Abstract on Game Design Research Paper

By- Annakaisa Kultima

University of Tampere

In this paper, notions of game studies, games research, game design, and
design research are examined. As a most popular keyword on game research
papers ‘game design’ connects the interdiscipline of game studies. However, it
is typical that notions of ‘design’ and ‘design research’ are not explicitly
reflected on the research papers within the academic field of game research.
The lack of onversation between game studies and general design research is
visible, yet historically explainable. However, considering the maturity of the
field, the presence of the theoretical frameworks of design research should be
improved. Understanding game studies as design research potentially
improves our understanding on game design and alleviates the bridging of the
epistemic gap between the practice and academia.

In 2008 Staffan Björk wrote how the “interest in research on gamerelated

topics has grown strongly in recent years following the widespread success of
computer games as cultural and commercial phenomena” and how “a certain
level of friction has existed regarding what constitute proper methods and
research questions”. Björk was searching for “an axis mundi” for game
research. He suggested that the different research interests within the rising
academic field were easily mapped on the three game concepts games, gamers
and gaming. Also in 2008, Frans Mäyrä conceptualized how the focus of game
studies lies in the interaction between game and player, informed by their
various contextual frames. In his introductory book to game studies the
intersecting views were grouped into
1) study of games
2) study of players
3) study of the contexts of the previous two

On their examination of the academic publications of game research within the

period of 2000-2014, Mercel etc. identified ‘game design’ as the most used
keyword among the over 20 000 unique keywords presented in 8207 articles.
While the mere weight of this finding could be telling, it is hardly simple to
interpret. ‘Game design’ can be connected to the wide variety of research
papers for various different reasons. Be it a technical oriented paper of an
inventive algorithm or a study of a game forum discussion – if the authors
addressed even vaguely the potential impact of the study into practice, the
keyword can be found central. Authors themselves do not need to be
identified as game design researchers. Anecdotally, when asking game
developers to describe their conception of game design, the responses can be
vastly varying on the ontological level of the content. For one, ‘game design’
can mean “emotion engineering” or “largely communication” whilst for the
other “everything that goes into a game is more or less game design.” On the
more formal matter, many designers have gone extra mile to explicate their
conceptions of the game design. Due to the young age of the field, it is not rare
to see these design guidebooks written by the industry actors cited in the
academic papers. Some of the books can be even considered as part of the
“canon” of the game studies. Katie Salen’s & Eric Zimmerman’s book Rules of
Play: Game Design Fundamentals discussing the different schemata of game
design (rules, play, culture) is perhaps one of these. Written for the designers,
the book is widely4 used by the young field of researchers – and often perhaps
even misunderstood by the research community due to the differing epistemic
needs of the industry and the academia (inspiration vs. foundation).
Conceivably one of their most cited original notion is the notion of “second
order design”. This is to illustrate the indirect nature of designing games as
computer mediated experiences: “game design is a second-order design
problem. A game designer designs the rules of the game directly but designs
the player’s experience only indirectly”.

Perhaps due to the absence of the academic counterparts for game design
theories, game studies continues to use the early conceptions of the industry
driven game design books. Perhaps academically driven critical approaches
towards the industry literature is a sort of a trial in pushing the theories and
the conceptions proposed by the experienced designers further towards the
academic account. However, there is a rising body of literature on the design
tools, processes and methods within the game studies. This type of
development is not something that is unique to game research. Lucienne
Blessing and Amaresh Chakrabarti have been suggesting that design research
can be considered to have passed through three overlapping phases:
Experiential, Intellectual and Experimentl/Empirical. In the Experiential phase
senior designers wrote about their experiences of the design process and the
resulting products, in the Intellectual phase logical and consistent basis for
design and many methodologies, principles and methods were proposed and
in the Experimental/Empirical phase empirical studies were undertaken to
gather data, both in the laboratory and in practice, in order to understand how
designers and design teams actually design, and what impact the methods and
tools had on the process. Such narrative of the progress of design theories
seem to be in line with the understanding of the current field of game design
research – even though Blessing and Chakrabarti positioned the development
of the general design research already on the previous century, time well
before the digital games

The loose historical account of the progress of the design research by Blessing
and Chakrabarti is far from being elaborate enough in opening the whole
picture of the historical development of design research. According to Nigel
Cross, the desire to “scientise” design emerged as early as in the 1920s and
surfaced again in the design methods movement of the 1960s. The Conference
on Design Methods in 1962 is generally regarded as the launch of design
methodology as an academic field and the 1960s has even been heralded as
the “design science decade” fashioned by the positivistic attitude on the
potential of the combination of design and science. Cross further discusses
how terms such as ‘design science’ and ‘science of design’ bear a different
meaning: former refers to a search for a single method for science-like design
and the latter to the study of designing as academic endeavor. The modern
term of ‘design research’ is to Cross a goal of “development, articulation and
communication of design knowledge”. Furthermore the sources of such
knowledge to him are to be found in people, processes and products.
Following, his taxonomy for the field of design research falls into three main
categories: design epistemology (study of designerly ways of knowing), design
praxiology (study of the practices and processes of design) and design
phenomenology (study of the form and configuration of artifacts). To Cross the
challenge for design research is to be at the same time interdisciplinary and
disciplined – a “paradoxical task of creating an interdisciplinary discipline.”
In some level, approaching game design as design research could revolutionize
the way that we see game studies. The ‘design’, ‘designer’, ‘process’ and
‘practice’ have been previously part of the box of “context” or otherwise in the
periphery whereas ‘game’, ‘player’ and ‘playing’ have being the dominate
conceptual tools . Following the taxonomies, conceptualizations and
categorizations of design generalists, we could end up in different emphasis on
the theorizing over games. Even though such a “design turn” in game studies
might not be as overarching as the “ludological turn” was, it certainly could be
eye-opening and contribute to the maturing of the field itself.

In this paper, the notion of game design research has been discussed. In result
of the examination, the emphasis of the design research as a theoretical
background for future research within the community of game studies is
encouraged. If such effort would not lead to the revolutionizing the
“interdisciplinary discipline” of games research, it would add depth to the
many issues of game design already widely explored and perhaps help bring
the relevant topics closer together on a such fast developed field of
interdiscipline as game studies.