Real-Time Research 3.0: An Experiment in Designing Research
Seann Dikkers · Erica Halverson · Drew Davidson · Colleen Macklin · Yoonsin Oh · Chris Blakesley
Wed., June 09, 2:00–3:00, Play Circle Theater
Few models exist for the successful collaboration among research academics, let alone among research academics and game designers, students, and teachers. The Real-Time Research (RTR) sessions provide time for this sort of collaborative workshop. For two years RTR has been a collaborative event conducted at the Games, Learning & Society (GLS) conference that attempts to address this need through a playful and somewhat improvisational investigation of what it means to do games research. Attendees will attend a two-part workshop style conference session and collaboratively design research experiments that take place over the course of the conference. They do this alongside three invited experts from both the academic and game design fields. In phase one of the activity, participants work in small groups to brainstorm “speed research” ideas, present those ideas to the group for critique and feedback, and then collectively decide which research questions to pursue throughout the next 30 hours of the GLS event. In the second and final phase of the activity, participants present the data they had collected and their conclusions based on that data, discussing the merits and drawbacks of the methods used for each research question pursued, and whether or not they would recommend the question as one worth further investigation using more systematic and resource intensive methods.
With only one day and a half to conceive, execute, and analyze games-based experiments, the expectations of RTR is not to make groundbreaking scholarly advancements in the field of games & learning per se but rather to “kleenex test” potential ideas in a context that forwards and promotes cross-disciplinary collaboration, interesting designs, and building strong relationships between fields. Past projects have been an overwhelming success, providing interesting insight into the research questions for whom the studies worked (some of which have resulted in both larger research projects and game ideas) and “interesting failures” for those that didn’t. RTR has grown over two years at GLS (with returning enthusiasts), has been integrated into the larger Game Developers Conference (GDC), and a collection of the projects are being published in the book RTR: An experiment in design (ETC Press, in process).
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