Dear Douglas

Welcome to the list. Apologies in advance for my long philosophical post, which has been a pleasant distraction from the writing I should be doing...

I'm sympathetic to your quandary, having struggled with it myself.
I found it helpful to think about research as a performative space (like a game I guess) rather than just a way of capturing something else that already exists.

The idea of performativity comes from J.L. Austin's theory of speech acts and is used as an analytical tool in the social sciences.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performative_turn

Using performativity as a research approach got me out of the dilemma you write about, in my case by helping me to recognize the academic politics that push us to perform creative practice as research.

However, the idea of performativity means you can't just think of research as theoretical critique (although this strategy did help me feel less 'dishonest'). Once you see research as being a performance that produces its own grounds of possibility then you also see how interdependent we are with the things we research. And this brings with it an ethical responsibility.

For example, you mention the way academic concerns 'pollute' the atmosphere of chaotic playfulness in game design. I'm interested you use the pollution metaphor, as if the academic world is bad for design. But why do we think these must be kept apart?

Why does 'play' always end up as the black box of designing, when we all know that creating a space for contingency is integral to a lot of design practices? Isn't it the balance between playfulness and structural determination that makes designs affective and therefore commercially successful (see Ash, 2010).

So why do we continue with a 'design methodology' that privileges a deterministic shaping of action?  And why do we continue to embody the distinction between academic practice and design practice by trying to maintain 'two lives'? (Big questions!)

I like the way some human geographers are thinking about this.  JK Gibson-Graham  (2 geographers who write collaboratively) write about  "...the power and responsibility that devolves upon scholars once we acknowledge the performativity of our teaching and research. When ontology becomes the effect rather than the ground of knowledge, we lose the comfort and safety of a subordinate relation to 'reality' and can no longer seek to capture accurately what already exists; interdependence and creativity are thrust upon us as we become implicated in the very existence of the worlds that we research. Every question about what to study and how to study it becomes an ethical opening; every decision entails profound responsibility. The whole notion of academic ethics is simultaneously enlarged and transformed" (Gibson-Graham 2008 p. 620)

Clearly this won't make the game of research any less stressful, but for me, a lot more satisfying and (dare I say) 'real'.

Best wishes
Amanda

Ash J, 2010, "Architectures of affect: anticipating and manipulating the event in processes of videogame design and testing" Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 28(4) 653 - 671

Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2008). Diverse economies: performative practices for `other worlds'. Progress in Human Geography, 32(5), 613-632.


Dr Amanda Bill
Institute of Design for Industry and Environment
College of Creative Arts
Massey University, Wellington
New Zealand

+64 4 8012794 ext 6430

email: [log in to unmask]





On 6/01/11 12:42 AM, "Douglas Wilson" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi all,

I'm a practicing game designer, and also a PhD student in game studies
at IT University of Copenhagen. New to the list.

I'm struggling to make sense of how my two lives (practice and research)
relate to one another, and I could use some suggestions as to how I can
defend my methodology (or not) in my dissertation. I could also use some
suggestions for literature that I should be reading.

Basically, it's becoming increasingly important to me that my design
work NOT be considered "research." I run a game design collective, and I
work primarily with friends who are /not/ academics. Often, we make
games just for the fun of it - for the joy of each other's company, or
in celebration of the playful as an end in itself. Sometimes, we
approach game design more instrumentally, and try to make games that we
can sell or that will make some upcoming exhibition. In either case,
we've found that our most successful/memorable designs frequently
originate unexpectedly - for instance, while sitting around drinking,
out on the town - with little prior expectation that we were going to
design anything. This kind of design practice is super messy, and
situated in a specific social scene that has little to do with the
academic world.

In my other life as a games researcher, I sit in my university office.
Every so often I realize, somewhat post-facto, that one of our game
projects might be relevant to my theoretical work on alternative
possibilities for the design of digitally mediated games. Then, I write
a journal article or chapter - grounded in various academic literatures
- recounting my experience as the designer. I try to raise certain
provocative conjectures based on an in-depth case study of the game that
I have co-designed. I see this kind of research as
hypothesis-generating, not hypothesis-validating. I make sure to
emphasize that my perspective is colored by my role as the designer,
both for good and ill.

My perspective here clearly stands at odds with design
theory-practitioners like Anthony Dunne. Dunne writes: "[The conceptual
designs in this book] are not necessarily illustrations of the ideas
discussed in earlier chapters, nor are the earlier chapters an
explanation of these proposals. They evolved simultaneously and are part
of the same design process" [1, p.xviii]. But for me, it's important to
have a clean separation, because I don't want theoretical or academic
concerns to "pollute" the atmosphere in my social circle of co-designers
- at least not when we're "in the moment." I do see how one might
counter-argue that such a separation is artificial. Obviously I only
have one brain, so the interchange between my design and academic work
probably isn't as one-directional as I'm suggesting. Nevertheless,
experience shows me that is /useful/ for me, as a designer, to think
about my work in such a cleanly separated way, in order to avoid those
"pollution" issues mentioned above.

My problem is, I keep getting feedback from reviewers and advisers who
ask me to discuss my design work as a "research method." But I feel like
this isn't so fair. Take Daniel Fallman's triangle model of interaction
design research [2]. I don't think my design work qualifies under what
Fallman calls "design practice" as it relates to research, because I
don't do my design work "with an explicit design research question in
mind" [2, p.6]. Indeed, I would argue that our lack of methodology is
very deliberate; especially in a field like game design, it's crucial
that our work be infused with a kind of deeply chaotic playfulness (Bill
Gaver makes a similar point in his work on "ludic design" [3]).
Similarly, Fallman's depiction of "design exploration" is unsatisfactory
to me because my design work is not "driven by ideals or theory" [2, p.8].

As for the validity or usefulness of the academic component of my work,
I would argue that there is something useful to be gleamed from someone
who has been there throughout the whole design process, and who is able
to articulate those experiences, post-facto, within a specific set of
academic discourses. In this sense, I think my case studies could
possibly be viewed as literature-grounded, peer-reviewed artist statements.

I guess what am asking is: can someone recommend any literature that I
can use to help defend my design method (or lack thereof)?
Alternatively, I'd be interested if someone could convince me that I'm
indeed being "dishonest" in the way in which I work.

Phew, that was a long email. By some luck, maybe some of you even read it.

Skål,

- Doug -


References:

[1] Dunne, A. (2005). /Hertzian Tales: Electronic Products, Aesthetic
Experience, and Critical Design/. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

[2] Fallman, D. (2008). The Interaction Design Research Triangle of
Design Practice, Design Studies, and Design Exploration. /Design
Issues/, Vol 24, No. 3, Summer 2008, p. 4-18. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT
Press.

[3] Gaver, W. (2008). Designing for Homo Ludens, Still. In Binder, T.,
Löwgren, J., and Malmborg, L. (eds.) /(Re)Searching the Digital
Bauhaus/. London: Springer, p. 163-178.

--
Douglas Wilson

PhD candidate, IT University of Copenhagen
Co-founder, Copenhagen Game Collective

www.doougle.net
www.cphgc.org