Naomi Clark on systems thinking and social responsibility

Art from Naomi’s new game, Consentacle

Today I’m super-excited to have Naomi Clark on episode 45 of the Clockwork Game Design Podcast. Last year, Naomi ran a super-successful Kickstarter for her two-player social card game Consentacle, which in addition to having beautiful, memorable artwork, is also trying to use systems to explore human communication and connection in new ways.

Naomi is also the co-author of A Game Design Vocabulary (written with Anna Anthropy), which is easily one of the best design books of its kind, and she teaches game design at the NYU Game Center. She also has a thoroughly awesome Twitter account. Some of her activity on there feels too good for Twitter; it feels like it needs to be catalogued into

We had a pretty wide-ranging conversation that touched on meta-rationality, social responsibility in game design, providing off-ramps for players, addiction, and more. You should also go check out Naomi’s GDC talk here (it’s the last talk in the clip). Oh, and follow her on Twitter.

Enjoy!

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