Ultimately I hope for this book to not only be critical and reflective, but also of practical use to present and future ludic mutators. The analysis is intended to contribute to a growing lexicon of artistic and activist approaches to game making and changing. I discussed the open-ended structure of what I referred to as unfolding games, a game approach that lends itself to creative exploration of identity and gender. I looked into various parasitic, symbiotic, and artistically noisy approaches to the modding of commercial games. I identified the broken toy tactic, a recipe for the deliberate sabotaging of gameplay for the sake of the message. I analyzed the harrowing mission's approach to fostering empathy for refugees and other groups in crisis. In the fourth chapter, I discussed a more artistic and disruptive approach to hacktivism, and located this approach within a broader spectrum of tactical orientations to digital hacktivism. In the fifth chapter, I discussed the chaotic force of toy-like, augmented reality gadgets.

As I look back over my examination of ludic mutation, a general pattern emerges across these tactics. The first discernible approach is playful change whose condition of possibility is a positive escape from societal strictures into an empty, free zone of play. The second tactic is playful change that negatively mutates, hacks, mods, or resists from an interior position within ‘the system’, whether it be from inside a game, a simulated model of the world, or an actual city. Over time, a productive, dialectic relation may evolve between these two ludic orientations—one tactic eventually feeds into the other. What initially seemed a messy contradiction between liberating escapism and critical resistance, could take on the appearance of a generative process, when playful change—ludic mutation—oscillates between positive and negative poles.

Why speak in terms of tactics rather than politics? From the realm of politics, I have appropriated theoretical concepts such as the Space of Appearance, the polis, and biopolitics for application to game changing. I also dedicated a chapter to critiquing obstacles encountered in persuasive rhetoric in political games, in articulating an activist message or protest to the playing public via a game. Most would agree that such concerns are political. But for addressing less deliberate and less goal-oriented acts of ludic mutation, or more artistic approaches to ludic mutation, politics is not always the proper term.