On the Expanding Ludosphere

Introduction

Jan H. G. Klabbers (2018) argues in this issue that game science needs more cohesion. Theoretical and methodological pluralism should make way for a more unified approach, which would rest less on instrumental approaches to games, and would help gather scholars of games from different departments under one, shared umbrella.

Klabbers’ position is that the communities of game scholars continue to be fragmented, which hinders a deeper, shared project of constructing knowledge on games and play. This matter is important to address when deliberating the future of a game-related academic inquiry, whether it is called game studies, game science, or game research, or situated in the related fields of studies into sports, gambling, and play. In his article “On the Architecture of Game Science”, Klabbers offers an answer to the struggles of the multidiscipline of games, that of a certain grounding of game-related research into game science. Klabbers’ approach is rooted in the tradition of simulation/gaming, but that is hardly the only tradition that a game scholar should be familiar with. In this article, we present a view from outside of simulation/gaming, one based in game studies and design research.

The game studies tradition emerged around the turn of the millennium. The issues Klabbers addresses have also been discussed in that tradition, for example, in the Critical Evaluation of Game Studies seminar held in 2014 (Mäyrä & Sotamaa, 2017). One of the fascinations of the game studies community is to study games as games – a ludological take on the research of playful experiences and artifacts. Beyond that, the multidiscipline of game studies is also taking various other directions in examining the sphere of games—for instance, looking at the game industry (e.g. A. Kerr, 2017) or approaching games as created (Kultima, 2018). However, numerous challenges still affect the field. These range from a scarcity of game-specific research methods to a lack of institutional support, and from the rapidly expanding presence and influence of games in the contemporary world to the deeply dissimilar knowledge interests of game scholars working in different fields abound. The exhausted group of game researchers trying to establish national programs in education and research—and perhaps even in hobby scenes and youth work, policies, politics, and philosophies—simply lack the resources to fulfill the mandate that they have given themselves to establish grounds for a ludological discipline.

In this article, we approach the issues that Klabbers addresses from the points of view of game studies and design research. We argue that scholars of games should be more aware of the multitude of the work done and offer one view towards the tradition of game studies to the readers of Simulation & Gaming. Furthermore, we argue that more cooperation between disciplines is needed. We see the plurality of approaches to be in line with the plurality of the ludosphere. This realm of play and games is expanding, making our efforts to confine it into one single frame even more challenging, if not even counterproductive.

The Study of Games During the 20th Century

Games and play have surfaced in scholarly works for centuries. For example, in the field of philosophy, relevant discussions on play date back to at least Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schiller. However, games and play per se were seldom the focus of study before the late 19th century. According to Avedon and Sutton-Smith (1971, pp. 21-26) games started to be discussed in mainstream publishing during the second half of the 19th century, and during the last three decades, anthropological, folklorist, and psychological interest in games started to emerge. This marks the beginning of the first wave of research specifically on games (Juul, 2001). Sustained academic communities devoted to the study of games, however, they did not emerge during this first wave. Game-related scholarship tended to stay within disciplinary boundaries. Early works that are still mentioned include Stewart Culin’s (1907/1922) anthropological work on the games of the Indigenous peoples of America and H.J.R. Murray’s (1913) History of Chess. Play received increased attention as well, although disciplinary boundaries are again important. Early works, such as Karl Groos’ books The Play of Animals (1896/1976) and The Play of Man (1899/1976) show a division that would follow between the study of play in ethology and psychology.

This early era of disconnected discussions of games and play went on for a long while. Some works have later achieved greater visibility and have become general classics, such as Johan Huizinga’s Homo ludens (1938/1955). Yet even that book existed in dialogue with earlier Dutch works on play – such as that of F.J.J. Buytendijk (see Walz, 2013). However, such context is often ignored since it is largely not available in English. Indeed, scholarship on games was not only separated by disciplinary boundaries, but also by languages.

