Teaching Research-Creation in game design: achievements and limitations of a still developing course

Sylvain Payen

Abstract

Game design research is an emerging field for which it is necessary to prepare our students both on theoretical knowledge from game studies, but also on game creation.

It is for this purpose that the course to initiate to research-creation in game in the field of emotions has been created. This course structured of three main time (theoretical introduction to the main articles about emotion and game, the production, the production of the experimental protocol and the first article) resulted in the realization of two games sufficiently finalized to continue to the next steps: the playtests and then the analysis of results.

We will discuss the limitations (lack of creative control; design driven by constraints; lack of articulation between theory and creation) as well as the achievements and the future iterations of the course (list of predesigned projects and common experimental protocol).

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