His book, Locally Played, encourages us to “collaborate in the creation, deployment, and study of playful ways to build local connection and restore a critical sense of vitality and even possibility to our civic lives.” Or games like Everything, that invite us to physically inhabit space in a massive range of bodies – from pollen to mountains, antelope to power pylons.Īnother interesting voice on the intersection between play and place is Benjamin Stokes. Then there are games like Buildings Have Feelings Too, that disrupt the usual remote dispassionate planning of the lived environment by giving voice to it. Then there are games like Thousand Threads and Fable that shine a light on inter-related tensions in groups, where helping one person may negatively impact another.Ĭommunity Memory: Games like Heaven’s Vault, Treasures of the Aegean and Deep Time Walk illustrate the power of community memory and tradition, and how these things are lost (and recovered) through language.Ĭommunity Planning: Games like Mini Metro, Townscaper or Conduct Together put us in the role of planning transportation and provision as opposed to experts. Others, like Pilgrims, invite us to understand the interrelated needs of a small community and then use their existing resources to meet these needs. Reimagine Community: Games like One Hour One Life invite us to contribute to a community for the benefit of future players. Not that we need to minimise harm, but that we need to understand our presence and impact so we can balance benefits ecologically. Reimagine Space: Games like Eco and Terra Nil underline our relationship with the land. The video games here offer a range of experiences that reshape and challenge our thinking in this direction: “Communities can’t know what they need from outside sources until they know what they have themselves internally. For 25 years Cormac has helped communities, agencies and governments solve urban and rural development problems not by focusing on the deficiencies of neighbourhoods, towns, villages but by understanding that people, their families and communities, have unique competencies in building community.
This list has been created with the help of Cormac Russell, Managing Director of Nurture Development. But they can also offer ways to reconnect with those around us and find a fresh (helpfully disruptive) perspective on our neighbourhoods. Video games can be a part of this dislocation as screen time diminishes engagement with the real world. In a world of technology, it’s easy to become disconnected or forgetful of the people we live with and the places we live in.
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