The second wave of research on games (Juul, 2001) hit in the 1970s, when academic communities devoted specifically to the study of games started to become viable. A turning point is the establishing of journals and academic associations: Simulation & Gaming (originally Simulation & Games) started publication in 1970, and the Journal of the Philosophy of Sport commenced publication in 1974. The International Simulation and Gaming Association (ISAGA) was founded in 1970 and The Association for the Study of Play (TASP) was established in 1973. Both associations have held regular conferences and TASP has published numerous journals over the years. (Crookall, 2012; Juul, 2005, pp. 9-10; Mäyrä, 2008, pp. 5-11; Myers, 2006, 1999)

Disconnected discourses were pulled together in a number of readers that collected key texts of games and play from numerous disciplines (e.g. Avedon & Sutton-Smith, 1971; Bruner, Jolly, & Sylva, 1976; Herron & Sutton-Smith, 1971). Being able to take stock of what had gone on before was key in moving forward: “it is vital that researchers and students have easy access to some of the major historical and current information on the study of games, and of play.” (Avedon & Sutton-Smith, 1971, p. 1)

Although scholarship about games started to coalesce, it did not unite under one banner. The traditions created to study games and play each arose with its own emphases. The simulation/gaming tradition focused more strongly on allotelic games, wherein “players act according to outside goals and sources of motivations, embedded in the rules” (Klabbers, 1999, p. 27). Play and culture studies, such as those represented by TASP, concern the interdisciplinary study of play (in children, adults, and animals). Play is valued regardless of function, or lack thereof (Reifel, 1998). The philosophy of sport tradition concentrates on sports, and also has a stronger connection to issues relating to embodiment, drug use, and ethics (cf. Morgan & Meier, 1995). It is also important to note that researchers working in these fields were not specifically game scholars, but hailing from different disciplines with an interest, often an instrumental one, in games.

Furthermore, these are not the only academic traditions devoted to games. Gambling studies, which largely approaches its topic as a societal problem, consolidated as a field in the mid-1980s (Reith, 2007), when academic venues such as the Journal of Gambling Behavior and Journal of Gambling Studies were formed. Studies into board games is a smaller field, organized around a conference and the journal Board Game Studies (since 1998). There are also specific game- or play-related topics that have arisen in disconnected fields, such as the psychological effects of violent digital games (e.g. Gortari, Oldfield, & Griffiths, 2016) and griefplay (e.g. Coyne, Chesney, Logan, & Madden, 2009), and animal play in ethology (e.g. Burghardt, 2005).

The Ludological Approach and the Birth of Game Studies

The third wave of research on games kicked off around the turn of the millennium, and centered on digital games (Aarseth, 2001; Deterding, 2017). Following a few conferences, the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) was founded in 2002. A large number of new game-centric journals were launched, such as Game Studies (2001), Games and Culture (2006), Loading… (2007), Well Played Journal (2011), ToDiGRA (2013), Journal of Games Criticism (2014). Game studies, as an interdisciplinary emerging field, came together as researchers were not being recognized in their home disciplines. This consolidation of fields looking into (digital) games was a necessary step, similar to what had happened in the 1970s.

This third wave has thus far been the most prolific as interest in the study of games has exploded. Today an abundance of scholarship on games exists, so much so that it is hard to keep up with it. Simultaneously, numerous disciplines have recognized the importance of games – leading researchers to return to their home disciplines in hope of getting permanent positions, something game studies as a field has been unable to generate (Deterding, 2017). This drives fragmentation, as disconnected game-specific interest groups are formed in various other academic communities.

In a review of The Study of Games (Avedon & Sutton-Smith, 1971) written 30 years after its publication, Jesper Juul (2001) wrote: “the current trend of (computer) games gaining acceptance may be the third wave of game studies, one that now needs to collect the scattered writing on games.” As Klabbers also pointed out, this has not yet happened. Game studies has incorporated works stemming from each of its preceding traditions, mostly works published as books, but sustained engagement with the whole history of studying games is missing. Indeed, it seems that the opposite has happened. While the amount of game-related scholarship has risen, the research has become more fragmented. This is a challenge that game researchers share with academia in general. In 2012, approximately 1.7 million academic articles were published in 27,000 peer-reviewed journals, and this has been increasing annually by 3.5% for the last three hundred years (B.-C. Björk, Roos, & Lauri, 2009; Ware & Mabe, 2012, pp. 22-23). Reviews, syntheses, and other bridge-building efforts are increasingly important, yet increasingly difficult in all scholarly practice.

