LIVE STREAMING GAME DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT: A GLIMPSE BEHIND THE MYSTIC CURTAIN WITH PEDAGOGICAL POSSIBILITIES Andrew Phelps The InterPLAY of Game Studies and Game Design Professor of Art & Design President, Higher Education Video Game Alliance Founder, RIT MAGIC Center & MAGIC Spell Studios Founder, RIT School of Interactive Games & Media Rochester Institute of Technology Mia Consalvo Professor of Communications Studies
Canada Research Chair for Games Studies & Design Founding Director, mLab Centre for Technoculture, Art & Games (TAG) Concordia University Hosted by the University of Utah Arts & Engineering Program National Communication Association th Annual Convention: 104th Communication at Play SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH 2018 GAME DEVELOPMENT IS NOT WELL UNDERSTOOD
NOTE: DEVELOPMENT STREAMING != ESPORTS MAYBE DEVELOPMENT STREAMING CAN HELP PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING OF GAMEDEV? RETHINKING APPRENTICESHIP ? POTENTIAL CRITERION FOR EVALUATING STREAMS 1) the degree to which formal and informal design processes and principles are discussed and presented to the audience 2) the type of design vocabulary employed in the stream sessions 3) how streaming as an activity forces (or fails to enforce) a type of reflexive self-study of the role of a game designer,
developer and/or artist 4) the role of the stream audience during the live session as an interactive influence on the design of the game itself 5) the potential of the stream in question to help inform novice- or non-developers about issues and paradigms in game design, development and production NICE SHEEP Game industry studies Co-creativity (John Banks) Game talk (Casey ODonnell) Live streaming gameplay Broadcasting play (TL Taylor) Hamilton W. A., Garretson O., & Kerne A. (2014, April 26May 1). Streaming on Twitch: Fostering Participatory Communities of Play within Live Mixed
Media. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 14). New York, NY, USA. A TALE OF TWO ADAMS Adam (1) (programmer making Bot Land) Chluaid (artist on BrackenSack: A Dashkin Game) (and also named Adam (2) IRL) A TALE OF TWO ADAMS coder adam (1)
artist adam (2) Talk aloud protocol Careful attention to chat Lots of questions & advice to/from other developers Streams as a commitment to practice Small community, not about audience per se A kind of visual stepwise process Specifically wanted less feedback
Streams as a commitment to practice Small community, not about audience per se Cultivation of community for visibility / connections DEVELOPMENT STREAMING A commitment to practice and function? Less about audience, more about community (maybe?) A scalable platform for observation, practice and critique? A form of bi-directional apprenticeship? A dialog platform for learning communities? A potentially scaffolded environment? A quest for authenticity and role models?
A first use of developer streams is for the instructor to use the technology to stream themselves performing various tasks and activities. Second, there may be significant value in having students stream their own creations either as a form of well played exercise, or simply as a walkthrough and talk-aloud critique of the project they have delivered. Third, along with streaming final games and prototypes, having students stream their own development work to then examine and reflect on it could be incredibly valuable. AS A TOOL FOR TEACHING AND
LEARNING? Fourth, having students stream their own work and development process can surface such work across an entire student body. Fifth, development streaming has the potential to engage students in a wider community that extends substantially beyond the campus. Finally, it may be useful to explore having students essentially cross the streams to help acclimatize students in a given role with their counterparts in other majors or areas of a curriculum. POTENTIAL PROBLEMS Stressing out over streaming / status / practice / etc.
Diversity and inclusion, harassment, and cultural failings online Student privacy and compliance with relevant edu statutes Large technical infrastructure and expertise Content search / noise / ambiguity WORK IN PROGRESS Consalvo, M., & Phelps, A. (2019). Performing game development live on Twitch. Presented at the Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science, Maui, HI. Consalvo, M. (forthcoming). Kaceytron and transgressive play on Twitch.tv. In K. Jrgensen & F. Karlsen (Eds.), Transgressions in games and play. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Phelps, A., & Consalvo, M. (2018) Live streaming game design & development: A glimpse behind the mystic curtain with pedagogical possibilities at The InterPLAY of Game Studies and Game Design, 2018 NCA Preconference, University of Utah. S Orme, University of Suffolk. National Communication
Association 104th Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah. Phelps, A., Consalvo, M., and Egert, C. (2018) Development Streaming as a Pedagogical and Community Strategy for Games Education. Workshop on New Research Perspectives on Game Design & Development Education. CHI PLAY 2018, October 28, 2018, Melbourne, Australia. POSITION PAPER REFERENCES Bai, Matt. (2013. April 20) Thrown for a Curve in Rhode Island. The New York Times, retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/business/curt-schilling-rhode-island-and-the-fall-of-38-studios.html Browne, P. (2015). Jumping the gap: Indie labour and the imagined indie community. Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.
Crecente, B. (2014, October 29). Watch people develop games live in Twitchs latest category. Retrieved June 16, 2018, from https://www.polygon.com/2014/10/29/7091727/twitch-game-development-live Entertainment Software Association (ESA) (2018). Are we in your State? Retrieved August 14, 2018 from https://www.areweinyourstate.org. Georgen, C., Duncan, S. C., & Cook, L. (2015). From lurking to participatory spectatorship: Understanding affordances of the Dota 2 noob stream. International Society of the Learning Sciences, Inc.[ISLS].
Johnson, M. R., & Woodcock, J. (2017). Its like the gold rush: the lives and careers of professional video game streamers on Twitch.tv. Information, Communication & Society, 116. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1386229 MacDonald, K. (2018, July 20). No Mans Sky developer Sean Murray: It was as bad as things can get. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/games/2018/jul/20/no-mans-sky-next-hello-games-sean-murray-harassmentinterview ODonnell, C. (2014). Developers dilemma: the secret world of videogame creators. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Planells, A. (2015) Video games and the crowdfunding ideology: From the gamer-buyer to the prosumer-investor. Journal of Consumer Culture Vol 17, Issue 3, 620-638. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1469540515611200 Whitson, J. (2015). Re-appropriating big data: Independent developers strategic use of analytics. Presented at the International Association for Media and Communication Research Conference, Montreal, Canada. Thanks & Questions
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