Designing with Impaired Technologies: A Game Jam of Constraints and Affordance Shrinkage

2026. To appear at ACM CHI PLAY 2026.

Priscilla Lo, Grace Stangroome, Vishal Joshi, Jack Burnett, David Thue, Dan Bennett & Oussama Metatla.

Playing under constraint, whether due to disability, financial limitations, technological obsolescence, or other factors, is a widespread but under-examined aspect of gaming culture. We introduce "impaired technologies'' (damaged peripherals such as cracked screens, controllers with missing buttons, and faulty speakers) as design provocations to explore what happens when the affordances available for play "shrink.'' Drawing on Dokumaci's concepts of "affordance shrinkage'' and "activist affordances,'' we hosted a two-day public game jam where participants (n=9) first played existing games on impaired technologies, then designed their own games inspired by the experience. We identified six adaptive play strategies improvised under constraint, and three design themes, transforming "bugs'' into features, embedding constraint within gameplay, and prioritizing fun over challenge. Our findings position constrained play as a site of creativity and agency, with implications for accessibility, jank, sub-optimal hardware gaming, and inclusive design.