Innovative game genres: sociological games

Abstract

In the last decades, the game scene has changed irreversibly: thousands of new game titles are been produced every year. Game industry is on the top of growth rate among cultural industries. However, and strangely enough, game genres and styles suffer from a lack of innovation and changed in a very lower rythm along the very history of digital games. An interesting critique on the nature of games and about the necessity of changing our game design rules and sensibility was done by Mary Flanagan (2009). My own reserach considers this experimental and social posture. E.g. we constructed a new breed of the so-called ‘serious’ and ‘educational’ games, aiming to allow not just the learning, but the practice of Sociology, that can be called Sociological Games. In other words, Sociological Games can be defined as games that reflect deeply on the very nature of social life, while playing with it. The following examples present some possibilities and prototypes in this direction.