Academic communities that study games are not aware of what is happening – or has already happened – in other game-centric communities. While works drawing from multiple traditions do exist (e.g. Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Smith, & Tosca, 2013; Harviainen, 2012; Vesa, Hamari, Harviainen, & Warmelink, 2017), they are scarce. This can lead to reinventing the wheel, as exemplified by the emergence of the “serious games research agenda in digital game studies, which ignored similar work in the simulation/gaming tradition, the book Serious Games by Abt (1970), and the pedagogical play movements of a century earlier (cf. Hirn, 1916/1918).

As the conceptualizations of the object under scrutiny differ (cf. Stenros, 2017), it is natural that the traditions do not always meet. Overcoming ontological differences when reading from a different tradition is laborious. Although Klabbers grounds his argument in the plurality of game-related scholarship, discussing approaches rooted in humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, medicine, and technology, the game science he seeks to build seems ultimately instrumental. This framing of game science leaves outside its scope questions relating to, for example, meaning and use, game culture, and game creation – issues game studies and design research hold central. While this instrumental approach is useful, it is hardly an overarching project that covers all or even most of game scholarship.

Interdisciplinarity and the Design Approach

As with most young fields of academic endeavor, game studies have been touted as interdisciplinary. Sebastian Deterding (2017) noted that game studies has been presented, from the beginning, as necessarily interdisciplinary; he argues that games are multifaceted and numerous approaches are needed to render them understandable. Furthermore, interdisciplinarity has been construed as both a richness and a challenge of game studies community (Mäyrä, 2008).

Interdisciplinarity has similarly been considered important in the simulation/gaming tradition. Long-time editor of the journal Simulation & Gaming David Crookall (2000) wrote that “the world is interdisciplinary—or, more accurately, nondisciplinary” and that games need to adapt to and take on aspects of whatever area they are applied to.

Deterding (2017) argued that what game studies has done, quite successfully, is establish games as a worthy object of study. However, in doing so, game studies is losing researchers back to their home disciplines, as those now recognize games as a valid topic. Game studies has been shriveling down to an entity “constituted by humanities, qualitative social sciences, and design scholars focused on games and play as cultural phenomena of meaning-making, with homogenous epistemic cultures: some form of constructivism, pragmatism, or transformative critical theory, with a tendency toward qualitative or textual analysis” (pp. 532-533). This, to Deterding, is the Pyrrhic victory of game studies.

A unified field of all possible game-related research does not seem likely based on Deterding’s analysis. He identified one possible promising future scenario for game studies as an interdisciplinary field: morphing into an application-oriented field of applied game design. However, Deterding’s idea of ‘design’ seems to be modelled as a problem-solving activity manifesting a narrow view (Kultima, 2015a). Design is similar to games in that it has similar breadth of use and meaning. If we look at the concept of design, we are stepping on a disciplinary field of design research that has its own historical developments (cf. Cross, 2007). Jussi Kuittinen and Jussi Holopainen (2009) argued that approaches studying game design are indeed narrow, and that game design should be studied using models constructed by design theorists. Similar to Deterding, Klabbers narrows the idea of design to (social) problem-solving. His exploration of definitions of design is specific to a moment in time when interventionist societal impact of design was valued, and ignores large portions (and the wider spectrum) of design research. From this it naturally flows that his idea of game design is problem-focused, programmatic, and narrow (cf. Dorst & Dijkhuis, 1995):

As games are artefacts, game studies should start with design issues, developing systematic ways of teaching and learning game design that is responsive to societal needs. Game design supporting social problem solving. (Klabbers, 2018)

Design theorists, like game scholars, do not share a uniform view of their domain. Were we to set game design as the foundation of a conceptual basis of exploring games and play, picking different design theories would lead us to different directions. For example, design theorists such as Herbert A. Simon and Donald Schön frame design in a different manner (Dorst & Dijkhuis, 1995): For Simon (1992), design is modeling rational problem-solving, for Schön (1983) design is more messy and follows the notion of designer as a reflective practitioner. Much can be learned from the conceptualizations of other design researchers, such as Bryan Lawson and Kees Dorst’s (2009) notion of design expertise or Nigel Cross’ (2007) notion of design thinking, just to name a few.

