Game Design Research

Game Design Research Annakaisa Kultima University of Tampere Kanslerinrinne 1 FIN-33014 University of Tampere

[email protected]

ABSTRACT In this paper, notions of game studies, games research, game design, and design research are examined. As a most popular keyword on game research papers ‘game design’ connects the interdiscipline of game studies. However, it is typical that notions of ‘design’ and ‘design research’ are not explicitly reflected on the research papers within the academic field of game research. The lack of onversation between game studies and general design research is visible, yet historically explainable. However, considering the maturity of the field, the presence of the theoretical frameworks of design research should be improved. Understanding game studies as design research potentially improves our understanding on game design and alleviates the bridging of the epistemic gap between the practice and academia.

Categories and Subject Descriptors K.8.0 [Personal Computing]: General – Games.

General Terms Design, Theory.

Keywords Game Design Research, Game Studies, Game Research, Game Design.

1. INTRODUCTION In 2008 Staffan Björk wrote how the “interest in research on gamerelated topics has grown strongly in recent years following the widespread success of computer games as cultural and commercial phenomena” and how “a certain level of friction has existed regarding what constitute proper methods and research questions”. Björk was searching for “an axis mundi” for game research. He suggested that the different research interests within the rising academic field were easily mapped on the three game concepts games, gamers and gaming. [2] Also in 2008, Frans Mäyrä conceptualized how the focus of game studies lies in the interaction between game and player, informed by their various contextual frames. In his introductory book to game studies the intersecting views were grouped into 1) study of games, 2) study of players, and the 3) study of the contexts of the previous two. [26]

Author’s copy. AcademicMindTrek '15, September 22 - 24 2015, Tampere, Finland.

The rise of the humanities and social sciences oriented game studies has been visible in the growth of the academic communities, such as DiGRA1 and journals similar to Game Studies2. In 2001, Espen Aarseth [1], the Editor-in-Chief of Game Studies wrote that the year 2001 can be seen as the “Year One of Computer Game Studies as an emerging, viable, international, academic field.” With a perhaps provocative ludological tone, Aarseth also declared how game studies should exist as an independent academic structure, because it cannot be reduced to any of the existing fields [1]. Since then, there has been a surge of different kinds of game related studies from various academic perspectives and construction of multitude of game research conferences and other academic venues [23, 24]. It is typical that the notions of game studies and games research or game research are used interchangeably. While constructing his “year one” declaration, Aarseth [1] refers to the important and inevitable multitude of contributing disciplines as “we all enter this field from somewhere else”. He lists such fields as anthropology, sociology, narratology, semiotics and film studies as few relevant examples of academic origins of game researchers. Among other actors within the game academia (i.e [36]), Mäyrä [26, 25] considers the multi- and interdisciplinary nature of game studies as richness and challenge of the community. In his reflections of multidisciplinary research work, Mäyrä [25] lists combinations of researchers from humanities and social sciences as well as the combination of socio-cultural game studies with technical or engineering-oriented research work as examples. While the research projects were fruitful and the multidisciplinary approach has been proven to be a good “survival tactic”, he concludes that the role of interdisciplinarity within and around game studies is somewhat mixed and ambiguous. [25]. Many reflections on game studies are narrow and naturally affected by the personal academic interests of the game researchers themselves. Aarseth’s early manifestation on game studies highlighted mostly the perspective of humanistic and social sciences collaboration. The categories and ontologies of game studies by Mäyrä [26] as well as Björk [2] and Juul [15] model the research interests of game researchers around the artefact and the users – leaving the other issues than the direct artefact analysis and user research as “context” (Mäyrä), “world” (Juul) or just the interplay of the two (Björk). Following these early drafts and the most active researchers’ disciplinary backgrounds, game studies has an undertone skewed towards the humanistic and social sciences approaches. With the help of general theories of interdisciplinarity, Sebastian Deterding [8] has been reflecting on the interdiscipline of game studies. He explains how the “friction” pointed by Björk [2] is not 1

