Sometimes, all it takes is a quick email, brief and pragmatic, to open the floodgates wide open. That is how Henrik Engström, professor of Informatics of University of Skövde’s (Sweden) Division of game development, announced his new open access ebook on game development :
I would like to announce a new book on game development research. It is freely available for download: https://gamedevresearch.se. The aim of this book is to give an overview to research that has studied game development “in the wild”, i.e. as it is conducted in the industry. The main target group is students at academic game programmes. Such programmes are typically conducted within traditional academic structures and disciplines. The goal of this book is to show the bre[a]dth of perspectives involved in game development and that the integration of perspectives, that is necessary “in the wild”, is not always happening in academia. I hope the book can be useful for game students and others interested in research that focus on game development.
Source: prof. Engström’s email to the GamesNetwork listserv on Jan 12th 2021
Note that, in addition to the website devoted to this book (https://gamedevresearch.se) the 10 megabite PDF file is also safely deposited in the good professor’s institutional repository. An exemplary measure to ensure the preservation of this very interesting volume. Indeed, here is a more formal citation of the work, provided on the book’s website:
Engström, H. (2020) Game Development Research. The University of Skövde, ISBN 978-91-984918-7-6 (print), 978-91-984918-8-3 (digital), https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:his:diva-19248.
To give you an idea of the breadth and depth of this work, here is the table of contents :
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Source: Engström, H. (2020)
1.1 Structure and aim of this book 6
1.2 The gap 8
1.3 Definitions and scope 12
1.3.1 Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.3.2 Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.3.3 Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.3.4 Game development research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
1.4 A brief history of games and research into these 24
1.4.1 Analogue games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
1.4.2 Digital games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
1.4.3 Digital game research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
1.4.4 Serious games, educational games and gamification . 31
1.4.5 A note with respect to KCC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
1.5 A note on technology and tools 35 1.6 Limitations 39
1.7 Acknowledgments 42
2 Software development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.1 Software engineering 47
2.1.1 Research overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.1.2 Recommended reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2.2 Information systems 53
2.2.1 Research overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
2.2.2 Recommended reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.3 User experience 58
2.3.1 Research overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
2.3.2 Recommended reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
2.4 Other software areas related to games 66
2.4.1 Artificial intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
2.4.2 Computer graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
2.4.3 Hardware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
2.4.4 Internationalisation and localisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
2.4.5 Recommended reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
2.5 Forums for game research in software areas 70
3 Game studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
3.1 Game production studies 76
3.1.1 Research overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
3.1.2 Recommended reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
3.2 Game design 81
3.2.1 Game design books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
3.2.2 Game design patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
3.2.3 Research overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
3.2.4 Recommended reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
3.3 Other game studies topics related to development 86
3.3.1 Gameworkers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
3.3.2 Game jams and cocreation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
3.3.3 History, culture, and regional aspects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
3.3.4 Recommended reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
3.4 Forums for game studies research 91
4 Media production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
4.1 Games and narratives 95
4.1.1 Research overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
4.1.2 Recommended reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
4.2 Various media types and their relation to game development 100
4.2.1 Film, television and games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
4.2.2 Theatre and games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
4.2.3 Art and games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
4.2.4 Music, audio and games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
4.2.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
4.2.6 Recommended reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
4.3 Forums for media production game research 110
5 Management and business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
5.1 Creativity management 115
5.1.1 Research overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
5.1.2 Recommended reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
5.2 Business 124
5.2.1 Research overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
5.2.2 Recommended reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
5.3 Publishing and analytics 129
5.3.1 Research overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
5.3.2 Recommended reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
5.4 Other aspects 137
5.4.1 Recommended reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
5.5 Forums for management and business game research 139
6 Serious game development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
6.1 Research overview 143
6.2 Recommended reading 147
6.3 Forums for serious games development research 148
7 The game industry perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
7.1 Game Developers Conference 154
7.2 Gamasutra, 80 Level, Gamer Network and more 158
7.3 Wikipedia, MobyGames, Twitch and more 160
7.4 International Game Developers Association 162
7.5 Books with industry sources 164
8 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
8.1 The paradigm gap 169
8.2 Types of research 172
8.2.1 Why should researchers create games? . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
8.2.2 Who is the author? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
8.3 Themes in game development research 178
8.3.1 Project management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
8.3.2 Technology and tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
8.3.3 Size and motivations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
8.3.4 Access and research funding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
8.4 Conclusions 188
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Note how Engström provides for an overview of current research, recommendations for further reading as well as discussion in almost all chapters. Thank you prof. Engström for your wonderful contribution to the discourse in game studies !