The Game Design Research Symposium and Workshop on May 7th-8th in Copenhagen arranged by Staffan Bj?rk, Interactive Institute, Sweden; Aki J?rvinen, Veikkaus, The Finnish National Lottery; Jussi Holopainen, Nokia Research Center, Finland; Steffen P. Walz, University for Art, Media and Design Zurich; Espen Aarseth, IT-University of Copenhagen.
I was asked how many game developers attended the event, and it’s hard to answer because no count was made, but: The attendance had been set to a max of 25 people, and 25 people attended. As a whole, about 1/3 of the attendees appeared to have been involved in commercial game development in some form, but with only a few full-time developers present. (Perhaps the full-time developers were developing games full-time?)
I will not attempt a complete recap of the event, but rather point to a few recurring themes that connect with my personal work.
The question of content
Gonzalo Frasca presented a position statement on political game design. In a nutshell: Games that don’t want to be just entertaining. And Gonzalo went against 4 things:
-Against virtuality (all games have consequences, anger, and so on).
-Against immersion (immersion removes the critical attitude of the player – this is the Brechtian theme in Gonzalo’s work).
-Against gameplay (great gameplay renders the rules invisible – same problem as before).
-Against fun (games are real pain and real suffering; all great games have boring sessions
Somehow at odds with the last point above, Craig Lindley presented a follow-up to his presentation at the Tampere conference in 2002. Being both a formal description of games and a normative suggestion for how to make games, Lindley discussed how to use a three-act model for recursively analyzing games (well, read the paper). Truth be told, since the Tampere conference I have always pointed to Craig Lindley as the “narratologist” whenever I needed to name one. As I interpret it, part of Lindley’s work focuses on making games that are always interesting, and I agree with Gonzalo Frasca that games are by virtue also partly boring and unsatisfying.
If Lindley’s presentation had formal aspects, it was by far outdone by Stefan Gruenvogel’s presentation on using mathematical models for understanding games. I confess that this isn’t quite my field, but it centered on state spaces, mappings, and formal analysis of games.
The question of players
Hanna Wirman & Rika Nakamura (University of Lapland) presented the enigmatically titled paper “Opportunities and Disadvantages of Feminine Strategies in Computer Games”.
This was a refreshing piece in that it didn’t do what was expected of it: First of all, from a number of sources (such as “From Barbie to Mortal Kombat”), they had created a list of 11 strategies that “women like”. Here they are:
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Co-operation, relationships, caring, realistic characters, female characters, player as protagonist, changing into something magical, non-violence, control of pace, own goals, realistic settings.
The surprising thing was that everybody in the audience expected them to start criticizing this as stereotyping, social constructions and so on, but that they didn’t.
Rather, they did something which I hadn’t seen explicitly performed in a paper, namely to look at whether these 11 strategies were viable strategies in The Sims, Arcanum: of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, and Warcraft III. As you might imagine, the Sims was the game were most of these “feminine” strategies worked (exception co-operation), the strategies worked the least in Warcraft III, and Arcanarum was somewhere in between.
After this, the presenters challenged the universality of the list by admitting to liking Warcraft III very much. Discussion ensued as to whether these weren’t stereotypes that should be challenged rather than accepted.
Following the presentations of John Salisbury (Middlesex University) and Laura Ermi & Frans M?yr? (Hypermedia Lab), discussion ensued on the issue of how to use players and designers in research. Can we ask players what they like and take it at face (or some other) value?
For example Richard Rouse III states that “Players don’t know what they want, but they want it when they see it.” I’ve also heard Mark Cerny make statements along the same lines.
Andrew J. Stapleton (Swinburne University of Technology) posed the question whether research through design can be justified within the scientific method – and answered this with a no, saying other models are needed.
Research and the game industry
Heather Kelly: What game developers need from game design research, even if they don’t know that they need it.
This was an informal discussion on the relation between developers and game design research. Heather asked for the following things:
-How to create more emotional involvement?
-Do people have different learning styles?
-More analysis and critique that’s not just journalism
-Better vocabulary for discussing games.
-More interesting interface technologies.
-How to create games that discuss moral issues; present the players with moral choices?
-How to preserve the history of games.