www.digra.org

2

www.gamestudies.org

unique to game studies, and how in general the “initially enthusiastic interdisciplines and young interdisciplinary researchers” quickly encounter various challenges including the friction due to incompatible epistemic cultures. By dissecting the models of overcoming the disciplinary boundaries into multi-, trans- and interdisciplinarity of different levels, Deterding characterize game studies as narrow interdiscipline or even encyclopedic multidiscipline at its best. Further, he argues that the current development and direction of the field can be considered as narrowing or differentiating into multiple sub-communities – just like any other maturing interdiscipline [8]. Deterding’s observations of the multidiscipline of game studies are mostly anecdotal and grounded on his own experiences and personal discussions within the games research communities (as he himself points out). However, there is a rise of empirical reflections on the academic communities of game researchers. Mäyrä, Van Looy and Quandt [24] conducted a survey on the game research communities of DiGRA, ECREA and ICA inquiring their disciplinary background, current research field, and identification as “digital games researcher” among other issues. They concluded that there is no single disciplinary field that would play a key role for organizing the academic identity of contemporary games researchers and that the research on games and play is highly multidisciplinary and dynamic [24]. However, reflecting on the background factors of the given academic community does not give away the whole picture of the interdiscipline. Adopting an alternative approach, Mercel et al. [23] conducted a data driven examination of the 15 years of game research. By evaluating the keywords of over 8000 game research papers, they identified 20 major research themes and seven distinct subcommunities. Their results support the commonly held assumption that games research has different clusters of papers and venues for technical versus non-technical research. Similarly to Mäyrä, Van Looy and Quandt, the study by Mercel et al. show the presence of wide variety of research interests within the different academic venues – however, the interpretation of the data of these two studies have a slightly different tone. As Deterding [8] implies, it is not the background factors of the whole community that defines an interdiscipline. The canon of game studies is crafted by narrower group of academic actors and many of the defining handbooks and introductions are “unanimously written by designers and humanities scholars” [8]. It could be argued that the so called “ludological approach” has justified such concepts as ‘game’ and ‘play’ as atoms of academic discussions. It is somewhat typical that a game research paper uses the metaphor of play or games as a model for the examined phenomenon, be it a phenomenon of culture, economy, social interactions, creativity or any other. Perhaps there is something exhilarating for a game researcher to be able to fortify the nonreductionist ludological stance initiated by Aarseth [1] by reducing other phenomena, often widely researched prior to the game research paper, into the vocabulary of game studies.

artefacts hold promise for growing and sustaining game research. However, in his scenario description, Deterding holds a particular view of design as problem-solving activity. The promise of game studies as an interdisciplinary effort is pictured as a contributing factor to the societal impact of game research and education, mainly in solving design problems. Conquering such path is not a trivial task, and the view itself is also limited. Perhaps Deterding’s orientation could be elaborated with such approaches as Jussi Kuittinen and Jussi Holopainen [16] pursuits. Their academic effort is in connecting the game design studies to general design studies and utilizing the frameworks of such design theorists as Herbert A. Simon, Donald Schön, Jonas Löwgren & Eric Stolterman, Willemien Visser and Bryan Lawson [21, 22]. In their conclusion, Kuittinen & Holopainen [16] argue that game design should be studied through models constructed by design theorists and that such approach is not present enough in the current game design literature.

2. WHAT IS GAME DESIGN? On their examination of the academic publications of game research within the period of 2000-2014, Mercel et al. [23] identified ‘game design’ as the most used keyword among the over 20 000 unique keywords presented in 8207 articles. While the mere weight of this finding could be telling, it is hardly simple to interpret. ‘Game design’ can be connected to the wide variety of research papers for various different reasons. Be it a technical oriented paper of an inventive algorithm or a study of a game forum discussion – if the authors addressed even vaguely the potential impact of the study into practice, the keyword can be found central. Authors themselves do not need to be identified as game design researchers. Anecdotally3, when asking game developers to describe their conception of game design, the responses can be vastly varying on the ontological level of the content. For one, ‘game design’ can mean “emotion engineering” or “largely communication” whilst for the other “everything that goes into a game is more or less game design.”

Even though successful in separating the dynamics of the interdiscipline of game studies, Deterding [8] lacks in the wider spectrum of ‘game design’. One of his suggestions to improve the interdiscipline, if that is the direction to take, is the scenario of design orientation in game studies. In his view an orientation towards instrumental utilization of game research through designed

On the more formal matter, many designers have gone extra mile to explicate their conceptions of the game design. Due to the young age of the field, it is not rare to see these design guidebooks written by the industry actors cited in the academic papers. Some of the books can be even considered as part of the “canon” of the game studies. Katie Salen’s & Eric Zimmerman’s book Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals [29] discussing the different schemata of game design (rules, play, culture) is perhaps one of these. Written for the designers, the book is widely4 used by the young field of researchers – and often perhaps even misunderstood by the research community [39] due to the differing epistemic needs of the industry and the academia (inspiration vs. foundation). Conceivably one of their most cited original notion is the notion of “second order design”. This is to illustrate the indirect nature of designing games as computer mediated experiences: “game design is a second-order design problem. A game designer designs the rules of the game directly but designs the player’s experience only indirectly” [29]. However, the lack of theoretical exposure to other design disciplines might lead to the overemphasis of the “special nature” of a design domain close to the examiner. In a discussion over Twitter in 2012 (Figure 1), Eric Zimmerman did

3

4

For the purpose of a game design course, such question was posted on the author’s Facebook wall. The Facebook network of the author consists of wide variety of game professionals.

Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals by Salen & Zimmerman has gained 3293 citations by 16 th of September 2015 (by the time of writing this article) according to Google Scholar.

retrospectively contemplate that “Perhaps design is always about second-order problems.”

Figure 1. Eric Zimmerman on second order design in 2012. Another popular5 game design guidebook is Jesse Schell’s The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. Similar to Rules of Play, it presents different schemata to interpret and to approach game design. While Salen & Zimmerman [29] builds their conceptions around the artefact and the player’s (meaningful) experience, Schell [31] goes through different topics from game experience and elements of a game, to the topics of the tools and approaches of the development process all the way to the self-reflection of the designer him/herself. Schell’s book is providing a seemingly honest account of his personal design cognition: varying, yet not exhaustive, lenses for game design. Game design accounts by experienced developers such as Schell’s might seem imperfect from the academic perspective as they are lacking in systematic view and epistemic transparency, leading into an embrace of subjectivity. Such books might end up criticized on those grounds if taken into the academic contexts. However, game design as a practice can be considered pluralistic, pointed by Annakaisa Kultima [18] in her study of the casual game design values. In general, it is considered that design work is guided by systems of designers’ values that might even contradict among each other as they are not actively used in parallel [13, 21]. Following the changes in game design, a game designer might need to adopt new design principles or shift between normative accounts according to the project. Eventually design work is about seeking a change as the design theorist Herbert Simon puts it: design is "transformation of existing conditions into preferred ones" [34]. Game design can also be considered as the pursuit of the change, be it as small as a change as in an average game sequel. This creates interesting epistemic stance for a designer sometimes in conflict of that with a researcher [20]. A design theorist Kari Kuutti [20] has been characterizing the difference between science and design by exposing the challenge of academic understanding of the importance of local, particular and timely knowledge. According to him [20] “The scientific apparatus simply lacks the means to deal with such knowledge, and thus design has to develop means of its own.” Another design theorist, Gui Bonsiepe [5] pictures the same challenge as designing being “initially free and independent form of activity unconcerned with the existence of design science”. Within the frame of game studies, the accounts of game design have to face these challenges of indifference. Even though appealing from an academic perspective for instance cataloguing patterns in game design, such as the work of Björk and Holopainen [3] might be a strange

5

The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell has gained 999 citations by 16th of September 2015 (by the time of writing this article) according to Google Scholar.

approach to the volatile and transformative field of game design. From the perspective of a designer such venture might seem impractical despite (and perhaps due to) the size of the epistemic project. Perhaps due to the absence of the academic counterparts for game design theories, game studies continues to use the early conceptions of the industry driven game design books. Perhaps academically driven critical approaches towards the industry literature is a sort of a trial in pushing the theories and the conceptions proposed by the experienced designers further towards the academic account. However, there is a rising body of literature on the design tools, processes and methods within the game studies. This type of development is not something that is unique to game research. Lucienne Blessing and Amaresh Chakrabarti [4] have been suggesting that design research can be considered to have passed through three overlapping phases: Experiential, Intellectual and Experimentl/Empirical. In the Experiential phase senior designers wrote about their experiences of the design process and the resulting products, in the Intellectual phase logical and consistent basis for design and many methodologies, principles and methods were proposed and in the Experimental/Empirical phase empirical studies were undertaken to gather data, both in the laboratory and in practice, in order to understand how designers and design teams actually design, and what impact the methods and tools had on the process. Such narrative of the progress of design theories seem to be in line with the understanding of the current field of game design research – even though Blessing and Chakrabarti positioned the development of the general design research already on the previous century [4], time well before the digital games. Many design guidebooks have been written for and by the game industry actors working on commercial game productions. The supposed purpose of the books is providing conceptual tools and inspiration for the practitioners. As the researchers and educators also consider these as noteworthy sources of information, it is appropriate to approach the design books on a critical note. Douglas Wilson and Miguel Sicart [38] point out how “game design theorists have positioned game design as the craft of satisfying players’ desires.” They claim to challenge the notion of “player advocacy” (exemplified by Tracy Fullerton [11]) as one-sided perspective, accompanied with the language of consumerism for game design. They emphasize the communication between the player and the designer by coining an approach of “abusive design”. In abusive game design the presence of the designer is highlighted by the design moves to surprise and displease the player. According to Wilson and Sicart [38], the ideology of player advocacy has resulted in an “accessibility turn” in computer games. This has turned game design into the direction where “players become mere customers, and designers become mere providers”. As opposed to the more artistic design process, the “player advocacy” school of thought is touted as conventional and monologic design. As Wilson and Sicart [38] depict the current era of game design as the era of usable games with wide audiences and pleasing designs, they seek more conversational relation with their critical approach to design theorizing. To their conception, the most provocative game design possibilities are found where the role of the designer as an advocate for the player is disrupted. Based on the analysis of handful of game design books from 20012008, Kuittinen and Holopainen [16] argue that whereas the books