Within the field of design research, there are interesting taxonomies of organization of the knowledge interests of design researchers, which could help us understand the growing practice of studying games. Utilizing Cross’s (2007) framework of design research divided into design epistemology (study of designerly ways of knowing), design praxiology (study of the practices and processes of design) and design phenomenology (study of the form and configuration of artifacts) would give us a very different understanding of what kind of traditions we have had, or towards which we should divide our attention (see also Archer, 1981; Frayling, 1993). Such framings can help us change how we think about research into games and navigate within the multidiscipline. Much of the inquiries of game study practice has been concentrated on the phenomena of play and games instead of, for example, the practice of making games, or even the cognitive processes that designing games require. The traditional views in game studies have given birth to ontologies of game studies that we cannot expand to all scientific enquiries relevant to the field (Kultima, 2015c, 2018).

Cross (2007) saw the challenge for design research in being interdisciplinary and disciplined at the same time—a paradoxical task of creating an interdisciplinary discipline. The struggles to balance coherence, goal, and focus are commonplace and not unique to the young field of game studies. To some extent, it seems that the field of design research has had its own discussion similar to ludology’s call to studying games as games (cf. Cross, 2007). The history of design (Fallan, 2010) and design research (Bonsiepe, 2007; Cross, 2007; Kuutti, 2007) has been in between the traditions of art and science, trying to find disciplinary ontologies for separating and not being swamped by the epistemic cultures of other fields. While Cross (2007) warns design researchers not to swamp design research with the other ontologies, such multitude is praised by others (e.g. Schön, 1983). Game studies have similar manifestos (cf. Aarseth, 2001).

The concept of game design is central in game study publications (cf. Melcer et al., 2015), which implies a need for more bridge-building between game studies and design research. The epistemic cultures of the practitioners (game developers) should be similarly in the focus of academic interest as it is in design research. The knowledge work that is happening within the field of practitioners as endogenous design research is also relevant to our exogenous design research approaches (cf. Bonsiepe, 2007). For example, in the professional online magazine Gamasutra, many non-academic articles are released that do not always discuss with their academic counterparts. Information sharing is also intense, with various professional conferences such as Game Developers Conference, Casual Connect, Develop, Pocket Gamer Connects, White Nights, and Amaze, just to name a few. The view of game creators and developers have been underrepresented in the game studies field (Kuittinen & Holopainen, 2009; Kultima & Sandovar, 2016). And yet, game studies likes to take pride in remaining sensitive to at least some of the contributions of game designers (cf. Copier, 2003; Stenros, 2015, pp. 25-26). The professional discourses relating to games are so abundant and the industry develops so fast that often very few ideas cross over between the academy and the game industry. Furthermore, we should not be limited to actors in the game industry: game players, hobbyists, and other passionate amateurs with their emic theories and para-academic traditions also offer a wealth of knowledge (e.g. sites like BoardGameGeek and WoWWiki, the books published around Knutepunkt such as Saitta, Holm-Andersen, & Back, 2014). Obviously, they need to be carefully assessed and contextualized, but we need to keep this connection in order to maintain visibility on the widening sphere of our domain.

Moreover, game studies needs to be reciprocally interdisciplinary. Much time has been spent in game studies analysing the complex, shifting meaning behind terms like ‘game’ and ‘play’. As Kultima (2015c) noted, it can be argued that a ludological approach has justified game and play as atoms of academic discussions—yet they often reduce phenomenon like culture, economy, social interactions, or creativity to the vocabulary of game studies by viewing them through the metaphor of games.

