Game Over Learning by Dying

This post is about an article called "Game Over: Learning by Dying" by Dimitris Grammenos from the Foundation for Research and Technology. In this paper Grammenos presents a game that breaks all fundamentals of video game design in order to teach (entertainingly) designers what to do in order to make their games available to all players. Each level of Grammenos's game breaks only a single rule of video game design, leading to horrible gameplay. This single rule-breaking scheme allows the player to fully understand what is wrong with the system. Grammenos uses a derivation of Space Invaders as his game model. He chose this game for its simplicity and easily defined goal.

While I found the exaggeration of the design mistakes entertaining and the premise behind the creation of the game useful, I feel that the research behind the presentation is shallow. It presents the game as a somewhat viable learning tool but not extraordinarily great and there is no significant result.