My Games Design

I'm pleased to announce I now have two more papers published on my PhD research. The first article, " Game-Play Breakdowns and Breakthroughs: Exploring the Relationship Between Action, Understanding and Involvement " is in Human Computer Interaction and focuses on the case studies I carried out how they resulted in a theory of the relationship between learning and involvement within the context of games. The theory is represented as a set of 14 claims that relate to: micro and macro involvement; breakdowns and breakthroughs in action, understanding and involvement; progress ; and agency, meaning and compelling game-play . In particular, the paper emphasises the ways in which players experience learning via breakthroughs in understanding, where involvement is increased when the player feels responsible for progress. We also argue that supporting the relationship between learning and involvement is vital for ensuring the success of commercial and educational games. (Y...

Last month I went to the first CHI Play conference in Toronto - and it was fun :-) The full papers from the conference are openly available for a short time only so make sure to check them out here . On the Sunday I took part in the somewhat provocatively titled "Participatory Design for Serious Game Design: Truth and Lies" workshop organised by Rilla Khaled, Mina Vasalou, Vero Vanden Abeele, and Maarten Van Mechelen. Participatory design (PD) is something I've recently become more interested in and our submission " Designing Persuasive Games through Competition " was about how PD influenced the organisation of the competition I ran at UCL earlier this year and some of the tensions that arose during the whole process. The workshop was a great experience as I got to meet a load of interesting people and to hear about different types of PD game research . And I learnt that defining PD, while a good learning experience, isn't particularly easy! On the followin...

 Last month I was invited to present at the Aarhus University's Interacting Minds mini-conference on "Failing and Confusion in Games and Gaming" along with Jesper Juul , Dennis Ramirez and Charlotte Janasson . Thanks to Andreas Lieberoth for the invite and organising a seriously interesting day :-) Mine was the final talk of the day, where I presented some of my PhD research on Investigating Game-play: Are Breakdowns in Action and Understanding Detrimental to Involvement? (see pic below). You can find my slides here . I'm waiting to hear back about a journal paper we put together on the findings but in the meantime you can check out my DiGRA paper on why I did not find physiological data to be useful for identifying breakdowns and breakthroughs in game-play. My main argument was that action and understanding breakdowns will contribute to involvement when the player feels responsible for overcoming them but that they will decrease involvement if they take too long ...

Last week I went to CHI in Paris - it's been a while since I've been to a major academic conference and I seem to have gotten out of the habit of blogging so I thought I would use this as an excuse to get back into it :-) Plus there was a lot of game sessions that have got me thinking. It all started last Sunday with the MediCHI workshop . This was a good opportunity to talk to about the work I'm doing on CHI+MED , with respect to medical device safety, and to meet others in the field. The main conference started on Monday with a keynote from Paola Antonelli from MOMA . She gave us an overview of lots of intriguing design projects that MOMA has exhibited and while no specific HCI challenges were made explicit during the talk, I was reminded about how technology, including games, can make people think. Particularly interesting examples include PIG 05049 (Christien Meindertsma) and the Menstruation Machine (Hiromi Ozaki/Sputniko!). She also mentioned their recent games col...

My thesis is finally available via ORO: Digital Games: Motivation, Engagement and Informal Learning .  I've included the abstract below though please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or comments :-) This thesis investigates the relationships between motivation, engagement and informal learning, with respect to digital games and adult players. Following the reconceptualisation of motivation and engagement (as forms of micro and macro level involvement respectively) three linked studies were conducted. In the first study, 30 players were interviewed via email about their gaming experiences. The resulting set of learning categories and themes drew attention to learning on a game, skill and personal level, which arose from micro-level gameplay and macro-level interaction with wider communities and resources. The second investigation consisted of eight case studies that examined how involvement and learning come together in practice. Participants were observed in the ...

It really has been ages since I last used this blog. Good news is I have finished the thesis! Viva passed, minor corrections and the final submission due at the start of Sept :-) I will make sure to post a link to it once the final version has been approved. The last few months have been stupidly busy - I also started a new job at UCLIC - but I have managed to get some game-playing in. There are some thoughts I'd like to get down about those soon but for now I just wanted to post a video of my friend Rob Farrow presenting a paper we wrote together at the Philosophy and Computer Games conference earlier this year. There's some points he makes about meaning and choice that I'd like to think about more - particularly in relation to Skyrim and Mass Effect 3. But for now, here's "In The Game'? Embodied Subjectivity in Gaming Environments". Thanks Rob :-) UPDATE: We also had a longer journal article published in Philosophy & Technology , which you can find...