The Expansion of the Ludosphere

The phenomenon of digital play (and playfulness in general) is expanding as games have become increasingly commonplace for wide audiences (Kultima, 2009, 2015c). We are experiencing an explosive expansion of the ludosphere itself. The realm of games, and areas touched by games, are rapidly expanding. The changes in distribution, through digital services and emergence of new publishers, has impacted the number of games published on commercial platforms. For example, the Apple App Store alone is attracting a huge mass of game submissions from developers around the world. Since December 2015, there have consistently been over 500 games submitted each day (C. Kerr, 2016). This trend has arisen out of several issues, but a key factor is access of developmental tools both for professionals (e.g. Unity 3D, Unreal Engine) and hobbyists (e.g. Game Maker, Construct 2). Large numbers of games produced in hobby events, such as game jams, have also impacted the growth. Just during Global Game Jam, 2017, 7000 games were produced within 48 hours (Global Game Jam, 2017). Game making is increasingly accessible.

Parallel to this, the cultural significance of games is growing, often discussed under the term ludification (Raessens, 2014). The ludification of culture manifests when practices, attitudes, patterns, tropes, materials, tools, language, and concepts relating to games and play become ubiquitous in all kinds of cultural spheres from business to schools and from art to hobbies. Simultaneously, the opposite, a cultivation of ludus, is also happening as games and play are being rationalized and instrumentalized (Walz & Deterding, 2015, pp. 6-7). Gamification (see Landers et al., 2018) is the most discussed aspect of this shift. Ludification has numerous practical implications, and one clear one is the realisation that the box we have placed ‘games’ in, is proving to be very limiting. As the number of uses and users of games and play grow, the epistemologies that we have used thus far are proving to be inadequate. The rising importance of games has been connected—in arguments relating to why they should be studied—to their growing economic impact. However, this means that most of the focus has been on digital games and on products developed by the game industry (cf. digital fallacy discussed in Stenros, 2015, p. 110; Stenros & Waern, 2011). Furthermore, the ludosphere of digital and non-digital play is continuously expanding and it is expanding in two directions: we know more about our past, and we will have more in the future.

The various fields looking at games tend to have very specific notions of what counts as a game. In game studies the emphasis is often on commercial products. Klabbers does not explicitly say what kind of games his game science would study, but based on his key questions for the field, we assume that he refers to allotelic games. For game studies, some of these choices follow from the sources of funding that are tied to specific industry-relevant research questions, but the impact extends into areas such as the canon of important games. Indeed, the way that game histories are written is often motivated from the perspective of a fan of a specific digital game genre (Suominen, 2017). It is uncommon to outline, for instance, national or personal histories of games from the wider spectrum of games that includes e.g. board games, larp, and sports (e.g. Kultima & Peltokangas, 2017; Kultima & Stenros, 2018). Yet not all games are developed within the games industry—as commercial products. For instance, playful folk practices form a huge chunk of our cultural heritage; there is a growing field of hybrids between art and games (Sharp, 2015), larps have their own playful cultures (Stenros, 2014), and game making can also be considered as a hobby of its own (Kultima, 2015b). Games can be made by many people, in various forms and for various reasons; there are numerous communities creating games from some completely different impetus than creating commercial products.

The choices of delimiting the concept of games as done in game studies and game science endorses narrow ontologies and a lack of history, but possibly makes the work for a researcher a bit easier. While focus is important, mistaking a close up for the big picture should be avoided. Games are not all digital, all created through economic incentives, all meant to entertain, or all created for allotelic purposes—and the exceptions are not marginal. Furthermore, even these divisions (digital/non-digital, capitalistic/gift-economy, playful/useful) are dangerously simplistic. Any effort in categorizing the design space of games is in flux, or sometimes even in interplay, with the creators trying to find new ways to bring their creative visions to life. It is not only that games are a moving target, it is a target in symbiosis with the observing scholars, and game scholars in this picture are not the host, but the lice. From the traditional academic perspective, we follow the trails of the phenomenon; we do not guard its development.

Yet these narrow fields looking at games like to present themselves as much wider than they are. Often game studies should actually be called digital game studies, just as allotelic game science would probably be a more accurate header for the vision Klabbers outlines. This may seem like a minor semantic quibble, but as our papers are filled with totalizing statements about ‘games’, we too easily start to believe our own overly broad generalization. Games can be, and are, multiple. We need wider vocabularies and focused, clearly delimited, theories instead of generalistic views.

