Super Serios - Urban games for interesting times in the context of social participation
Super Serios is a design research initiative aiming to develop a methodology of play in urban studies. Research-based art-games are spaces for knowledge distribution and creation. The event is playing, action is content. Players bring their experiences and opinions, in a performative exploration of urban topics. Learning and meaning creation are collaborative, through an aesthetic of participation. Super Serios follows an artistic research approach with an implicit pedagogical dimension.
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
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As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Super Serios Type of organisation: For-profit company First name of representative: Maria Last name of representative: Mandea Gender: Female Nationality: Romania Function: Designer Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Baraj Cucuteni 10 Town: Bucharest Postal code: 032753 Country: Romania Direct Tel:+40 748 842 872 E-mail:studiosuperserios@gmail.com Website:http://www.superserios.ro
Super Serios is a design research initiative aiming to develop and implement a methodology of play in urban studies. Super Serios promotes shared decision-making on urban stakes and collaboration through an aesthetic of participation. It functions at the intersection between game design and urban studies and follows an artistic participatory research approach with an implicit pedagogical dimension.
Through a series of projects, our initiative was developed as an iterative process. This pedagogical strategy will continue to be implemented as we expand the direction of play as a resolute tool for urban research and participatory pedagogical prototyping.
The projects are: ‘Alfabet Anina’ (2018-20), a game based on the study of the post-mining city of Anina, ‘Victoria Narrative Puzzle’ (2019), a game that explores the post-industrial city of Victoria, ‘Far to close’ (2020), a game of situations for an imaginary city, ‘System in the Room’ (2020), about the housing system (macro scale) developed from an interdisciplinary theory in cybernetics and architecture, ‘I Me Ours’(2021) a five-game series on issues of private vs. shared property, viewing the subject from a different perspective (transport, housing, food, work and city), ‘The Rousseau Game’(2022) investigating human relations and power structures in regards to ownership. Each game has a documented background, knowledge presented to the participants through interaction. But learning functions both ways. Players integrate their experiences and opinions in play. The result is a performative exploration of the topic, a form of enactment.
Most projects are large scale games where players move in space and interact using their bodies. The games are also scale models of macro systems or part of society, allowing participants to explore such structures and decisions in a fun, non-threatening context. Through the players' experiences and the structures represented in the game we aim to be both personal and political.
game design
urban studies
participatory urbanism
playfulness
play design
Current urban development in Romania is mainly initiated and driven by private actors. This leads to urban growth that is at odds with the principles of sustainable and resilient development, as we have recognised through our scientific research. One of the aspects we identified is the lack of engagement and participation of citizens as key actors. Building better and healthier cities cannot be done without at least a basic understanding of architecture and urban planning by all actors involved. Through games and play as tools for dissemination and understanding, we bring together professionals and citizens of all ages. The potential of our strategy lies in the modularity and universality of the games we propose. The rules, the size and the visual language can adapt to different situations and urban contexts. The existing problematics that we started with, gain further insight through each implementation and each new context. For example, ‘Far To Close’ was created in a performative space in Bucharest (WASP), but then it was adapted and reiterated in different contexts. At first we adapted it in two highschool yards, in the cities of Ploiești and Sinaia, Romania. The third one was in Cajarc, France, at the Maison des Arts. The game starts from ordinary city situations and determines the players to narrate their walk crossing the town. Each time we adapted the game for a new context, new ways of understanding them illustrated in the game emerge.
By playing with urban concepts and problems, we have shown how games can tackle serious subjects. This is the case of one of our doctoral theses: the study of the direct relationship between urban rules and quality of life, in Romanian context. The games we propose work in these two directions: the rigidity or creative interpretation of the rules (of the game or of the city), and the importance of communication between the players, in the game, and the citizens, in the city, for the creation of a good environment.
Through our projects our objective is to treat the play experience as an aesthetic experience that is relational, participatory and performative. By treating relations, experience and interaction as our mediums for expresion, new aesthetic possibilities emerge. Expression is not only a quality of the artist but also a challenge for the player. It becomes a democratic exploration that is both serene and resolute. We sought to place the installations into a chronology of participatory art within contemporary artistic forms of expression, with its roots in the democratic pedagogical explorations of Joseph Beuys through the Free International University and locally the unrealised proposal of romanian performance artist Geta Brătescu in pedagogical utopia.
