# books

title: A Systematic Review of Game Design Methods and Tools
sort: Systematic Review of Game Design Methods and Tools, A
timestamp: 2023-07-12 14:13:14+00:00
pubdate: 2013-09-11 07:45:02+00:00
path: Marcos Silvano Orita Almeida/A Systematic Review of Game Design M (12)
uuid: 23322dc2-c911-4f5b-a6e2-fa93c7698684
last_modified: 2023-07-12 15:10:10.315167+00:00
author_sort:
Almeida, Marcos Silvano Orita & Silva, Flávio Soares Corrêa da & Anacleto, Junia C. & Clua, Esteban W. G. & Fels, Sidney & Yang, Hyun S.


title: Learning from Syllabus
sort: Learning from Syllabus
timestamp: 2023-07-12 13:33:50+00:00
pubdate: 2019-07-15 00:00:00+00:00
path: Valeria Graziano/Learning from Syllabus (13)
uuid: a1e65813-301e-4b56-a4ba-5776c4e8618f
last_modified: 2023-07-12 15:10:30.186344+00:00
author_sort:
Graziano, Valeria & Mars, Marcell & Tomislav, Medak & Colakides, Yiannis & Garrrett, Marc & Gloerich, Inte


# comments

text:
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.


text:
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.


text:
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’s 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.


text:
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’s decisions concerning referencing and about the meaning and relevance of those decisions.


text:
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.


text:
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.


text:
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’s 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’s particular methods, which may contribute to-wards the constitution of a unified design toolbox.


text:
"Today, we live in a world where every time we turn on our smartphones, we are inextricably tied by data, laws and flowing bytes to different countries. A world in which personal expressions are framed and mediated by digital platforms, and where new kinds of currencies, financial exchange and even labour bypass corporations and governments. Simultaneously, the same technologies increase governmental powers of surveillance, allow corporations to extract ever more complex arrangements and do little to slow the construction of actual walls along actual borders. On the one hand, the agency of individuals and groups is starting to approach that of nation states; on the other, our mobility and hard-won rights are under threat. What tools do we need to understand this world, and how can art assist in envisioning and enacting other possible futures? This publication investigates the new relationship between states, citizens and the stateless made possible by emerging technologies. It is the result of a two-year EU-funded collaboration between Aksioma (SI), Drugo More (HR), Furtherfield (UK), Institute of Network Cultures (NL), NeMe (CY), and a diverse range of rtists, curators, theorists and audiences. State Machines insists on the need for new forms of expression and new artistic practices to address the most urgent questions of our time, and seeks to educate and empower the digital subjects of today to become active, engaged, and effective digital citizens of tomorrow" -- back cover.


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