What is game design?
Eric Zimmerman presented a dynamic view of what game design is based on the more general framework from Salen & Zimmerman’s book Rules of Play.
Here’s the big quote:
Game designers create experiences, but only indirectly. The designer creates structures that the players meet. Game design is a second order design problem.
As the in-between person who game industry people often think of as academic and academics think of as a game developer, Eric explains game design research as both practically applicable and more general ways of framing games conceptually.
Much of his presentation was based on several iterations of a game design that ended up being four of the participants cast in the role of hungry sisters, picking numbers in order to race towards Heather Kelly who had food for them.
Also, we got a behind-the-scenes peek of the design process of the catch-the-butterflies-game Loop.
Research through design / for design / into design
The second day centered on three perspectives on game design, research through design, research for (the sake of design), and research into the design process.
Three (again) frameworks were presented for designing and understanding games, each of which was applied to Mario Kart: Double Dash.
Staffan Bjork and Jussi Holopainen presented the Game design patterns framework. This structural framework aims at identifying different design choices in games. For example: Powerups, boss monster. role reversals.
Steffen Walz presented his own Game Design Figures project, which aims to use rhetoric to classify if not patterns, then recurring elements of games. The goal is to collect 1000 figures. For example, Mario Kart: Double Dash contains peristasis – the showing of adversaries, diastole – lengthening gameplay by way of unlockables.
Aki J?rvinen presented a part of his Ph.D. project where he tries to connect the actual game mechanics of a game with the pleasures that the players can get from them. As can be seen on his web site, he has an elaborate scheme for describing games as procedures / components / goals / environment / interface / players / context. What makes this interesting is that he tries to connect this with a list of pleasures. The number 11 resurfaced:
- Challenge, masochism, intellect, discovery, sensation, fantasy, sadism, luck, narrative, fellowship, expression.
Different pleasures cater for different tastes and player types.
Finally, the participants where split into four groups, one playing Tetris, one playing GTA3: Vice City, and two playing the board game Carcassonne. After two hours of playing, the groups had to present the game to the whole symposium, preferably by having analyzed it with one or more of the three frameworks presented.
At the end of the day, dinner, and lots of suggestions for how to structure the second game design symposium, which hopefully will take place in less than a year.
Thanks for the summary. In this day and age of electronic media, I wish that the original papers were made available more often, but it’s great for those of us who don’t have the opportunity to travel to these events to get some insight into the conversation.
As a designer working on commercial titles and lapsed academic, I find the question of how academic research can contribute to the field an interesting one. However, I believe there are several different goals being pursued under the one rubric. I wonder if it would be valuable to separate out:
Game research for game development
Game research for academic professionalization
Game research for cultural intervention
etc.
Frasca’s framework, for example, seems to apply to the latter two categories but not the first. Kelly’s comments seem to touch on all three, but not all are applicable in all areas. (I use “seem” to acknowledge that these are third-hand readings of second-hand accounts and so may not have any valuable relation to the primary arguments.)
This is one of the reasons why I find the involvement (or lack of involvement) of commercial game designers in these types of events important. If the goal is to provide academic credentials or cultural interventions, then there’s certainly no need for those “in the trenches” to be present; if anything, that might be counter-productive. But insofar as the conversation reaches toward the notion of academics being a useful resource to the development of what “electronic games” means in the mainstream context, it seems like a fundamental need would be to have the perspective of those making such games.
That may just be my own bias, however.
Eyejinx.
Eyejinx, I think I understand what you are trying to say in your categorization, but I think there may be better or more direct ways of saying it. The categories are not separable, since all academic research must also be for reasons of professionalization — only bad or incredibly naive researchers do not try to optimize their working conditions — including research that aims to improve game development. To me, the usual categories of pure vs applied research provides all the distinction we need, except that your idea of cultural intervention is a good one; some would call it action research.
By the way, by “game development” do you mean only commercial development, or all forms of game development, including indie or open source development, experimental game development, avant garde/artistic game development, etc.? It seems to me that academic game research has a special responsibility to support non-commercial game development, and to try to push the field in directions the industry can’t go. I would also contend that the industry doesn’t always know what it needs, and that long-term, pure research could be one crucial way of finding out.
