The Social Dimensions of Digital Gaming
Tutorial, GDC 2006
March 20

Popular conceptions of the digital game industry are slow to change but this is influenced in part by deeply held beliefs about the anti-social character of information technologies from television and the Internet, to cell phones and digital games. Contemporary cultures of gaming and game design have long ago abandoned the archetypal user of the pre-pubescent boy sitting alone in his room. Today, the landscape of games covers the gamut of human social experience from introspective explorations of self-identity, to small group cooperative and competitive play, to LAN parties and massively multiplayer online games. All this suggests that some form of social experience is endemic to digital games and the industry would benefit from further reflection on what that experience consists of.

This tutorial brings together expert social scientists doing research on game design, play and culture to work with designers in generating useful vocabularies for making sense of the social dimensions of digital games. Content will focus on identifying and mobilizing key sociological concepts for design practice, reviewing methodological tools useful for studying gamers and game culture, and present current research findings by a number of academics working in the field.

Idea Takeaway:
Attendees will gain knowledge of how to recognize and analyze the social component of games and new and productive ways. In addition, practical advice and methodological tools will be offered for developing this aspect of all game design.

Intended Audience:
Developers, producers, managers, marketers and those involved in all aspects of game design across all genres from solo games to MMOGs. No previous knowledge of methods or social science required.

Schedule:
* 10:00-10:10 - Welcome/Introduction - Frans Mäyrä, president of DiGRA (University of Tampere, Finland)

* 10:15-11:00 - The Social Dimension of Games
What does it mean for games to have a social dimension? What is the difference between social, socializing and sociable games? How do the social aspects of play affect the fun, immersiveness and marketability of games? How do players build on collective experiences, practices, and knowledge to shape their game experience? These are some of the questions that will considered by the experts on this panel in laying out the groundwork for a sociology of games and gamers.
Speakers:
Constance Steinkhueler (University of Wisconsin, Madison) - Research Through Guild Leadership & Management
Mia Consalvo (Ohio University) - Games as Communicative Spaces
Thomas Malaby (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee)

* 11:00-11:15 - Morning coffee break

* 11:15-12:30 - Methods in Social Game Studies
This session will introduce participants to social science methods useful in the design, marketing and assessment of digital games. A brief overview of the techniques (such as surveys, ethnography, data mining, interviews) including a discussion of their uses and limits, will be presented as well as examples from current research.

Speakers:
Dmitri Williams (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) - Methods for Empirical Game Research
TL Taylor (IT University of Copenhagen) - Ethnography in Game Studies
Nick Yee (Stanford University) - discussant

* 12:30-14:00 - Lunch break

* 14:00-15:00 - Keynote
Julian Dibbell - Money for Nothing: In Search of the Vanishing Line Between Work and Play

* 15:00-16:15 - Gaming in the Global Context
This session will look at a variety of issues raised by the worldwide context of gaming. It will explore the ways in which play and the use of games are shaped by their specific cultural and national contexts, as well as the cross-cultural potentials at work in the globalization of games.

Speakers:
Beth Kolko (University of Washington, Seattle) - Cultural Narratives and Game Conventions: The Continuing Challenge of Localization
Joshua Fouts and Doug Thomas (University of Southern California) - MMOGs as Global Spaces: Public Diplomacy Around The World
Bart Simon (Concordia University, Montreal) - discussant

* 16:15-16:30 - Afternoon coffee break
* 16:30-17:30 - Workshop/Panel: Designers Meets Social Scientists
A fitting end to the tutorial; three designers will be paired with three social scientists to play a kind of "matchmaking game" that brings together design and social science research.
Participants:
Eric Zimmerman (GameLab)
Raph Koster (SOE)
Heather Kelley (Ubisoft)
Matt Adams (Blast Theory)
Mikael Jakobsson (Malmö University, Sweden)
Torill Mortensen (Volda College, Norway)
Suzanne De Castell (Simon Fraser University, Canada)

*17:30-18:00 - Wrap-up/FinalQ&A