Framing Play: the Relevance of Game Studies for Design Discipline and the Value of Design Research for Game Design Education

The gaming industry has seen dramatic change and expansion with the emergence of ‘casual’ games that promote shorter periods of gameplay. Free to download, but structured around micropayments, these games raise the complex relationship between game design and commercial strategies. Although offering a free gameplay experience in line with open access philosophies, these games also create systems that offer control over the temporal dynamics of that experience to monetize player attention and inattention. This article will examine three ‘freemium’ games, Snoopy Street Fair, The Simpsons’ Tapped Out and Dragonvale, to explore how they combine established branding strategies with gameplay methods that monetize player impatience. In examining these games, this article will ultimately indicate the need for game studies to interrogate the intersection between commercial motivations and game design and a broader need for media and cultural studies to consider the social, cultural, economic and political implications of impatience.

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Game Design Education "Terjumlah" Using Kinect Sensor

Journal of Business and Technology ◽

10.24167/jbt.v1i1.3220 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 1

Author(s):

Yedija Prima Putra ◽

Erdhi Widyarto Nugroho ◽

Hendra Prasetya

Keyword(s):

Game Design ◽

Design Education ◽

Kinect Sensor ◽

Educational Value ◽

Game World

At present, the development of the game world is increasing. A lot of which utilize various sensors as input. However, many of these games have no educational value. Therefore, the game titled "Terjumlah" is designed, which has educational value, in this case math material. In the making of the game, collaborated using kinect sensor that can detect the movement of the user, to be more active and interactive.

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Is Pokémon GO Feminist? An Actor-Network Theory Analysis

Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association ◽

10.26503/todigra.v3i3.78 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 3 (3) ◽

Author(s):

Carina Assuncao

Keyword(s):

Network Theory ◽

Game Design ◽

Science And Technology Studies ◽

Actor Network Theory ◽

Game Studies ◽

Entertainment Media ◽

Actor Network ◽

Pokémon Go ◽

Politics And Gender ◽

And Gender

The Pokémon franchise has been targeted and has been successful with males and females (Tobin, 2004). In it, cute-looking creatures with superpowers fight each other for the fame and glory of their masters (the players). The franchise includes a plethora of entertainment media. This essay will focus on the recent release, Pokémon GO. This particular game and its location-based technology will be analysed using cyberfeminism and actor-network theory to explore the play space as a context for kinaesthetic awareness and embodiment. The cyberfeminism herein exploited is that of “the utopian tradition of imagining a world without gender” (Haraway, 2000, p. 292). Actor-network theory, a strong methodological tradition in science and technology studies, sees actors and the networks they create as completely ‘flat’ and non-hierarchical. ANT has been criticised for its lack of concern with politics and gender (Lagesen, 2012) but, in combination with a feminist lens, ANT has the potential to uncover issues that other approaches in game studies cannot. This original framework can help game studies scholars to see gameplay processes in a new light by following the many actors involved in game design and use.

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What Can Play: The Potential of Non-Human Players

Pivot: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies and Thought ◽

10.25071/2369-7326.40291 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Kara Stone

Keyword(s):

Game Design ◽

Animal Studies ◽

Game Studies ◽

The Other ◽

New Materialism ◽

Donna Haraway ◽

Cause And Effect ◽

History Of ◽

Post Humanism

What can post-humanism teach us about game design? This paper questions the line drawn between what species and matter can play and what cannot play. Combining works by scholars of feminist post-humanism, new materialism, and game studies, primarily Jane Bennett, Donna Haraway, and T.L. Taylor, it proposes that play is a form of communication not only between animals and humans but also between plants and cyborgs, insects and atoms. Beginning by interrogating the borders of the human that have been built on ableist and racist discourses, this paper moves towards considering the human as interspecies and outlines that we must reassess the ways in which a multiplicity of species experience the intra-action that constitutes “play.” With a brief look into the history of defining play in both game studies and animal studies and their small crossover, play is reconfigured into an outlook or an approach rather than a set of rules. It is a drive that all species and matter experience, including insects, bacteria, and metal. This moves us beyond considering solely the materiality of our bodies at play by reconsidering the objects of play as our co-players, as matter with agential force. I argue that we need to reconsider the videogame player as an interspecies being, an assemblage of human and non-human bodies. The de-anthropocentricization of the popular notions of player agency allows for a multiplicity of reactions not created in the linear cause and effect course, the belief in ultimate player control within procedural systems, which dominates game studies. This paper concludes by submitting possibilities of what considering the non-human through a feminist and anti-ableist lens can offer game designers, players, and critics, such as considering the material platform’s impact on play, reforming the individualistic agency of players, and designing for the Other(s).

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Exploring traditional thread-making and simple weaving used in OPP lamination film upcycling for ecologically responsible textile craft

IOP Conference Series Earth and Environmental Science ◽

10.1088/1755-1315/905/1/012030 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 905 (1) ◽

pp. 012030

Author(s):

R E Santoso ◽

L A Utami

Keyword(s):

Design Education ◽

Design Research ◽

Raw Materials ◽

Plastic Waste ◽

Raw Material ◽

Environmental Care ◽

Traditional Technology ◽

Cradle To Cradle ◽

Craft Community ◽

Woven Textile

Abstract Aiming for sustainable eco-friendly craft/design practice, this design research explored upcycling-practice of OPP plastic waste using traditional technology to create an alternative raw material for textile craft. By combining cultural investigation into the textile-making tradition with Cradle-to-Cradle design principles, we identified the potential of traditional technology as an ecologically responsible production process. We also developed upcycling method to process OPP plastic waste material. This research resulted in: (1) thread-making techniques that produce different sizes of thread as raw materials and hand-woven textile, (2) revitalized endangered indigenous technology of craft-making that had been a part of human-nature ecology, (3) eco-design education that can be accepted by local textile craft community, and (4) textile craft products that express the local identity and promote environmental care.