on game design concentrate on teaching the reader the principles and elements of game design, design as an activity is left for too little attention. The game design books leave aspects of design activity such as representing, design moves and reflecting to little consideration. Design as an activity is not presented in the given books as explicitly as it could be. Looking at game design through general design models could open up possibilities of improving the methodologies of game design. Kuittinen and Holopainen [16] state that doing game design is an activity similar to any other design field but that the form and the content are specific to the game design context. Perhaps following the model of progress of design research pictured by Blessing and Chakrabarti [4], there is a rising body of empirical research concentrating on game developers. Ethnographical approaches conducted by Casey O’Donnell [27] and F. Ted Tschang [35], or interview studies by Annakaisa Kultima [19], Mirva Peltoniemi [28], and Ulf Hagen [12] just to name a few are important sources of descriptive accounts on the practice and the contexts of game design. Instead of mere theorizing on the concepts of the culture or speculating on the designers’ intentions or inspirations through artefact analysis [e.g. 14], studies on designers, such as of Alyea Sanovar’s [30] account on the game developers’ conceptions of culture add to the body of the knowledge on game design research in an important manner. Despite the fact that ‘game design’ bears several meanings, there is a lot of explicating to do and room for theoretical, empirical and experimental work addressing different areas of game design. One area of that is to keep on answering to the definitional question of ‘game design’. Perhaps alarming, or soothing for the game researchers, the word ‘design’ is found complex on the field of design research in general. As more and more design fields are emerging, it is becoming increasingly difficult to address the area as unified. A design historian, John A. Walker [37] pointed out as early as in the 1980s how ‘design’ has more than one common meaning: it can refer to a process, the result, the products, or the look and overall pattern of a product. The term has also undergone some historical changes from the Renaissance ‘disegno’ meaning ‘drawing’ to the industrial revolution and the introduction of the ‘designer’ all the way to the value-laden ‘design’ and ‘designer’ of the 1980s [37] continuing to the current date. The scholarly meaning of the word ‘design’ has been dominated by the views of industrial design and architecture. By looking at the definitions of the design, Walker [37] concluded that for many scholars at that time, design was industrial design. Such emphasis on material mass production might be one of the reasons why digital games researchers find design research difficult to utilize. There is also something unfitting and conflicting in the colloquial use of ‘game designer’ within the games industry. Depending on the project, social constellation of the game project and the studio, a game designer might be in control of the design decisions, or act as a creative mediator similar to the producer in other productions. More active participation of the game design research and game design researchers into the general discussion of design research is more or less needed.

3. FROM DESIGN RESEARCH TO GAME DESIGN RESEARCH The loose historical account of the progress of the design research by Blessing and Chakrabarti [4] is far from being elaborate enough in opening the whole picture of the historical development of design research.

According to Nigel Cross [7], the desire to “scientise” design emerged as early as in the 1920s and surfaced again in the design methods movement of the 1960s. The Conference on Design Methods in 1962 is generally regarded as the launch of design methodology as an academic field and the 1960s has even been heralded as the “design science decade” fashioned by the positivistic attitude on the potential of the combination of design and science. Cross [7] further discusses how terms such as ‘design science’ and ‘science of design’ bear a different meaning: former refers to a search for a single method for science-like design and the latter to the study of designing as academic endeavor. The modern term of ‘design research’ is to Cross [7] a goal of “development, articulation and communication of design knowledge”. Furthermore the sources of such knowledge to him are to be found in people, processes and products. Following, his taxonomy for the field of design research falls into three main categories: design epistemology (study of designerly ways of knowing), design praxiology (study of the practices and processes of design) and design phenomenology (study of the form and configuration of artifacts). To Cross [7] the challenge for design research is to be at the same time interdisciplinary and disciplined – a “paradoxical task of creating an interdisciplinary discipline.” [7] The different taxonomies of design research are also utilized, if not too thoroughly, by the game researchers. Perhaps one of the most famous and often used typology is that of Christopher Frayling’s [10]. Frayling, adapting Herbert Read’s distinction about art education, divides research into three different categories: research for, into and through (art and) design. Of these the last is sometimes used as positioning more experimental, practice oriented or engaging game design research projects on the field of game studies whereas other endeavors might not need such positioning. The framing of design research is called upon on the “difficult” or academically more unconventional cases. In a similar way to Frayling, Keiichi Sato [32] differentiates two ways of using the word design research. According to Sato, design research can have at least two distinctive meanings. On one hand it might denote the practice of developing information for a particular design project and on the other hand it indicates the practice of developing a generalized and structured body of knowledge (academic research). Furthermore Sato’s typology for design research divides the academic design research into theoretical research, methodological research, experimental research, field research and case studies [32]. In game design research, it seems, that such borders are not necessary that clear between the industry and the academia (or project and the more general approaches). As already mentioned previously, the title of the game design theorists can be given to a representative of either side of the fence (industry or academia). Furthermore, it seems that many humanistic or social science oriented game studies could be framed design research on the Sato’s account. Perhaps more pressingly, Gui Bonsiepe [5] distinguishes endogenous and exogenous design research. Endogenous design research is initiated spontaneously from within the field of design whereas the exogenous design research is interested in the design as an object of scientific inquiry. For Bonsiepe, endogenous design research is primarily instrumental and tied to design projects and embedded into the design processes similar to Sato [32]. However, Bonsiepe hopes for the endogenous design research to eventually reach for more general level of knowledge similar to exogenous design research. For Bonsiepe the danger of exogenous research, then again, is to fall into the normative account of design disconnected from practice [5]. In game design research, the

