Alternative game controllers, interfaces, and controls (altctrl) and the games designed around and through them provide novel arrangements of players and games, significantly altering play experiences. Altctrl works can take a variety of forms, including, but not limited to, custom devices coupled with new software and repurposed artifacts or play practices. They have gained cultural momentum through game jams, showcases, and specialized events. While often valued for innovation and entertainment, altctrl practices can also challenge hegemonic conventions, fostering critical, oppositional, and reflective approaches to game making and play. I set out to examine how altctrl articulates alterity and the unconventional, addressing issues of openness, materiality, criticality, and reflection. This effort is in conversation with the fields of critical and reflective game design, game design research, and game production studies. It also aims to benefit altctrl practitioners, students and educators, and game creators.

This research combines mutually informed research-creation and qualitative research approaches. I elaborate a model for understanding altctrl as devices, games and practices, drawing from analysis of primary and secondary interviews with practitioners, online documentation of events and other works, and previous scholarship. I developed research-creation projects focused on criticality and reflectivity: an altctrl game discussing political systems and game interfacing; altctrl devices questioning do-it-yourself and circulation practices; and a set of phone-based altctrl games and tools exploring possible infrastructures for altctrl practice. These projects’ development was carefully documented, allowing for analysis focused on their reflective and critical potentials. The insights from research-creation informed the construction of an expanded set of design qualities to support reflective game design.