All this suggests that we need to go back to one of the key questions Klabbers’ lists on the philosophy of science level, namely: What is a game? Game does not refer to a single thing, regardless if that thing is digital AAA games, educational games, or traditional folk play practices. Any notion or definition of ‘games’ is limited to a subset of real-world playful artifacts, and is historical, candidly normative, or too broad to be useful. Definitional games are well manifested in the concept of game itself as it is more of a cluster of meanings irreducible to a strict definition (Wittgenstein, 1953/1958, pp. 66-67).

As the phenomenon expands, so too do the viewpoints and groups. In addition to game makers and game players, we need to consider the spectators of play, the game harnessers, industry mediators, and other positions. Indeed, already for some time it has been fashionable to talk about games as an assemblage, a mess, or a mangle (Bogost, 2009; Steinkuehler, 2006; Taylor, 2009). These stand in stark contrast to the neat ontologies of dividing the pie to games, gamers, and gaming (S. Björk, 2008) or games, players, and context (Mäyrä, 2008). Furthermore, we must realize that the other positions are not new. The role of spectators in sports far precedes streaming of digital game play, just as the history of educational uses of games and play stretches back over a century, indeed all the way to Plato if one wants to claim roots in antiquity. Claims of newness are often the result of disconnecting digital games from the rich history of games.

Furthermore, game scholars and developers are hardly the only groups building the future of games, nor the only ones looking back. The fragmented knowledge work relating to games is divided amongst a plethora of professional practices, including groups such as teachers, social workers, youth workers, politicians, lawyers, and consultants. As this list of stakeholders shows, there are varied needs for game-related knowledge, and the practices of knowledge creation follow the multitude of the knowledge interests.

It is challenging to see how such polyphony of games would be captured with a unified theoretical apparatus. This multiplicity also shows that in practice the scarce game scholars of the world are unable to grasp the whole field. Indeed, it is hard to conceive even of a discipline devoted to ‘games’ that could tackle all these different epistemic approaches. Multiple approaches, both disciplinary and interdisciplinary, are needed. Some of these approaches become valuable by rooting them around the object of games, and a deep experiential knowledge of the phenomena, while remaining sensitive to their limitations. Others bring their value through looking at games from the outside and through other conceptual constructs. No simple solution is apparent for avoiding the discomfort that the disorganized and disconnected epistemic cultures might cause a single scholar. However, awareness and respect for the field as a whole is a fruitful point of departure.

Multidisciplinarity has been one of the main tools in maintaining as healthy as possible a relation to the multitude of the game and play phenomena within game studies. In order to create theories on the ludosphere, we need to be constantly informed by various frames of examination. Klabbers raises an example of NYU Game Center as one of the successful programs in what he calls game epistemology. He points out that as several disciplinary traditions and practices that relate to games exist, it is good to combine these into one and form centers around such efforts.

We argue that similar efforts in collaborative and multidisciplinary work exist around the world. It is trendy to push developmental money on national or area levels in order to form game clusters combining academia with industry, and one discipline to others. This is centrally important in programs that have to do with game development education and innovation programs, as games are multifaceted, collaborative works. Such approaches should be, and evidently also are, visible in many research centers focusing on the wider spectrum of games and play.

We use our current home university as an example, as it is an environment where we have attempted to put many of these ideas into practice, and that has shaped our thinking. University of Tampere Game Research Lab has employed bridge-building in several multidisciplinary research projects for the past 15 years. Most of the projects have been combinations of applied research and fundamental research—mostly because it has been easier to get funding for applied research, yet it is impossible to apply for anything without digging into deeper theoretical levels. During this period we have learned to do these two in tandem; insisting on a separation, and holding on to a singular research agenda would have meant that much less work would have been done. By necessity, the Game Research Lab has been interdisciplinary, even transdisciplinary at times and in close collaboration with practitioners from the game industry and hobby scenes.