academic values of “critical” approach might push early researchers into the narrative of the industry driven design theorists’ of “best practices” before there is adequate descriptive understanding on the field. Perhaps depending on the epistemological or philosophical presuppositions and the disciplinary backgrounds of a researcher, design research can seem as an ill-fitted and hopelessly unorganized academic field. Blessing and Chakrabarti [4], coming from the engineering background, identified the common challenges of the design research as 1) lack of overview of existing research, 2) lack of use of results in practice, and 3) lack of scientific rigor [4]. It could be argued that the issues pointed by Blessing and Chakrabarti [4] can be connected to the challenges of many interdisciplinary efforts. The challenge of the interdisciplinary discipline pinned by Cross [7] is a familiar one to any of the contemporary game researchers and the lack of shared understandings of the general design theories instead of that provided by the design guidebooks is perhaps further contributing to the slow progress of the game design research. As pointed by Kuittinen and Holopainen [16], utilizing the general theories within the design research provides possibilities for the game design research to grow. Such one-sidedness as the problemdriven design orientation of game studies proposed by Deterding [8] can be an example of lack of awareness in underlying paradigms in design warned by Cross [7], if not intentionally selected perspective. Cross points the different underpinnings of design theories of Herbert Simon and Donald Schön, which has been more thoroughly studied by Dorst and Dijkhuis [9]. According to Dorst and Dijkhuis, Simon’s [34] theories lead to a conceptualizing design as “rational problem solving” whereas Schön’s [33] theories emphasize design as “reflective practice”. This differentiation has been utilized by Kultima [17] in proposing underlying schools of thoughts also within the practice of game design as a hobby, profession and educated practice. In their examination of the shortcomings of design research Blessing and Chakrabarti [4] are not completely clear whether the issues they have raised are fatal to the purely academic endeavors or the practice itself. Similarly to Aarseth, Cross [7] warns us on [1] “swamping the design research with different cultures imported from either the sciences or the arts”. Even though there is a need to utilize different disciplinary traditions, Cross wants us to realize how the design practice has its own strong and appropriate intellectual culture. This culture could be an interest for the wider understanding of the cognitive theories. Somewhat provocatively, he claims epistemology of science being in “disarray, and therefore has little to offer to an epistemology of design.” This claim is supported by Bryan Lawson [21], as to him the study of what designers know “challenges our more conventional understanding of what makes good knowledge in ways that might be of interest and value to those in the information and cognitive sciences.” Such understanding of the nature of design research should be also visible in the various design-oriented studies within the field of game research instead of taken granted the epistemologies of more traditional disciplines. Similar to this, as pointed by Deterding [8], in order for game studies to overcome its narrow epistemic nature, it is to find its ways to allow and work with epistemological pluralism similar to cases in cognitive sciences or communication research. Eventually any interdisciplinary efforts are bound to be challenged by varying

6

www.gdconf.com

epistemic cultures taking us researchers outside our comfort zones of the disciplinary backgrounds.

