, "What is an element of games that if rnyou modified it in a way, it could have a dramatic affect on how you rnthink about games?" And so we just picked the element of time. We rnthought, well what if we moved away from this notion, and this was in rnmid-2000s when casual games were really blossoming. And so the whole rnidea was people playing games in snack-like sizes. So people would havern five minutes, they could play a game, they would have a minute, and so rngame design became about shortening the time it would take to play. Andrn so we were interested in thinking about, well what would happen if we rnelongated that notion of time and it was a game that might take 25 yearsrn to play... What would that game look like? What would that experience rnof play look like? How would it change your relationship to the game? rnAnd so the notion of "slow games" evolved out of that idea.
rn
rnSo we had one game that was call, I think it was called, "The Last rnFax." And so the whole game was to be the last person in the world to rnsend a fax. We had a game that we registered a product bar code in rnadvance of something ever being invented, and the person that invented rnthe invention or product that got to use that bar code would win the rngame. So, there was no sense of when that bar code might come up in thern queue of inventions.
rn
rnThere was a kind of cross word puzzle game where there was one clue a rnyear that was given. And it took 25 years to complete the game. And rnthen there was a game that had a drawing of, I think there was a donkey rnthat had headphones on and had some kind of crazy backpack. And the rnidea was that you would take a piece of paper with that drawing on it rnand you would look at it, and then you would put it away and once a rnyear, you would take out the folded piece of paper and you would win thern game if you had forgotten what was on the piece of paper.
rn
rnSo, we were working with the idea of sort of memory there that there’s rnalways these artifacts that are laying around your house and could you rncultivate a game where the goal was to not remember a game piece rather rnthan remembering what the kind of answer was?
rn
rnQuestion: Are you still playing these games?
rn
rnKatie Salen: We are, and there are very few people that are stillrn playing them. They were really conceptual exercises and not so much rnintended to be played, but the fax game still goes on. Faxes, rnparticularly in real estate, very popular. And the product code hasn’t rnbeen used yet, so that game is still open.
Recorded May 7, 2010
Interviewed by David Hirschman
rn
rnKatie Salen: I actually designed a Hobbit board game when I was rnprobably eight years old, in my closet because I was slightly rnembarrassed at the time. And so I had been reading the Hobbit and I rnthink at the time I was less interested in that it was a game and I was rnmore interested in drawing the characters and sort of imagining this rnincredible world that I’d been reading about. So that was my first gamern that I designed way back when.
rn
rnThe first sort of digital game I designed was really, back in 2003, and rnit was the game called The Big Urban Game, that was commissioned by the rnDesign Institute in Minneapolis. And it was a game that used these rngiant inflatable game pieces that people raced around the city over the rncourse of five days as a way to get the people of Minneapolis and St. rnPaul to think about the design of their city. And so the digital rncomponent of that game was a kind of Web site where people called in andrn voted. And so that was really the first big game that I designed.
rn
rnQuestion: What are "slow games?"
rn
rnKatie Salen: Metropolis Magazine, which is a design magazine, wasrn having a 25th anniversary issue a couple of years ago and they asked rnmyself and Frank Lance, who I mentioned, and Nick Fortuno, another game rndesigner in New York, to develop a set of games for the magazine. And rnso we began to think about, well, "What is an element of games that if rnyou modified it in a way, it could have a dramatic affect on how you rnthink about games?" And so we just picked the element of time. We rnthought, well what if we moved away from this notion, and this was in rnmid-2000s when casual games were really blossoming. And so the whole rnidea was people playing games in snack-like sizes. So people would havern five minutes, they could play a game, they would have a minute, and so rngame design became about shortening the time it would take to play. Andrn so we were interested in thinking about, well what would happen if we rnelongated that notion of time and it was a game that might take 25 yearsrn to play... What would that game look like? What would that experience rnof play look like? How would it change your relationship to the game? rnAnd so the notion of "slow games" evolved out of that idea.
rn
rnSo we had one game that was call, I think it was called, "The Last rnFax." And so the whole game was to be the last person in the world to rnsend a fax. We had a game that we registered a product bar code in rnadvance of something ever being invented, and the person that invented rnthe invention or product that got to use that bar code would win the rngame. So, there was no sense of when that bar code might come up in thern queue of inventions.
rn
rnThere was a kind of cross word puzzle game where there was one clue a rnyear that was given. And it took 25 years to complete the game. And rnthen there was a game that had a drawing of, I think there was a donkey rnthat had headphones on and had some kind of crazy backpack. And the rnidea was that you would take a piece of paper with that drawing on it rnand you would look at it, and then you would put it away and once a rnyear, you would take out the folded piece of paper and you would win thern game if you had forgotten what was on the piece of paper.
rn
rnSo, we were working with the idea of sort of memory there that there’s rnalways these artifacts that are laying around your house and could you rncultivate a game where the goal was to not remember a game piece rather rnthan remembering what the kind of answer was?
rn
rnQuestion: Are you still playing these games?
rn
rnKatie Salen: We are, and there are very few people that are stillrn playing them. They were really conceptual exercises and not so much rnintended to be played, but the fax game still goes on. Faxes, rnparticularly in real estate, very popular. And the product code hasn’t rnbeen used yet, so that game is still open.
Recorded May 7, 2010
Interviewed by David Hirschman
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26 min
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