I’m thinking of submitting an abstract for the CODE conference that’s on later this year, and so I’ve been looking at the different themes to find some sort of direction (yeah, this might be a little late, what with it being due in 3 weeks…). I’ve had a thought that needs to be fleshed out some more, and would love to get some feedback on this topic to help me cement it into some sort of throughline.

Also, it’s been ages since I wrote about the theory of game design and I kinda miss it.

The theme I’m looking at is ‘Code and the in/visible’. The conference site explains that it has been argued that “software, operating at the level of screen and interface, obscures the constant workings of code, which become opaque to ‘end-users’”, and asks for papers that discuss “the technical, ideological and academic aspects that work to obscure codes? And what might be the strategies for making codes visible again?”

My response to this? For me, games are in a unique position when it comes to the visibility and invisibility of code and, that at some level, they undermine the very idea of obscuration.

What? Why? How? Read on and I’ll (hopefully) explain (clearly).

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