Each of our game-installations functions as a space for collective creation and negotiation of meaning and expression. We are focused on the aesthetics of public space through our prototypes. The design of space within the game translates into the design of social life. Moreso, through the game rules, certain power structures and relations can be replicated. Through play, social life fills the space of the game. The aesthetic and the social experience are intertwined.
The experience is multimodal, it is experienced through more than one sense. It is of course, visual, but it is also tactile, for example in the case of ‘Victoria Narrative Puzzle’, or it is cinetic, in ‘The Rousseau Game’ or in ‘I Me Ours’. It also involves senses that are less considered, the sense of balance or perspective, as it develops in space and in relation to the players bodies.
Games as a cultural phenomenon are a medium that can reach a wide range of people. Playfulness is a key human attitude that can provide a voluntary and active tool for participation. We are using play for its possibilities for reaching a wide variety of people. While we do consider children and young adults as one of our most engaged groups of people, we consider that through play we can cross generational and background differences, thus reaching a wide variety of people. From our experience, our games tend to function best when the group of people is heterogeneous, be it adults playing with children or specialists from a specific field (eg. Architecture and urbanism) playing together with people who have living experience with the specific topic of the game (eg. Citizens living in that area). It is through the common play experience that they can find grounds for discussion and negotiation. Most urban games focus on cooperation as opposed to many commercial games where conflict is more common. We also deliberately integrate conflict into our games. The game functions as a safe space, where conflict (unavoidable in real life, especially when we are dealing with our living space) is moderated through the game rules. This way we can reach deeper discussions that have to do with less than pleasant experiences (for example, regarding conflicts that have to do with ownership or with sharing).
During play, a game-community is formed. This can extend beyond the game-space and it includes players that can come from very different backgrounds. Through accepting the game rules by all players, regardless of income status, prejudices, social status, background, a common starting point is created. We sought to also include actors from the governing system, especially local authorities. Play grants inclusion because no one is above the rules, yet the game is between players.
The game community functions as a social structure, a community created by the rules of play.
Our strategy was developed in the context of a post-socialist country where urban regulations currently serve the aim of private actors: profit, following a neo-liberal approach. Our initiative places quality of life and communitary possibilities as concepts to be debated and discussed. As a larger outcome we consider the possibility of replacing a profit-focused urban development with a human-centred method of design and decision. But we focus on addressing a missing aspect of Romanian urban life: dialogue and engagement on issues that concern the city, the neighbourhood and the street. Games have the potential to describe future urban and architectural projects and to spark collective imagination and provide space for utopia, but they can also be used as research and survey tools for those aspects of urban life that cannot be directly measured or designed: how a person feels about their home and its surroundings. In addition, urban games generate a participatory attitude by shifting from play to real problem solving. We have already studied methods to encourage communication and debate on urban problems, however, a future direction is to bring together public actors and citizens, creating the possibility to discuss specific issues through games. This is a context in which we have to work to understand each point of view in urban planning and design. This is something that is very rare in Romania.
Beyond research and design proposals, a future step in our research strategy is the testing of our methods with public actors, such as municipalities or civic groups with projects that focus on improving the quality of urban life. This step would focus on methods of engaging the citizens in the design of their neighbourhood or city, with an actual design improvement in their day to day life. We have already implemented temporary elements with ‘I Me Ours Transport’ in a street in Bucharest and ‘Far to Close’ in two schoolyards.
Each of the projects developed in the Super Serios initiative has a structure of partners either in the research phase or the dissemination and play phase. They vary from local authorities like the city hall in Anina or the Culture House in Victoria to national and international art institutions like the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest or Ars Electronica Center.
For the development of ‘AlphabetAnina’, a game whose pieces represent various architectural and symbolic elements in the post-industrial city of Anina, we were part of Anina Mine of Ideas (2015-2018), a project developed by Alba Verde Association, to explore the architectural heritage of the mine and the surrounding facilities.