It is always wonderful when commercial developers say they find academic research useful, but it would be even more wonderful if they can see the value and importance of pure research. Luckily, but not surprisingly, quite a few do.
I can accept that “all academic research must also be for reasons of professionalization” in the sense that what academics do is to promote themselves as academics (not singling out academics, this is endemic to work in general), but I’m not sure that I can extend that to “including research that aims to improve game development”. Do literary researchers’ aims include promoting the production of better literature? Do philosophers research ways to improve the ontological status of being? Do historians bemoan the sad state of history in academic journals and call for re-structuring the sequences of events?
I think the line between criticism as an academic function and the craft of developing games is one that is seductive to cross. After all, if one can appreciate what makes good games work as such, then why could that knowledge not be applied in turn to making better games? However, the analysis of “texts” and their production are separate disciplines and no amount of theoretical knowledge of game development is necessarily going to help you to make an actual “good game”–much less a good commercial game involving all the complexities that come with that level of work. As a commercial game designer, I am constantly confronted with people both inside and outside the industry who think that their experience playing games enables them to make design judgments. However, while lots of people have really good ideas, very few people actually understand how to make ideas into workable designs.
So, I don’t think that this is really about applied vs. pure research, since game development is much more of a craft than a science; if I am out of date on that and people are actually talking about applied humanities, then please forgive me for my ignorance. It has been some years since I lived within the ivory tower.
While I think it’s laudable of academics to support all forms of game development, including indie, open source, “diy”, hobbyist, mod, and commercial, and while these no doubt provide a variety of interesting variations for research and criticism, I do think there is something suspect in using the commercial, recognizable titles to draw attention and then focusing on non-commercial gaming. I may be pissing territorially, but it feels a bit like a bait-and-switch to wave the GTA3 flag, for example, and then talk about design issues and processes that apply to interactive fiction. If you want to talk about commercial game development, I think you need to talk to commercial game developers, and if you want to talk craft, you have to get off the hobby horse of theory and deal with the practicalities of commercial game development.
Which is not to say that I’m anti-theory; in fact, I have spent more than a few years of my life blissfully engaged with classical and contemporary critical thought. I’m all for academics and critics engaging with games from the critical/theoretical perspective; however, I also believe that there are limits to the applicability of that framework.
My, now I’ve nattered on for far too long. My apologies. Fundamentally, I believe in the value and importance of pure research; I’m just inclined to think that this value belongs to the critics and the students, not the developers. I may be crazy, but I don’t think that Wordsworth would have benefitted the least bit from reading Derrida, regardless of how fertile deconstructionists have found his work.
Eyejinx.
I realise that I was present and presenting at the Symposium, and as such am possibly biased, but I feel that a discussion on the directions and possible implications of academic research is valuable. It’s true that academic research is concerned with the collection of knowledge for its own sake. We are asking whether this knowledge, so acquired, be of benefit to parties outside this activity. Surely this benefit would depend on the nature of the knowledge and the means by which it was created.
During the meeting at ITU there was talk of (let’s see if I remember this correctly) research for design, research into design, and research by design. Where research for design, is seeking knowledge which might have implications in designed artifacts, but not necessarily in their method of construction (into design), or how different designs might be implemented (by design).
Most industries have received advice on their practices from knowledge generated through explicit research (use manufacturing, software engineering, or research itself as good examples), and the practices of practitioners in pretty much every sphere of human activity have been studied somewhere, including the arts.
In terms of what is possible, the creation of examples and prototypes is a common activity in many domains. One might write short stories to explore literary structures say, or build model boats to explore hydrodynamics. Lessons learned from these models can then inform the creation of the articles in question.
I interpret Eyejinx’s reservations regarding design research to be focused on research ‘for design’. I also see his reservations as being based on 2 more assumptions. The first is that ‘academic’ research is synonymous with ‘creating critical theory’, as one might in literature. The second assumption is that academically derived knowledge is usually too formal to be of direct benefit to practitioners.