4. ON THE EPISTEMIC CULTURES OF GAME DEVELOPERS Following Bonsiepe’s distinction of endogenous and exogenous design research, the examination of these two epistemic cultures is relevant also within game research. Game research is conducted both within the interdisciplinary communities as well as growingly among established disciplines of academia elsewhere. Another relevant epistemic community is that of game professionals, outside of the game academia. Many game design projects seek new knowledge in order to pursue with new technologies, improve the performance of the existing technologies, understanding new and existing user groups, and to tweak their design in many opportunistic ways. Before concluding this paper, it is only suitable to devote couple of sentences to the epistemic undertakings of the industry and how to potentially bridge the gap between the academia and the industry. Mäyrä, Van Looy and Quandt [24] examined the nature of the game researchers’ collaboration as one of the defining background factors. As high as 39 % of the respondents (n=544) reported having some sort of research collaboration with the industry. The nature of the collaboration was not explicated, but one of the explaining factors could be found in the funding instruments of research. Many game scholars struggle as outside actors of the established disciplines and it is typical to seek aggressively for external funding. Some instances, such as EU research funding favor projects with appropriate industry partners to improve the possibilities of the societal impact of the conducted research [24]. It is also probable that some of the respondents have been working on the internal research projects of the game companies or projects externally funded by industry actors. Which ever explains the relatively high percentage of industry collaboration, the epistemic premises of these two create phenomenon worth to investigate. As already mentioned, Kuutti [20] and Bonsiepe [5] highlight the special nature of design cognition. Furthermore, Bonsiepe [5] discusses that there is a special kind of interplay between research and practice. To him, “designers can no longer design the way they did one or two generations ago” and “researchers can no longer do research as they did one of two generations ago – i.e. orienting themselves primarily or exclusively by texts.” Bonsiepe [5] is talking about iconic turn in research whereas the rising complexity in design processes calls for more systematic approaches. Seeking synergy between game creators and game researchers is a natural continuation of such blurring of the lines. Similar to the utilization of game design guidebooks as academic references, it is not atypical for a game researcher interested in game design to participate to the game industry conferences and events instead of or in addition to the academic conferences. In the US, such conferences as the Game Developers Conference6 held annually at San Francisco can be relevant to the game design researchers for various reasons. The areas of interest are shared with the developers, even though the social processes of conducting, recording and evaluating research might differ drastically. Additionally to this, there is a lack of good sources of information on the emerging design areas and the topics change and transform fast making it difficult for an academic to follow.

Industry conferences are also excellent places for deeper discussions with the industry practitioners. Other notable conferences are the Casual Connect in Europe and US, and the annual Nordic Game Conference 7 in Sweden, bringing together the Northern European game developers, students and educators. Similar venues are spread around the calendar year and around the globe to the extent that a diligent traveler easily spots the same presentations in different conferences during the year.

artifact knowledge is always particular and timely according to Kuutti.

However, many researchers (as well as developers) have no possibilities to travel to the industry conferences due to the limited travel budgets and schedules. Fortunately for the stationary academic researcher, game industry in its boom is relatively open to share the presentations of the industry conferences also after or during the events. Even though many of these are available for anyone to watch, there is also business around the information sharing. Example of this is the GDC Vault8. UBM Tech, as the owner of the GDC conference brand also maintains an online magazine Gamasutra.com 9 which collects professionals’ views on their products and processes and aggregates hundreds of developer blogs. Such library of developers’ views on their art is valuable also for the future game research. Popular data set drawn from the Gamasutra.com (and Game Developers Magazine) is that of “game design postmortems” where the developers dissect their development process publicly into “What went wrong?” and “What went right?” If a game educator might want to ban Wikipedia as a source of information in student essays (making it sometimes very difficult to for instance cite to game related information), the industry speeches and presentations around the web provide even faster paths for the current state of the art for the outsiders, as well as to the insiders of the industry. The epistemic usefulness and reliability is just a matter of literacy skills for the both parties. This was highlighted for instance by Rami Ismail, a successful indie game developer, in his keynote for Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki conference in 2015: the game industry is moving fast and the speeches by the industry actors hold a truth for a particular game project on a particular platform and in a particular slice of time. He encouraged his peers to go to the talks, but to form their own opinion by putting together the pieces of information as trends instead of treating the lessons straightforwardly.

In some level, approaching game design as design research could revolutionize the way that we see game studies. The ‘design’, ‘designer’, ‘process’ and ‘practice’ have been previously part of the box of “context” [26] or otherwise in the periphery whereas ‘game’, ‘player’ and ‘playing’ have being the dominate conceptual tools [26, 2]. Following the taxonomies, conceptualizations and categorizations of design generalists, we could end up in different emphasis on the theorizing over games. Even though such a “design turn” in game studies might not be as overarching as the “ludological turn” was, it certainly could be eye-opening and contribute to the maturing of the field itself.

Another type of information source provided by the game industry is the industry reports on the salaries of the developers, the growth of the industry, the players of certain games and mixed topics white papers. For instance in Finland, an annual report of the state of the national games industry is provided by non-profit and nonacademic game industry organization, Neogames 10. Such reports have been criticized in academic use, since similar to the Gamasutra.com design post mortems, the publication value differ to those of the values of academia. What is typical of such accounts is that the expert knowledge is shared almost “by the hour” and many of such is fast outdated and far from “re-searched”. On the other hand, following the academic values of conducting research, many of the topics could take too long to survey. Despite their reliability, some of the presentations and publications hold invaluable role as recordings of the future history of game development. This echoes well with the notion of the “artifact knowledge” by Kuutti [20]. Where the purpose of science is to produce general, global, and timeless knowledge, the

If there is enough already to juggle with the varying epistemic cultures between the academic disciplines, game research as design research, seem to have another interesting epistemic challenge to consider: that of design knowledge.