‘Victoria Narrative Puzzle’ and ‘System in the Room’ were developed within Utopian Cites, Programmed Societies, a multi-annual project focusing on Eastern European cybernetics and design organised by 2580 Association (www.programmed-societies.info). ‘Victoria Narrative Puzzle’ was started during Victoria Summer Camp, first presented at the Culture House in Victoria and then at the Paintbrush Factory in Cluj (now closed). ‘System in the Room’ was shown at the 15th edition of the Simultan Festival (www.simultan.org). Divided was developed at Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria and a part of Ars Electronica Festival 2020. ‘Far to Close’ was developed together with 4Culture Association at WASP Bucharest (performance art space) and then adapted for Mihail Cantacuzino high-school in Sinaia, the Technological Services High School in Ploiești and the Maison des Arts in Cajarc, France. ‘I Me Ours’ series was developed at the Stirbei47 artist-run space and then adapted for a street in collaboration with the Czech Centre Bucharest and the National Museum for Contemporary Art in Bucharest. In the same museum, ‘The Rousseau Game’ was played and it is now part of their collection.
Super Serios is created at the intersection between game design and urban studies. A very important component has to do with aesthetics and performative and visual arts. We have also worked with specialists in other fields (eg. sociology, economics ) for addressing specific questions in each of the games.
Game design is considered in its most experimental, research-driven form and less in its commercial, marketable aspects. The directions of the doctoral studies made by two members of our collective came together through urban games. One of the studies questions the current context of urban development in Romania, and proposes a shift from private goals to the common good, using urban rules as the tools of architects and urban planners. One of the directions proposed in the doctoral research is a focus on involving citizens in the design and research of urban environments. The other doctoral study addresses the design of playful experiences by taking into account their participatory and performative possibilities and it was developed within the context of a Visual Arts doctoral school.
Most studies on the quality of urban life tend to focus on quantitative measurements, related to economic, health or education aspects. But the concept of quality of life also contains a dimension related to well-being, social connections, the feeling of belonging to a place, and so on. These aspects, in a designated urban area, are harder to study, observe and understand.
The innovative character consists of considering games as tools of research for studying the subjective aspects, in correlation to the objective. Urban games can create a safe and controlled context where indexes regarding quality of life, emotional and relational qualities of space and aesthetic considerations can be taken into account.
Typically, subjective aspects are studied through surveys and participation is ensured through local meetings that are rarely attended. In our initiative, the aesthetic quality of the interaction is crucial. By creating game mechanics that spur from the concepts researched or from the main topic of the game, we aim to consider action as a key. This leads to a performative aspect of our installations that can involve even more people, not just the players. The players become performers in our games, they integrate their options and sensibilities, and standbys become spectators to a performance about the city or neighbourhood. This creates an environment that encourages debate and the expression of those subjective issues that are important for professionals to understand.
Thus, urban games have a potential for urban research and design not only in Romania, a country where the spirit of participation in urban issues is still low. Super Serios research strategy shows that these urban games can be replicated and adapted to different situations and needs, that can be played by citizens of all ages.
One of the main characteristics of Super Serios urban games are modularity, adaptability and the combination of universal urban images with specific contextual ones. All our games can be translated into different contexts and pose little (if any) language barriers. In the process of translation, be it into another country, city or neighbourhood, they gain new meaning from the context they are placed in and the players that experience them. Initially created in an artistic performative space, different iterations had to be created for different environments. There are still possibilities to enhance the games we have already created by transferring them or adapting them for different players.
But our process is the one that has the greatest potential to become a method in design for play in urban context. Through the games developed, we have devised a methodology that starts with research on the topic studied, research that informs the game rules and possibilities of play. The medium we work with is play, it is how knowledge is created and transferred. The implicit pedagogical structures that can be developed through play have the potential for making this process a learning and discovery tool. The games have been tested by players of all ages, from different social and working fields. Each age and work category can identify different problems and solutions that can be debated and explored with fellow players. Thus, urban games can be explored in different domains: from a scientific one in urban studies to a performative one in art, to an educational one in schools and universities, but also a participatory one, concerning direct action of citizens into the urban environment.
Our collective is also involved in teaching at the Master of Game Design at the University of Theatre and Film ”I.L. Caragiale”, Bucharest. This direction explores the potential of diversifying the scope of computer games beyond the commercial and entertainment interest.
The methodology involves initial academic research into the current understanding of a particular topic or urban issue. We usually analyse scientific documentation, but also universal sources such as media articles or art projects. When we are working in the Romanian context, we usually analyse contemporary sources, but also sources that were created during the socialist period. On-site documentation is also important, such is the case of ‘AlphabetAnina’, based on research done by the Anina Mine of Ideas (which we were part of) or that of ‘Victoria Narrative Puzzle’, where we worked in the context of o summer school in the city of Victoria, Romania. We focus on gathering multimodal resources, visual, audio, gestures, and spatial elements. Next, the knowledge is summarised by extracting the aspects that can make up or generate the rules of the game or the physical aspects of the game. Through game mechanics, we try to convey our research. The mechanic becomes the message but it is also the experience.
