As an evocative knowledge object, Leafcutters seeks to raise questions while engaging
the player in play, thereby cultivating curiosity about the subject matter. This pattern of
engagement is also utilized in The Cat and the Coup, which takes a similar approach to its rich
subject matter: the game provides enough prompts and bits of knowledge to engage the player’s
curiosity—without filling in all of the details.60
Adaptation Game
Leafcutters is a game designed by adaptation from a natural system. At the most obvious
level, the narrative and artistic elements of the game are modeled on the subject matter. The
game system is also an adaptation, designed to accurately represent the natural systems of
leafcutting ants. Furthermore, the play strategies which arise in this game system mirror
behaviors found among real ants. Leafcutters combines these multiple layers of adaptation in
order to faithfully represent leafcutting ants in video game form.
Educational Game
Leafcutters also functions as an educational game. James Paul Gee presents a list of
principles for games as learning tools.61 From this list, Leafcutters particularly features the
concepts of co-design, system thinking, and leveraging the concept of meaning as action image.
Gee states, “In good games, players feel that their actions and decisions—and not just or
primarily the designers’ actions and decisions—are co-creating the world they are in and the
experiences they are having.”62 Leafcutters provides the player with such co-creation in three
ways. First, the player’s shaping of the ants’ behaviors results in visual patterns of movement of
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60 The Cat and the Coup. Peter Brinson and Kurosh ValaNejad, 2011.
61 Gee, James Paul. "Learning by design: Games as learning machines." Interactive Educational Multimedia. 8. (2004):
15-23. Print.
62 Gee 17.