Erik Gieszelmann's abstract and bio

Sliding Agency:
A study of the balance between
system and agency in game design

While the author would argue its classification as a “game,” Sliding Agency is a game simulation that allows the audience to dip their collective toe into the waters of game design. It does not give the audience complete creative control, but allows the audience to make one of the many key decisions a game designer must make when creating a game.

While a player is running the simulation, it initially seems to the player that he or she is playing a simple side scrolling platformer. The addition of a slider at the bottom of the screen (or in the case of the wall screen, the screen itself) changes the experience from a simple game to a study in game design. The slider allows the player to dynamically alter the balance between system and agency in the game they are playing.

Agency is the feeling of control over their environment that the audience feels while playing a game, and system is (in this case) defined as the amount of control the game has over the same environment. System can be alternatively defined as the set of rules that the audience allows to control their actions during play.

The author hopes that the addition of this slider to an otherwise unremarkable platformer will encourage the player to inadvertently discover how system and agency interact in this game, and by extension, any game he or she plays, and bring the player to a greater understanding of the intricacy of game design.

About Erik Gieszelmann

Erik Gieszelmann was born November 8, 1985 in St. Louis, Missouri. He attended St. Louis Priory High School before moving to Los Angeles for the undergraduate study of computer science with an emphasis in games at the University of Southern California.

As a senior in the aforementioned major, Gieszelmann has worked on several game projects since enrolling at USC. Examples include That Dam Game, a beaver inspired puzzle game, and Errantry, an innovative new take on story-telling in games, using the Wii remote to implement a gesture system which allows the player to take direct control of the narrative of a story. Gieszelmann’s most recent game-related project is Sliding Agency, a game simulation that allows the player to explore the delicate balance between agency and system in game design.

Aside from game projects, Gieszelmann is a presidential scholar at USC and enjoys playing video games for “research purposes,” making fun of his housemates, and writing, directing, and acting in his sketch comedy troupe, the Big Game Hunters.