As I mentioned in the last post, my recent part-time work where I've been looking at digital scholarship at the OU, has got me thinking about what it might mean to be a scholar in the digital age and how openness can be a part of that. I have touched upon aspects of my research in this blog, but mostly I tend to use it as a way to reflect about my own gaming experiences and as a way to keep track of my thoughts about different events I go to. As I was writing up the post about ECGBL 2011 , I realised that I really did want to say more about what I had been doing and this might be quite a useful thing to do, especially as I'm currently writing up my PhD thesis. So, in terms of what I have done my research, consists of three phases. Phase one included a conceptual overview of different frameworks of engagement and motivation and a set of interviews with a range of different games players (from casual to hardcore). This led to the development of a set of learning categories, which...

After rearranging flights to avoid the air traffic control strike, I made it to Athens last week for the 5th European Conference of Game Based Learning . Not everyone was so lucky but I was pretty impressed with the conference organisers for managing to make sure the conference went ahead and that we all were looked after so well whilst we were there. It was a bit surreal having to avoid the crowds of protesters on the way to the conference venue and trying to make sure we didn't get caught up in any of the running battles with riot police on the way back... We did avoid the worst of it (which, on the first conference day involved ducking into a restaurant for a little while until the trouble outside died down!) with only piles of burnt rubbish around the city to remind of us of what was going on (see below). Oh, and t-shirts like this :-) In terms of the conference itself, I am very glad I managed to make it as it was a great opportunity to meet up with people I had met before, li...

I recently got back from the 5th DiGRA conference - it was held at the Utrecht School of Arts in Hilversum, and has seriously given me a lot to think about! So much so that I think I'm going to have to split the post into two parts. The conference opened on the Wednesday night at club De Vorstin setting up a playful atmosphere with Chick n' Run races (where you have to rock back and forth on adult-sized play garden chickens against an opponent), B.U.T.T.O.N. (encouraging Brutally Unfair Tactics are Totally OK Now as you physically do all you can to win or stop your opponents from winning - one of many there from the Copehagen Game Collective ), and a Do It Yourself DJ installation (with which you can mix audio samples using old school cassette tapes) to name just a few of the attractions on offer. Plus Kid Koala performed the opening "keynote" - gotta love a conference that's opened by a guy in a koala suit! The next day, Eric Zimmerman's keynote gave t...

So like I said I was in Nottingham last week for a couple of things, as well as the ITAG conference there was the GameCity 5 . I went along last year too, so had a better idea what to expect this time. The festival had the usual marquee in Market Square though one half of the arena was devoted to EA and the Nottingham Primary Care Trust who partnered up to "bring you the Best Health club in the WORLD" (according to the GameCity website anyway). That was a bit weird to be honest - games promoting fitness... still not sure I've got my head around all that though that doesn't mean I think it's a bad thing, just different. The other side was much closer to home though, as it was full of couches and TVs so people could comfortably try out different games: Like the new Lego Universe - a massively multiplayer experience that has just been launched. It looked cute and funny, though I got the impression it's being aimed at younger players. And Confetti Carnival, devel...

I spent yesterday afternoon at the Eurogamer Expo at Earl's Court in London. Here's a photo of me trying out Fallout: New Vegas . As I just picked up from where someone else left off, I had no idea what I was doing so ended up shooting randomly at some people I think I was probably supposed to help. I didn't play for long as the people weren't very happy with me shooting at them and I died pretty soon after, so I'm not sure what to say about it. It felt a lot like the previous Fallout I guess, though the colours were less grey and more orange this time. Hmm, I'm thinking whatever happens after this PhD, I'm probably not going to get paid for writing game reviews... I know these events are supposed to give you a chance to try new releases, but I'm not sure how comfortable I feel playing in public. It seems a little too close to performing, even though I'm pretty sure no one is actually judging how well I'm doing. Plus, I think when it comes to ne...