From riddles to board games to online adventures, games are universal. As systems that come with their own particular sets of rules and instructions, they are also highly designed — and can lead to new ways of thinking outside the demands of the functional, suggests Eric Zimmerman, CEO of the computer game development company GameLab.
“Game design is particularly skewed towards the creation of delightful experience, rather than the fulfillment of utilitarian needs,” he writes.
For the CAST course Design Across Scales, taught by professors Neri Oxman and Meejin Yoon, interdisciplinary teams of MIT students designed, built, and tested their own original games, from creative takes on old schoolyard favorites to laser beam board games to card games that involve taking players’ cell phones hostage. Check out a few of our favorites here.