These practical limitations drive the constant chasing of external funding, but also force us to keep ourselves up-to-date with changes within the game ecosystems. As a result, we studied pervasive games 10 years before POKÉMON GO hit the streets (e.g. Montola, Stenros, & Waern, 2009). We had a project studying games on social media when FARMVILLE launched on Facebook (e.g. Paavilainen, Hamari, Stenros, & Kinnunen, 2013). We explored games as services (e.g. Sotamaa & Karppi, 2010) when digital distribution was starting to pick up—and followed that up by moving on to hybrid games (e.g. Tyni et al., 2016) as SKYLANDERS was breaking. While we have not been able to delve as deeply into all of these topics as one would wish, we have cultivated an understanding of the broad range of digital games today and the rapid speed of change. One of the factors behind this is the close connection with the successful Finnish game industry. At the same time, we have been able to look at a wide range of different types of games, which has helped in long-term fundamental research.

Our graduates are game experts, taught with an eye towards the surprisingly numerous sectors that need such experts: government, museums, archives, journalism, education, management, art, youth work, health, counseling, forecasting, business—and research. While some of our students certainly are game designers, they come to us for the larger package of game expertise. They should understand what games and play are, and what is their history; be able assess games in a number of analytic traditions; know how games are made and have an understanding of the game industry; understand the societal impact of games and speak to the fears and hopes attached to games; be familiar with the history of the study of games and be able to study games. The curriculum draws from many academic traditions that engage with games and play, but especially emphasizing the plurality of games.

Discussion

What direction should the future research into games take? The challenge is in balancing between devotion to a specific field, and the discourse with other fields of inquiry. The struggles that Klabbers highlights are not limited to the plurality of game and play scholars, nor should we alone expect to solve these challenges. Nor should we forget the uniqueness of the concepts of games and play even if cutting them off from other comparable phenomena is not the answer either. We need to be wary of being seduced by claims of the exceptionality of games (see Malaby, 2006).

As games are within the domain of design, we should understand them as such. Design theorist Kari Kuutti (2007) issued a warning against strong reductionist views of design. Kuutti discusses how we should not overlook the special nature of design cognition and the epistemic cultures of designers as they are not best understood with traditional theoretical frameworks. The traditional philosophy of knowledge, epistemology, is not much help in this—it is even in disarray according to some design theorists. For Kuutti, design knowledge is special as it contains the elements of particular, local, and timely. The work of understanding the processes and practices of design—and we could argue that also games as designed artifacts—will not be, and should not be, constructed alone in the ivory towers of academia. As it is already difficult to provide an overview of the multitude of the science, it is even more difficult to address the multitude of design (Fallan, 2010). The task is not getting simpler, but increasingly complex; we need to find ways to deal with these complexities.

The project here is not to argue that game studies or game research should be only thought of as a subfield of design research, even if some might go as far as claiming that all scientific research is a subset of design research (cf. Glanville, 1980). We wish to highlight the intricacies and implications that the concept of design brings in play. It is no longer possible to relegate games as designed to a miscellaneous category (such as context’ or culture). It seems that the focus of this coming era for game research is the expansion of our theoretical frameworks instead of quests of uniformity. Obviously, a similar argument can be made for any number of disciplines from sociology to philosophy, and from computer-human interaction to ethology.

It is clear that tackling the expanding ludosphere requires new tools. Where playing games has been seen as a key way to assess games, it is not always a sustainable strategy. We need to find shortcuts to gameplay, and to uncover ways to explore the multitude of the ludosphere more methodically. The challenge here is to develop methods that could ease the work of a single game scholar without losing the importance of experience. The phenomenon of Let’s Play videos and streaming services such as Twitch could be used more systematically in studying play. However, they also underline the difficulty in archiving experiences and storing digital games, or indeed game or play experiences, transient and ephemeral as they are.

The larger issue is that games are not only difficult to capture and communicate, but that in academia we tend to try to do this through purely textual means. It would be important that games and play would be reported with more care. However, it is perplexing how infrequently gameplay screenshots, photos, flow-charts, and other visual forms of communication are used within the field of game research. Then again, this is not a unique challenge for game scholars—it is part of a larger transformation in scientific discussion. In design research, Gui Bonsiepe (2007) has argued how design has simultaneously become more scientified while research has become more design-like. He is talking about the iconic turn where the language of science is taking advantage of the communication means of design practice: the turn from verbo-centrism to the emergence of more visual means of communication. Yet it is not uncommon that in an academic paper on games an audiovisual experience is explained without any pictorial support. Just as it is important to demand fluent English or the use of references in academic papers, we should also be more strict in providing visual material when discussing play. Indeed, Bonsiepe (2007) pointed out that increasingly we argue not only through discoursive, but through viscourses (ie. visual discourses).

