Wednesday, March 11, 2015 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM (GMT)
October Gallery
24 Old Gloucester Street
WC1N 3AL London
United Kingdom

In this talk I will consider a design manifesto of using games as speculative designs through which players might explore scenarios that represent plausible alternative presents and speculative futures. The talk will review future orientated design techniques such as Design Fiction and Critical Design, to create a new manifesto for Speculative Design that is informed by other game design approaches, such as Critical Play, Persuasive Games, and Procedural Rhetoric. The manifesto aims to provide a design frame for desirable and productive future practice when creating games that facilitate discussions around complex societal challenges.

Paul Coulton is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Design within Lancaster University's open and exploratory, design-led research lab, ImaginationLancaster in LICA. His research predominantly falls into what is considered as Game Studies, an area of research that deals with the critical study of digital and non-digital games. More specifically, it focuses on game design, players and their role in society and culture. This means that Game Studies has evolved naturally as an inter-disciplinary field with researchers and academics from a multitude of areas, such as design, computer science, psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, arts and literature, media studies and communication, etc. This activity is embodied primarily as 'research through design' and, in particular, design theories developed through the design of novel, hybrid, physical/digital interactive games, playful experiences, and artefacts.