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DESIGN THINKING MODELS IN DESIGN RESEARCH AND EDUCATION

SOCIETY INTEGRATION EDUCATION Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference ◽

10.17770/sie2016vol4.1584 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 4 ◽

pp. 488 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Andra Irbīte ◽

Aina Strode

Keyword(s):

Design Education ◽

Design Research ◽

Design Thinking ◽

Social Economic ◽

Interdisciplinary Cooperation ◽

Public Higher Education ◽

Traditional Design ◽

Systems Requirements ◽

Research And Education ◽

Is Design

Design thinking has become a paradigm that is considered to be useful in solving many problems in different areas: both in development of design projects and outside of traditional design practice. It raises the question - is design thinking understood as a universal methodology in all cases? How it is interpreted in design education? The analysis of theoretical and design related literature indicates different basic and contextual challenges facing design today: increasing scale of social, economic and industrial borders; complexity of environment and systems; requirements in all levels. As specialists and researchers in the field of design have concluded, here are multiple disconnects betweenwhat the graduate design schools are teaching at the level of methods and what skills is already needed. The problems have been found also in interdisciplinary cooperation and research. In the context of design thinking models and problem solving methods, the analysis shows that design education implementers in public higher education institutions in Latvia are ready for local and global challenges.

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Players’ Experience in a Sport Geocaching Game

Emerging Research and Trends in Interactivity and the Human-Computer Interface ◽

10.4018/978-1-4666-4623-0.ch006 ◽

2014 ◽

pp. 127-143 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Pirita Ihamäki ◽

Mika Luimula

Keyword(s):

Game Design ◽

Design Research ◽

Academic Research ◽

Internet Survey ◽

Complex Environments ◽

Outdoor Sports ◽

Adventure Game ◽

Player Experiences ◽

Prevalent Form

Geocaching is a multiplayer outdoor sports game. There is a lack of extensive research on this game, and there is a need for more academic research on this game and its application to other contexts worldwide. There are about 5 million people participating in the geocaching game in 220 different countries worldwide. The geocaching game is interesting because the players create it. The players’ role in game design increases its value in human-centred design research. Digital games are a prevalent form of entertainment in which the purpose of the design is to engage the players. This case study was carried out with 52 Finnish geocachers as an Internet survey. The purpose of this conceptual analysis is to investigate how the geocaching sports game might inform game design by looking at player experiences, devices, and techniques that support problem solving within complex environments. Specifically, this analysis presents a brief overview of the geocaching sports game, its role in popular adventure game design, and an analysis of the underlying players’ experiences and enjoyment as a structure to be used in game design.

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Apportioned Commodity Fetishism and the Transformative Power of Game Studies

Examining the Evolution of Gaming and Its Impact on Social, Cultural, and Political Perspectives - Advances in Human and Social Aspects of Technology ◽

10.4018/978-1-5225-0261-6.ch005 ◽

2016 ◽

pp. 95-122

Author(s):

Ken S. McAllister ◽

Judd Ethan Ruggill ◽

Tobias Conradi ◽

Steven Conway ◽

Jennifer deWinter ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Game Design ◽

Game Studies ◽

Commodity Fetishism ◽

Transformative Power

This chapter explores the ways in which the field of Game Studies helps shape popular understandings of player, play, and game, and specifically how the field alters the conceptual, linguistic, and discursive apparatuses that gamers use to contextualize, describe, and make sense of their experiences. The chapter deploys the concept of apportioned commodity fetishism to analyze the phenomena of discourse as practice, persona, the vagaries of game design, recursion, lexical formation, institutionalization, systems of self-effectiveness, theory as anti-theory, and commodification.

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Design Learning for Tomorrow — Design Education from Kindergarten to PhD

Form Akademisk - forskningstidsskrift for design og designdidaktikk ◽

10.7577/formakademisk.1409 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Liv Merete Nielsen ◽

Karen Brænne ◽

Ingvill Gjerdrum Maus

Keyword(s):

Applied Sciences ◽

Design Education ◽

Design Research ◽

International Association ◽

Research Society ◽

Decision Makers ◽

Good Time ◽

Art And Design ◽

Design Learning ◽

Traditional Songs

This issue of FORMakademisk is built upon papers from the DRS//CUMULUS Oslo 2013 conference — 2nd International Conference for Design Education Researchers — at Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences (HIOA) 14-17 May 2013 in Oslo. The conference was a cooperative event between the Design Research Society (DRS) and the International Association of Universities and Schools of Design, Art and Media (CUMULUS), and hosted by the Faculty of Technology, Art and Design at HIOA. The theme for the conference was Design Learning for Tomorrow — Design Education from Kindergarten to PhD. The conference received an overwhelming response both ahead of the conference, with 225 admitted papers, and during the conference with 280 delegates from 43 countries listening to 165 presentations and having a good time in Oslo. The last day of the conference was the 17th of May, Norway National Day, with traditional songs and a children’s parade in the centre of Oslo.We see this positive response to the conference as a growing awareness of perceiving design in a broad interdisciplinary perspective in support for a better tomorrow. For years the Design Literacy Research Group, with a base at HIOA in Oslo, has promoted the idea that sustainable design solutions should include more than ‘professional’ designers; they should also include the general public as ‘conscious’ consumers and decision makers with responsibility for quality and longevity, as opposed to a ‘throw-away’ society.

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