The Play’s the Thing: Practicing Play as Community Foundation and Design Technique

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Fullerton Tracy
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

Earth balls, parachutes, word plays, provocative magic ... This session is a discussion of the USC Game Design Community, an attempt to encourage inter-disciplinary game design and research through community play experiments. The USC Game Design Community is a cross-departmental student group responsible for initiating a series of social play experiments designed to bring students and researchers from various schools of the University together. The play experiments of the previous year culminated in a game innovation research grant offered to an inter-disciplinary student team and a test of our overall assumption that playing together can provide disparate groups with common vocabulary, social relationships and collaboratively generated design concepts.

 

Representing Users in the Design of Digital Games

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Kerr Aphra
2002 Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings

While economic and sociological studies have generally recognised the important explicit role that users play in shaping a technological artefact - through feedback channels after launch and market trials and studies before launch - there has been less exploration into the more implicit strategies by which designers attempt to pre-figure users prior to launch. Given that design involves making choices, and framing the choices made by users, this paper suggests that Madeline Akrich's approach (1992, 1995) may provide a constructive tool for exploring more implicit strategies of representing users in the early stages of the design process. It may also prove useful in exploring how users can be excluded or alienated through design. While acknowledging that users may actively negotiate designers' representations this paper will explore the usefulness of the Akrich approach in relation to understanding the design of digital games. A study in 2001 of production in digital games companies in Ireland found that various macro, meso and micro level factors play a role in limiting the games developed and the user groups developed for. This paper will present findings from ongoing research conducted in 2002 into the reasons why and how one start-up company decided to design a multiplayer online game for males aged 25-40.

 

The winner takes all: Standardization and console games

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Nieborg David B
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

Drawing on media economics and critical theory and political economy, this paper will provide a critical reading of the blockbuster video game. While blockbuster games are considered to be highly innovative by constantly pushing technological boundaries, they are also considered to be formulaic and its themes and game mechanics fairly predictable. The hit-driven nature of contemporary console publishing translates into a particular mode of cultural production and circulation affecting all aspects of the video game's cultural form.

 

Problem Based Game Design – Engaging Students by Innovation

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Reng Lars Schoenau-Fog Henrik
2011 DiGRA '11 - Proceedings of the 2011 DiGRA International Conference: Think Design Play

At Aalborg University’s department of Medialogy, we are utilizing the Problem Based Learning method to encourage students to solve game design problems by pushing the boundaries and designing innovative games. This paper is concerned with describing this method, how students employ it in various projects and how they learn to analyse, design, and develop for innovation by using it. We will present various cases to exemplify the approach and focus on how the method aspires for innovation in digital entertainment and games.

 

Wherever Hardware, There’ll be Games: The Evolution of Hardware and Shifting Industrial Leadership in the Gaming Industry

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Jörnmark Jan Axelsson Ann-Sofie Ernkvist Mirko
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

The paper concerns the role of hardware in the evolution of the video game industry. The paper argues that it is necessary to understand the hardware side of the industry in several senses. Hardware has a key role with regard to innovation and industrial leadership. Fundamentally, the process can be understood as a function of Moore’s law. Because of the constantly evolving technological frontier, platform migration has become necessary. Industrial success has become dependent upon the ability to avoid technological lock-ins. Moreover, different gaming platforms has had a key role in the process of market widening. Innovatory platforms has opened up previously untouched customer segments. It is argued that today’s market situation seems to be ideal to the emergence of new innovatory industrial combinations.