On a closer look, even that seems like leaving the job unfinished: we also need ludocources. Such contributions would be welcomed not just in game-related scholarship, but in other disciplines as well. In addition to visual representations, we need interactive representations and snapshots of the phenomena that we are communicating about with other scholars. Games are also attractive as research tools and playgrounds for different kinds researchers (e.g. Mayer, 2009) not necessarily contributing directly to game-oriented disciplines. Furthermore, perhaps the scholar Deterding (2017) showed that those leaving game studies are not so much deserters as emissaries, bringing ludic understanding back to their home discipline. What are the ludocources we should aim to develop? Should we shift from inward-thinking conceptual analysis of ‘games’ and ‘play’ to a metalevel? Is it what Ian Bogost (2007) referred to as procedural rhetorics, or is it what Klabbers (2018) discusses as game epistemology? How do we bring this outside game-focused scholarly practices, and would that improve existing theories of knowledge and science as design research is doing in relation to cognition?

However, it also turns out that a study of what designers know challenges our more conventional understanding of what makes good knowledge in ways that might be of interest and value to those in the information and cognitive sciences. (Lawson, 2004)

The nature of games as interactive systems and playful activities could help us craft language in explaining, analyzing, and communicating complex issues that modern society has to tackle. Here is a chance for the design and game theories to collaborate in understanding the world of ill-defined problems as well as the creation of new futures. This is an area where game studies has much to learn from the simulation/gaming tradition.

As Klabbers lists relevant research disciplines for games and play, we argue that this list could be extended to cover almost all academic inquiries in one form or another. Numerous intellectual practices might benefit from the fostering of coherence within that community, but in total the human scientific effort is a whole and there should be multiple overlapping communities to bring knowledge over the borders of specific interests. Finally, game scholars can also have something to bring to this wider community—not just utilize the works of others.

Yet the emissary of game-related knowledge needs to know existing work on games. Forming a comprehensive idea of the current state of game research in different fields and disciplines is important before any claim of comprehensiveness can be voiced, if such is even the goal. In such a survey it is mandatory to account for the different knowledge interests, or risk dismissing interesting and important research. A game-related research program that originates in only one tradition will not bring game research together. The plurality of games cannot be dismissed, and consideration of the expanding, pluralistic ludosphere helps put our theories to test in good, but also tiring, ways.

Conclusions

Scholarship on games has been and continues to be pursued in numerous disciplines and traditions. While significant cross-pollination between these academic traditions has taken place, a single umbrella for all of these approaches does not exist. The plurality of approaches is needed to tackle the numerous questions relating to games, since these viewpoints into games have different and conflicting ontological, epistemic, and methodological foundations. Constructing an umbrella for such a varied collection of intellectual pursuits is a worthy goal, but in the process aiming for cohesion would come at the cost of nuanced, situational, and holistic understanding. The various knowledge interests stemming from different disciplinary backgrounds cannot be fully reconciled, and this is even before bringing in the numerous interests from outside academia. Such a view is similar in other fields, such as design research.

The endeavor is particularly hard as the target keeps moving. The ludosphere is expanding as we continue to learn more about the history of games, as we move into the future and more varied games continue to be created, and as the concept of ‘game’ keeps shifting due to its centrality in cultural processes such as ludification.

Finally, game scholarship also needs to exist in the real world, finding ways to operate in a way that is devoted to the principles of academic inquiry, useful to society, and able to carve a place for itself from the contested resources of contemporary universities. We are hopeful for the future where game scholars are embedded in multiple scientific disciplines as well as other epistemic communities.

Fully grasping the whole multitude of games is not possible for any single scholar as the ludosphere and research into games continues to grow and mature. However, we argue that cultivating a strong general awareness of the plurality of work is important as that helps situate the work a single scholar does. We cannot claim overarching knowledge of all things related to games, but we must find our own position in the larger academic project and foster tolerance for multiple voices.