With respect to this first assumption, I would argue that it depends on what articles you read. There are indeed papers which carry the critical traditions of other apparently related fields into the study of games, but this is not the only research direction. Considering the second possible assumption, this may be that academics write up their work for academic audiences, and practitioners are unwilling to read work in this style, or unable to see the implications of such work. In other domains knowledge is often presented in more structured and targeted ways, while the practitioners are trained to interpret this knowledge to some degree of practical success. For example, architects rely on many theories which may have been academically derived, regarding such things as the way individuals interact with the spaces they construct, the aesthetics of different forms, the properties of the materials used in the building’s construction, and the scheduling of work during construction.
Essentially I’m proposing that in saying, “this value belongs to the critics and the students, not the developers”, is short-sighted, but in order for this attitude to be dislodged the academic community need to demonstrate where the knowledge they acquire may be of use.
[Eyejinx:] Do literary researchers’ aims include promoting the production of better literature?
–Why, yes; ever since Aristotle’s Poetics, and very much also today. Stephen King dedicated one of his books to his college teacher, the English Professor AND poet Burton Hatlen. In short, the direct feedback loop between literature and academic theory/criticism is rich and strong –an excellent role model; names like Umberto Eco, J.P. Sartre, Tolkien, David Lodge and Iris Murdoch is just the tip of the iceberg. Then we have famous examples of literary authors who also contribute to theory: E.M. Forster, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Coleridge… and, oh, yes, Wordsworth.
I very much appreciate healthy skepticism towards academia from the industry (it keeps us honest), but if 2000 years of literary history can tell us anything, it is that you can’t keep theory and practice separate. 10-20 years from now, it is a safe bet that most professional game developers will have been educated by game schools and programs, where they hopefully will have had time to play around with concepts and ideas that make them better at what they do. There will always be a natural tension between those who do and those who teach, but we are certainly talking, and some of us have been doing it for several years now. So let’s not worry! The main problem seems to be that both groups are extremely busy.
Ah, Dr. Aarseth, you’re having a bit of fun now, aren’t you? As I’m sure you realize, the Poetics is precisely the type of prescriptive approach to art that iconoclasts such as Eliot, Woolf, and Wordsworth were writing against in their critical works. And the ironic formulation of “a direct feedback loop” can only embody the collapse between the notion of a writer who is also a critic and a writer who writes to fit a critic’s definition of art. I almost fell for it, but your use of Eco in place of the Italian futurists gave it away. You post-structuralists and your immanent critiques.
I have no doubt that in the near future most professional developers (and a great many others besides) will have had training in the academy; nor do I doubt that academics have a great deal to offer to our understandings of the field; in fact, the reason why I came here in the first place was precisely to listen and to learn from the discussions you and your colleagues have been having. I am grateful to people like yourself who take the time to advance these debates and bring rigorously developed insights to them, as well as to our host Dr. Juul (and others) for publicizing and disseminating the themes of these conversations, and to folks like (soon to be Dr., no doubt) Salisbury for providing access to the fruits of his labors through links and electronic publications to those of us who would not otherwise have access to them.
My only reservation, the only point of skepticism I have tried to raise, is that in trying to formulate ways for academics to improve game development, some thought be given to the proper forms–the strengths and weaknesses of the academic endeavor–in consideration of which, it may be less important to talk at the industry, and more important to talk with us.
It is my hope, perhaps vain, that the value of this exchange might lie on both sides. Perhaps one day there will be a conference on what game developers can offer to improve the process of academic game studies.
Eyejinx.
For my money there already is such a conference, Eyejinx: The GDC. It may not be perfect, but I listen and learn more there than at any other conference I know.
See you at GDC in March?
One more thing, Eyejinx: Obviously I am not going to respond to your proust-structural side-step, excellently done though it was, but how about you put those skills to work and give us a critically adept industry insider’s view on the game/story issue? This is one issue where academics do far too much of the talking, so if you did, I would listen very carefully indeed.
Fair cop on the GDC. I tend to think of the “by developers for developers” side, but you’re absolutely right that there’s this whole big section of the conference devoted to academics. Next time I go, I may need to pay more attention.
As for the game/story issue, as you mentioned, we’re all busy, but I’ll contact you offline about it.
Apologies if I stepped on any toes with my attempt at jouissance.
Eyejinx.