One of my favorite QGCon talks, which I've returned to several times over the years, is Ida Toft & Sabine Harrer's Design Bleed Methedology (Old canonical link, currently offline.)
The technique uses experiences original to the LARP community to empower marginalized developers.
The goal is to create "designs that radically prioritize developers' unconventional preferences and knowledge over, for instance, mainstream game culture's notions of 'real games' or 'good games'".
My big takeaways are:
Design for relevance rather than best practices.
Switch contexts to encourage different ways of thinking.
Interpret "positive negative experiences" as analogous to kink play.
For me, this not only has helped me to center my own tastes and needs in my own design work but also to better understand games that others in my community value.
This is, IMO, QGCon is at it's best ~~ leveraging academic-adjacent insights to magnify the work of people far outside the realm of academia
And I love that they borrow rhetoric "from a mix of birdwatching commentary, marriage speeches, and sensual erotic fetish play". π¦’π©πΎβπ€βπ©πΎπ
These are the methodologies four main principles:
- Needs Before Roles
- Patience Before Outcome
- Skills Before Tools
- Acknowledgement of Power Before Outcome
