In this episode of Playopolis, we hear from game designer, curator and writer Holly Gramazio about ways to invite adults into play, and her role in bringing Bernie De Koven’s last book The Infinite Playground into the world. It makes a playful invitation to experience the energy and joy unlocked by imagination and lays out a curriculum for learning through play.

And in the second half of the program, we travel to Japan with researcher and artist Dr Hugh Davies, where we’ll explore the pre-history of the hit augmented reality game Pokémon Go. In the first of a two part series, Hugh takes us to the Japanese countryside, where we uncover the ancestry of key elements of Pokemon’s gameplay in historical practices of insect collecting and cataloging.

Episode 3 show notes

Holly Gramazio is a game designer, curator and writer and founder of Now Play This, a festival of experimental game design.

Bernie De Koven was an American game designer, author, lecturer and fun theorist.

Hugh Davies is a researcher and artist working with location-based games both analog and digital.

00:24 Welcome back
02:10 What is ‘experimental game design’?
03:24 Inviting adults to play
06:09 Transit Meditation
08:38 One Easy Step
11:00 Designing games for public space
14:36 Playable cities
16:38 The Infinite Playground
19:00 Coliberation through play
22:48 Huizinga’s Magic Circle

27:05 64 Ways of Being researcher: Dale Leorke

36:45 The Pre-history of Pokémon Go
39:48 Locating and collecting ‘Mushi’
41:57 Tokyo’s expansion
42:53 Commodification of Insect collecting
43:30 Gashapon
44:20 Pokédex
45:27 Gym Battles
46:00 Cultural origins
47:08 Credits