5. DISCUSSION

For instance utilizing the taxonomy of Cross [7] would create a very different version of game studies pulling design cognition and the practice to the front row of the attention instead of the somewhat dominant presence of the humanistic and social sciences driven “canon” [8]. Such positioning would at least add to the body of the basic literature within the game studies. With a more careful elaboration, the design orientation of game studies proposed by Deterding [8] could lead to fruitful collaborations between the researchers interested in game design. Being able to resort on a more general level of design conceptions could act as a way of bringing in the different, perhaps underrepresented areas of game studies with sustainability. And to further push the multitude of epistemologies, such endeavors would not only need tools in understanding the dynamics of interdiscipline, but also the dynamics of multiprofessional environments. Design brings together multitude of perspectives, naturally. On a more moderate account similar to Kuittinen and Holopainen [16], the utilization of design conceptualizations can potentially shed light to the topics of design philosophies behind different issues of the design practice [e.g. 17]. Such explorations could be done within other disciplines (in this case within the communities of design research around the Design Issues or Design Studies, for example) or within the interdiscipline of game studies. It is recommendable that researchers interested in the different layers of game design would draw from and engage in the more general discussions of design theories. This would potentially help us deepen the issues already scratched in the individual studies and to bring relevant research closer to each other in a manner that mere concepts of ‘play’ and ‘games’ cannot yield. Simultaneously the collaborations between the industry and the academia should be continued with the help of the added understanding of the epistemological differences and similarities within the research interests of academia and practice. Overlooking the history of already over 30 years of game research published in the Simulation & Gaming [6], Espen Aarseth wrote in 2001 that “we have a billion dollar industry with almost no basic research.” Despite whether 2001 was a true “Year One” or “The

7

conf.nordicgame.com

9

8

www.gdcvault.com

10

www.gamasutra.com www.neogames.fi

Year 31” and what is considered as “basic research” for game studies or game research, or games research, in 2015 we still have a lot to do.

6. CONCLUSION In this paper, the notion of game design research has been discussed. In result of the examination, the emphasis of the design research as a theoretical background for future research within the community of game studies is encouraged. If such effort would not lead to the revolutionizing the “interdisciplinary discipline” of games research, it would add depth to the many issues of game design already widely explored and perhaps help bring the relevant topics closer together on a such fast developed field of interdiscipline as game studies.

7. REFERENCES [1] Aarseth, Espen. 2001. Computer Game Studies, Year One. Game Studies. The International Journal of Computer Game Research. Volume 1, Issue 1, July 2001. [2] Björk, Staffan. 2008. Games, Gamers, and Gaming Understanding Game Research. Mindtrek 2008, October 7–9, 2008, Tampere. [3] Björk, Staffan & Holopainen, Jussi. 2004. Patterns in Game Design. Charles River Media Game Development. Charles River Media. [4] Blessing, Lucienne T.M. & Chakrabarti, Amaresh. 2009. DRM, a Design Research Methodology. Springer. [5] Bonsiepe, Gui. 2007. The Uneasy Relationship between Design and Design Research. In Michel, Ralf (Ed.) Design Research Now. Essays and Selected Papers. Birkhäuser. p. 25-41 [6] Crookall, David. 2000. Editorial: Thirty Years of Interdisciplinarity. Simulation and Gaming. Vol. 31 No. 1, March 2000. p. 5-12. Sage Publications. [7] Cross, Nigel. 2007. From a Design Science to a Design Discipline: Understanding Designerly ways of Knowing and Thinking. In Michel, Ralf (Ed.) Design Research Now. Essays and Selected Papers. Birkhäuser. p. 41-55 [8] Deterding, Sebastian. 2014. The Expectable Rise, Pyrrhic Victory, and Designerly Future of Game Studies as an Interdiscipline. In the Proceedings of Critical Evaluation of Game Studies: A seminar re-evaluating the field of game studies. Tampere: University of Tampere. [9] Dorst, K. & Dijkhuis, J. 1995. “Comparing paradigms for describing design activity” Design Studies Vol 16 No 228 April. p. 261-274. Elsevier Science. [10] Frayling, Christopher. 1993. Research in Art and Design. Royal College of Art Research Papers. Volume 1, Number 1. 1-5. [11] Fullerton, Tracy. 2008. Game Design Workshop, 2nd Edition: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games. Morgan Kaufmann, February 2008. [12] Hagen, Ulf. 2009. “Where Do Game Design Ideas Come From? Invention and Recycling in Games Developed in Sweden”. Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory. Proceedings of DiGRA 2009 [13] Holm, Ivar. 2006. Ideas and Beliefs in Architecture and Industrial Design: How Attitudes, Orientations, and Underlying Assumptions Shape the Built Environment. Arkitektur- og designhøgskolen i Oslo. [14] Juul, Jesper. 2007. Swap Adjacent Gems to Make Sets of Three: A History of Matching Tile Games. Artifact journal. Volume 2, 2007. London: Routledge.

