One way to understand games better is to experiment with their design. While experimental game design is part of most game design, this chapter focuses on ways in which it can become amethod to perform academic enquiry, eliciting deeper principles for game design. Experimental game design relies on two parts: varying design, and doing some kind of studies with it. In this chapter we limit the discussion to experiments that involve people that play the game.
\nWaern, Annika, and Jon Back. \u2018Experimental Game Design\u2019. In Game Research Methods, edited by Petri Lankoski and Staffan Bj\u00f6rk, 341\u201353. Pittsburgh, PA, USA: ETC Press, 2015.
Design experiments are claimed to be a core means of inquiry in the research tradition of research-through-design. However, it is rarely articulated how the experiments were carried out in order to test a hypothesis, to begin a fruitful journey into unexplored design terrain or just gradually build knowledge. On the basis of the analysis of ten PhD theses we provide a typology comprised of five forms of design experiments in research-through-design. This provides a general outline of the characteristics which point to the methodological roles that design experiments and design work may acquire in research-through-design. Our typology of design experiments in research-through-design accounts both for relations between major cases and iterations embodied in detailed sketches and prototypes. The purpose of the typology is to provide an overview that respects and account for the less-than-ideal way design research actually happens: process-loops where hypothesis, experiments, and insights concurrently affect one another and result in a drift of research focus and continued adjustment of experiments to stabilize the research endeavour.
\nKrogh, Peter Gall, Thomas Markussen, and Anne Louise Bang. \u2018Ways of Drifting \u2013 5 Methods of Experimentation in Research through Design\u2019. ICoRD, 2015, 13.
Recent years have borne witness to an explosion of games research from diverse home disciplines. Much of this work concerns game design, but the games research community has yet to agree on practices and methods for examining game design that are simultaneously rigorously scholarly, flexible enough to accommodate a design-oriented perspective, and sufficiently knowledgeable of computation to engage with the materiality of games. In this paper, we outline such an approach. We focus on the question of an appropriate method for an academic game design research practice that is grounded in making and play while respecting recoverability and context. We demonstrate what game analysis based on such a method can reveal, drawing on the case of Pippin Barr\u2019s It is as if you were doing work, and show how method and analysis in tandem can materialise tacit design knowledge, support balanced subjectivity, and illuminate the often abstract design problem space.
\nKhaled, Rilla, Jonathan Lessard, and Pippin Barr. \u2018Documenting Trajectories in Design Space: A Methodology for Applied Game Design Research\u2019. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, 1\u201310. Malm\u00f6 Sweden: ACM, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1145/3235765.3235767.
The question of what constitutes a game as a social object is famously problematic. The alleged impossibility of formulating a complete analytical definition for what constitutes a game is perhaps the most evident symptom of that difficulty. One expression of this problem that has been entirely overlooked by academia is the scholarly practice of referencing games. This paper addresses game referencing as a practice that is implicated with - and constitutive for- the ways in which we conceptualize and assign cultural value to games. Focusing on the conceptual framing of games, on game authorship, and on the historical dimensions of both, we will discuss referencing games as an act that is inevitably political. On these premises, we will provide foundational guidelines for thinking about one\u2019s decisions concerning referencing and about the meaning and relevance of those decisions.
\nGualeni, Stefano, Riccardo Fassone, and Jonas Linderoth. \u2018How to Reference a Digital Game\u2019. In Proceedings of DiGRA 2019: Game, Play and the Emerging Ludo-Mix, 17. Kyoto: DiGRA, 2019. http://www.digra.org/digital-library/publications/how-to-reference-a-digital-game/.
Whilst many game design academics are also game designers, their research is often presented through the lens of other disciplines (philosophy, media theory, human computer interaction [HCI], etc.) and practice-based design research is arguably underrepresented in the games research community. Although game design research espouses to open an inclusive community, at present, research approaches and the presentation of results is dominated by those inherited from either the social sciences or HCI. This dominance of loaded and prescriptive academic frameworks is arguably why many of those creating games outside academia feel such research is unrepresentative of their own practices.
\nCoulton, Paul, and Alan Hook. \u2018Games Design Research through Game Design Practice\u2019. In Game Design Research: An Introduction to Theory & Practice, edited by Petri Lankoski and Jussi Holopainen, 169\u2013202. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University: ETC Press, 2017. https://press.etc.cmu.edu/books/game-design-research.
This article argues that among the burgeoning approaches to game studies there is a crucial re-imagining of digital games in their material contexts across different scales and registers: the machine, the body and the situations of play. This re-imagining can be seen in a number of approaches: platform and software studies, which examine the materiality of code and/or the technological infrastructure through which it is enacted; critical studies of digital labour; and detailed ethnographic studies that examine the cultures of online worlds and situate gaming in relation to everyday practices. The article traces these three strands, focusing on how they demonstrate a heightening of the stakes in game studies research by providing access to scale and connecting digital games research to wider interdisciplinary contexts.
\nApperley, Thomas H, and Darshana Jayemane. \u2018Game Studies\u2019 Material Turn\u2019. Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 9, no. 1 (1 October 2012): 5. https://doi.org/10.16997/wpcc.145.
A systematization over the contributions of researchers and designers towards conceptual and concrete tools is presented over the build of a shared design vocabulary and a game design modeling language. The game designer\u2019s craft is very young if compared to filmmaking and software development. The knowledge base and formal techniques of these areas is far more comprehensive. Even after decades of evolution of the games production software, the range of design centered techniques and tools is still limited, as observed by many authors. Thereby, efforts have been made towards the establishment of game design formal methods. This paper presents a systematization over the contributions of researchers and designers towards conceptual and concrete tools. These efforts converge to two approaches: the build of a shared design vocabulary and a game design modeling language. While valuable, the existing implementations of these approaches are not mature enough to gain industry adepts, serving only as reference to future works. Moreover, it is needed to discover the designer\u2019s particular methods, which may contribute to-wards the constitution of a unified design toolbox.
\nAlmeida, Marcos Silvano Orita, and Fl\u00e1vio Soares Corr\u00eaa da Silva. \u2018A Systematic Review of Game Design Methods and Tools\u2019. In Entertainment Computing \u2013 ICEC 2013, edited by Junia C. Anacleto, Esteban W. G. Clua, Flavio S. Correa da Silva, Sidney Fels, and Hyun S. Yang, 8215:17\u201329. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41106-9_3.
\nAlmeida, Marcos Silvano Orita, and Fl\u00e1vio Soares Corr\u00eaa da Silva. \u2018A Systematic Review of Game Design Methods and Tools\u2019. In Entertainment Computing \u2013 ICEC 2013, edited by Junia C. Anacleto, Esteban W. G. Clua, Flavio S. Correa da Silva, Sidney Fels, and Hyun S. Yang, 8215:17\u201329. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41106-9_3.
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So, what is this game About?
\nImagine the following situation: you open a door in a videogame. One could argue that it is not really you who opened the door, but rather the player-character. Another objection to the idea that doors can be opened in gameworlds is that one does not actually pursue the action of opening doors, but rather that of inputting certain commands in a controlling device. We could even go as far as saying that no door is involved in that interaction to begin with: one simply clicks on a bunch of pixels that are meant to evoke a door in their imagination.
\nVideogame credits:
\nStefano Gualeni - Game Design, Game Writing
Nele Van de Mosselaer - Game Design, Background Art, Doors Descriptions
Diego Zamprogno - Programming
Rebecca Portelli - Character Art and Animation
Eva \u0160kerlj Prosen - Background Art
Costantino Oliva - Music and Sound Effects
Videogame website: https://doors.gua-le-ni.com/