The next step follows the game design phase where we create a spatial environment that can become the background for a set of rules. We invite different stakeholders as well as people in the community or just participants interested in the topic to test the proposed game. They propose new rules or changes in the game. The last step is to exhibit the new version of the game to be played again. In all steps involving participants, we emphasise a performative aspect of our efforts. The presented approach varies according to the context in which we are creating the games. If we are working with an art gallery or doing scientific research on urban images, the results and steps will be adapted or modified. We will take into account the information we are working with, the collaborators, the target group and the expected results.
The quality of life in an urban setting is a global issue as much of the globe's population is living in urbanised areas. Problems regarding housing, urban situations and property issues need to be addressed not only at a decision level but also as a grass-root, individual matter. By creating a setting, within the game, where systemic urban issues can be discussed by individuals, the Super Serios strategy takes into account the personal. In ‘Far to Close’ we take everyday situations for players to create their own stroll through the city. The cities they imagine are based on cities they inhabit. Their stories show universal problems. Meaning is created through commonality, either by collaboration or through conflictual situations. A global, systemic perspective is included. It is present in the game rules, the game proposal, through actions performed or through concepts illustrated within it.In AlphabetAnina or ‘Victoria Narrative Puzzle’, starting from post-industrial cities can provide a framework for a situation that is prevailing in Eastern Europe.
Our mid-term plan is to develop a Super Serios Institute for Games. As games are sets of procedures, they can be offered to be applied without requiring our physical presence. We want to develop a resource for implementing urban games, games developed from local situations, a pedagogical tool spread globally for other communities of players.
The topics of the games are ingrained in the European welfare state. This is explicit in games about housing standards (System in the Room, I Me Ours Housing) or in the Rousseau Game, which starts from a quote in Discourse on Inequality and it is implicit in all our proposals. The welfare state values become part of play through the play community, the possibility of discussion and negotiation but also through the game mechanics and rules. This is a less evident learning, but meaningful outcome of our games. Our methodology of critical play is a methodology in critical pedagogy.
Our plan for the next 2 years is to develop the Super Serios Institute for Games, to develop, study and spread urban games to be implemented locally, by others. Currently, in our research strategy, we created 13 games in Romania, Austria, Italy and France. This was backed up by scientific papers and press articles about our games. The main similarity shared by the projects lies in the curiosity with which different aspects of the urban environment are approached, whether we are talking about the memory of a place, the pleasure of a walk, or the common good and private property.
At a regional level, System in the Room is based on the research of Mariana Celac și Mihai Botez, The systems of spatial planning. Identifying a focus on urban games, we invite players to explore different issues that affect the housing stock.
On a city level,we created two games that play with memory and heritage, as in Matera Narrative Puzzle. Victoria Narrative Puzzle embodies through play the town of Victoria. For those who know the town, playing has a form of nostalgia as they follow with their fingers the paths of their town. For the others it is a game of discovering the city and a game of imagining the town as it could be. AlphabetAnina brings forward specific urban images extracted by citizens and researchers. It proposes an alphabet of memory and heritage that can be played using the map of the former mining town,exposing stories of deindustrialization and shrinking cities.
At a conceptual level, I Me Ours and The Rousseau Game, bring into discussion the place of private property into the issues of cities and common good. The players explore how individual interest has an impact and what represents common good, such as mobility or urban amenities.
For future directions we aim to focus efforts on creating games that can act as a link between residents and public administration. Residents are integrated into urban analysis and initiatives in order to improve the urban environment.
As games gain a more important role as a consumed cultural media, there is a need to develop competences for game design that focus on more than just commercial games. Key competences that can be developed with the aid of our methodology is that required for an urban game designer collective. The skills involved must focus on understanding the urban morphology and the social aspects of the city, while being able to create a visual language that can be understood and appreciated by the players. Given the current resistance of people to meaningful and sustainable change, there is a need for a better understanding of the city by the citizens and of the citizens by the public actors.
As the initiative develops, through the Super Serios Institute for Games, we want to provide resources to equip other communities in implementing games as tools in urban analysis and change.
