Playful Design Manifesto for Blockchain Eco-systems

What does game design theory offer for efforts to reconfigure social value exchange using emerging blockchain technologies in Scotland’s Creative Industries? Blockchain ecosystems are platform co-operatives that combine digital networking systems with blockchain peer-to-peer authentication technologies. While digital networks such as these can successfully co-ordinate self-interest for mutual benefit, they are not by their nature public services and need to be designed accordingly in order to help manage their societal impact, while also promoting their public benefits. In this chapter, we present a manifesto for the application of game design principles within blockchain ecosystems for social value transformation. As we argue, game design strategies can help to manage tensions between creativity and sustainability, individual versus collective concerns, and quantified versus priceless values. Such speculative opportunities for playful co-operation are considered here within the context of Scotland’s creative collectives. The unique contribution of this study is to develop a preliminary exploration for the playful engineering of crypto-based co-operative economies.