A Game Designer’s Analysis Of QAnon
A Game Designer’s Analysis Of QAnon
A Game Designer’s Analysis Of QAnon
By Claire Zoleta
January 21, 2021
Summary
I've worked in Alternate Reality Games, LARPs, experience fiction, interactive theater, and "Serious games".
Games with rabbit holes that invite you into wonderland and entice you through the looking glass.
QAnon is like the reflection of a game in a mirror, it looks just like one, but it is inverted.
In most ARG-like games apophenia is the plague of designers and players, sometimes leading participants to wander further and further away from the plot and causing designers to scramble to get them back or incorporate their ideas.
In role-playing games, ARGs, video games, and really anything where the players have agency, apophenia is going to be an issue.
A great game runner can use one or two of these speculations to create an even better game, but only as much as the plot can be adjusted for in real time or planned out before-hand.
A game helps the people who play build an internal world that best serves them.
Reference
Zoleta, C. (2021, January 21). A game designer's analysis of qanon. Retrieved February 22, 2021, from https://www.thestreet.com/phildavis/news/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qanon