The University of Chicago school of game design has unfolded systematically since 2011. Most of our projects have included three distinctive elements.

First, UChicago games are experimental in orientation. Instead of leading with commercially-oriented games, we have encouraged formal play with mechanics, rules, objectives, and transmedia components. In addition to video games, these projects have included board games, card games, augmented reality games, and tabletop storytelling games. Arguably, the most distinctive and recurring form has been the transmedia “alternate reality game” that combines screen-based and live-action components across platforms in order to achieve a “this is not a game” aesthetic.

Second, many UChicago games prioritize education and advocacy. Several of these games have involved collaborations with researchers in the biological and physical sciences. Primary game topics have included public health, epidemiology, sexual violence, climate change, artificial intelligence, and diversity. In many cases, these games have also foregrounded issues of race, gender, and sexuality. In addition to creating games, our design teams have incorporated quantitative and qualitative evaluation processes in order to explore games as a medium of learning.

Third, game development at UChicago involves faculty, professional designers, area-specific researchers, and students. Beyond games as finished objects, we have explored processes of participatory design and co-making, especially with middle school, high school, and undergraduate students across the South Side of Chicago. For us, games are not just entertainment products but also media of thought, which promote encounters with difficult topics and speculations about possible and preferable futures.

Game design at the University of Chicago has borrowed the laboratory model from the sciences. Instead of games created by auteurs, we have promoted a collaborative culture that brainstorms, designs, playtests, develops, and experiments in intergenerational groups that range from middle school, undergraduate, MA, and PhD students to faculty, professional designers, researchers, and staff. In many cases, UChicago games are experiments with social play and learning. Like scientific experiments, these projects serve as a form of participatory hypothesis testing with emergent human interactions. Since 2012, we have established several labs focused on game design for public health and medicine (Game Changer Chicago Design Lab), digital storytelling and narrative games for social and emotional health (Transmedia Story Lab), transmedia game design and playable theater focused on wicked problems (Fourcast Lab), and student and community facing game design design and pedagogy (Weston Game Lab).