[15] Juul. Jesper. 2005. Half-Real. Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. The MIT Press. [16] Kuittinen, Jussi & Holopainen, Jussi. 2009. Some Notes on the Nature of Game Design. Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory. Proceedings of DiGRA 2009. [17] Kultima, Annakaisa. 2015. An Autopsy of the Global Game Jam 2012 Theme Committee Discussion: Deciding on Ouroboros. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG 2015), June 2225, 2015, Pacific Grove, CA, USA. [18] Kultima, Annakaisa. 2009. Casual Game Design Values. In the Proceedings of the 13 th International MindTrek Conference: Everyday Life in the Ubiquitous Era. 2009. p. 58-65. [19] Kultima, Annakaisa. 2010. The Organic Nature of Game Ideation: Game Ideas Arise from Solitude and Mature by Bouncing. Proceedings of the International Academic Conference on the Future of Game Design and Technology. [20] Kuutti, Kari. 2009. Artifacts, Activities, and Design Knowledge. In Poggenpohl, Sharon and Keiichi Sato Design Integrations: Research and Collaboration. The University of Chicago Press. [21] Lawson, Bryan. 2005. How Designers Think. The Design Process Demystified. Fourth Edition. Architectural Press Elsevier. [22] Lawson, Bryan. 2004. What Designers Know. Architectural Press. Taylor & Francis Group. Routledge. [23] Melcer, Edward; Truong-Huy Dinh Nguyen, Zhengxing Chen, Alessandro Canossa, Magy Seif El-Nasr, Katherine Isbister. 2015. Games Research Today: Analyzing the Academic Landscape 2000-2014. In the Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG 2015), June 22-25, 2015, Pacific Grove, CA, USA. [24] Mäyrä, Frans; Van Looy, Jan & Quandt, Thorsten. 2013. Disciplinary Identity of Game Scholars: An Outline. In the Proceedings of DiGRA 2013: DeFragging Game Studies. DiGRA Digital Library. [25] Mäyrä, Frans. 2009. Getting into the Game: Doing MultiDisciplinary Game Studies. In Bernard Perron & Mark J.P. Wolf (eds.) The Video Game Theory Reader 2. New York: Routledge. pp. 313-329. [26] Mäyrä, Frans. 2008. An Introduction to Game Studies. Games in Culture. SAGE Publications Ltd. [27] O’Donnell, Casey. 2014. Developer’s Dilemma. The Secret World of Videogame Creators. The MIT Press. [28] Peltoniemi, Mirva. 2009. Industry Life-Cycle Theory in the Cultural Domain: Dynamics of the Games Industry. Doctoral dissertation. Tampere University of Technology. Publication; 805. [29] Salen, Katie & Zimmerman, Eric. 2004. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. The MIT Press. [30] Sandovar, Alyea. 2015. Cultural Narratives in Game Design. Doctoral Consortium of FDG 2015. [31] Schell, Jesse. 2008. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. CRC Press. [32] Sato, Keiichi. 2009. Perspectives on Design Research. In Poggenpohl, Sharon and Keiichi Sato Design Integrations: Research and Collaboration. The University of Chicago Press. p. 25-49. [33] Schön, D. A. 1983. The Reflective Practitioner. Harper Collins, USA.

[34] Simon, H. A. 1992. Sciences of the Artificial. MIT Press. Cambridge, MA. [35] Tschang, F. Ted. 2003. Beyond Normal Products and Development Processes: Computer Games as Interactive Experiential Goods and Their Manner of Development. What Do We Know About Innovation? A Conference in honour of Keith Pavitt University of Sussex, 13-15 November, 2003. [36] Waern, Annika & Zagal, Jose. 2013. Introduction. Transaction of the Digital Games Research Association. Vol 1 No 1.

[37] Walker, John A. 1989. Design History and the History of Design. Pluto Press. London. [38] Wilson, Douglas & Sicart, Miguel. 2010. Now It’s Personal: On Abusive Game Design. Future Play 2010. [39] Zimmerman, Eric. 2012. Jerked Around by the Magic Circle – Clearing the Air Ten Years Later. Gamasutra.com