research-article

Documenting trajectories in design space: a methodology for applied game design research

Authors:

Jonathan Lessard,

Pippin BarrAuthors Info & Claims

FDG '18: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games

Article No.: 27, Pages 1 - 10

https://doi.org/10.1145/3235765.3235767

Published: 07 August 2018 Publication History

Abstract

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.

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Morrell EKultima AGrufstedt YKauppinen T(2023)Promotypes - Prototyping Games for a University Game Production PipelineProceedings of the 18th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games10.1145/3582437.3587203(1-8)Online publication date: 12-Apr-2023
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Index Terms

Documenting trajectories in design space: a methodology for applied game design research
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Interaction design
    1. Interaction design process and methods
    2. Interaction design theory, concepts and paradigms

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FDG '18: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games

August 2018

503 pages

ISBN:9781450365710

DOI:10.1145/3235765

Copyright © 2018 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Published: 07 August 2018

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FDG '18

FDG '18: Foundations of Digital Games 2018

August 7 - 10, 2018

Malmö, Sweden

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FDG '18 Paper Acceptance Rate 39 of 95 submissions, 41%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 152 of 415 submissions, 37%

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Morrell EKultima AGrufstedt YKauppinen T(2023)Promotypes - Prototyping Games for a University Game Production PipelineProceedings of the 18th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games10.1145/3582437.3587203(1-8)Online publication date: 12-Apr-2023
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Oliva CPoutiainen A(2022) Otogarden Journal of Sound and Music in Games10.1525/jsmg.2022.3.2-3.283:2-3(28-58)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2022
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LaPensée ELaiti OLongboat M(2021)Towards Sovereign GamesGames and Culture10.1177/1555412021102919517:3(328-343)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2021
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