9 Methodological Processes: Nathalie Pozzi, Architect, and Eric Zimmerman, Game Designer

The players frantically tossed large cardboard boxes in an attempt to block their opponents, who in turn were trying to get two balls linked with rope across the field. They were playing BlockBall, a fast-paced strategic sport created by game designer Eric Zimmerman. He invited architect Nathalie Pozzi to this early playtest of the game so he could ask her advice on the play space and the design of objects in the game. As Nathalie would relay later, “it was looking pretty bad.”
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The rules of the game were fine, but the way the play interacted with those cardboard boxes and the linked balls was disastrous. Yes, it was a prototype, so the materials weren't the focus. But even so, Nathalie was responding to the scale, the shapes, the length of the rope connecting the balls, and most importantly, how the physical elements related to the human bodies that interacted with them. They were all off-they just didn't communicate the drama of the game to the players. Nathalie's input turned a somewhat clumsy prototype into a much more spatially aware BlockBall in its debut at the 2009 Come Out and Play Festival, a street game festival in New York City. And so a collaboration between the architect and the game designer began.