The Ivory Tower

July 2004

What scope is there for game researchers, developers and players to collaborate in making games?

by Caroline Pelletier

As we know from the biographies of its leading luminaries, the games industry emerged from the bedrooms of 12 year olds programming games on rustic computers less powerful than contemporary digital alarm clocks. Although many developers remain self-taught, modern game designs and technologies have raised the entry barrier beyond the reach of all but the most dedicated programming prodigies.

A research and development project between the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media (University of London) and Immersive Education is aiming to rectify this situation by developing a software tool which will enable children to create their own computer games, without needing to learn programming. Over the next three years, Immersive Education will release successive prototypes of a game-authoring tool, which educators will take into schools and summer camps to research its uses and benefits. The research will investigate how game making can be taught and learned, and whether the concept of 'literacy' can be extended to the analysis (reading) and production (writing) of computer games.

The project raises many questions for both partners. I'll address a few here to throw some light on the potential scope for partnership between game researchers and developers.

One set of issues relates to the open-ended nature of this kind of R&D. Using rapid prototyping to generate and address research ideas whilst at the same time responding to user input means that both partners only have a general idea of the product they will eventually end up with in three years time. The researchers' challenge is to investigate the educational benefits of a piece of software that keeps shifting its shape. For the software developer, the issue is finding ways of responding to the research and feedback within its core development framework.

A second set of issues relates to the speculative nature of this kind of R&D. Funding for such collaborations is designed to encourage research and development that is justified on the basis of anticipated or desirable future needs. This means there is no guarantee that the final outputs will have an audience. The rationale for the project is that games will move into the school curriculum in the same way that film and television have. This is beginning to happen but it remains unclear whether it will become more than a minority subject and whether teachers and exam boards will incorporate an element of production.

Another potential audience is the home market, where games are generally played. Will many teenagers want to create their own games? Games can be designed as a means of self-expression, in the same way as painting or drawing, but primarily they are interactive media. The point of making a game is to have it played. Would homemade games reach an audience? Researching prototype technology in people's homes is problematic, which is why we work with schools. However, this means we cannot consider game making in the major site for game playing.

A third set of issues concerns the variety of perspectives on the object of study and the extent to which we can productively engage with each other's positions. From our cultural studies background, we view games as social and cultural phenomena that mediate children's relationships and identities. In researching game authoring, we tend to focus on how young people can use games as a means of communication and representation. Immersive Education is interested in how it can make an attractive product. Their software designers want to understand how non-professionals of different age groups can best get involved in the mechanics of game design, and how a game authoring tool can make that experience as easy and intuitive as possible. The teenage end-users involved in the study focus on their experience as players. Games are understood neither in terms of their cultural significance nor their design, but rather through accounts of game play and its associated pleasures.

Finding a common perspective on games has been the major task of the first part of the project. When educators and researchers first started working with a class of 13 year olds, creating paper-based game designs, we defined games predominantly in terms of narrative and representation. What kind of character would you want? What would be the plot?

The result was that we collected valuable data on the motivations and meanings involved in game play. But it was clear that the work produced by students did not constitute game design. Students told stories - the kind that would emerge from playing a game - but did not consider how games work as systems for meaningful interaction. As a result, the research could not significantly address the developer's questions regarding the design of the first prototype.

In order to establish a common language and practice between all parties, we decided to focus on the design of games, starting with board games. Over several weeks, researchers and a small group of nine school students played Snakes & Ladders, Chess, Monopoly and Cluedo. Each week, we discussed how the game had been designed and changed the rules to create new games. Eventually, we considered how board games could be turned into computer games.

Initial findings suggest that this approach has equipped students with a vocabulary and conceptual framework to understand game design. This has helped researchers define what 'game literacy' might involve, and what kind of pedagogic approach and software tools might develop it. The hope is that this puts the research in a stronger position to contribute to development, as the purpose of the prototype is being more closely defined.

This leads to a fourth set of issues, which concerns the different timetables we work by. The research is gradually identifying how game design can be learned, but it only has an early prototype to teach it. This can be frustrating for the students involved in the research, who are trying out prototype software that cannot provide as fulfilling an experience as the eventual final product. Our challenge is framing the research so that when young people use the prototype, they do not focus solely on its current limitations but provide constructive guidance on how it can be developed further. Their understanding of game design is therefore applied not so much to the design of computer games as to analyzing and imagining how a software tool could enable them to make computer games.

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Caroline Pelletier
Caroline Pelletier is a researcher in the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media at the Institute of Education, London. She manages the R&D project "Making Games: developing games authoring software for educational and creative use". She can be contacted at c.pelletier@ioe.ac.uk.