About Us
Playful by Design began as a community network that includes faculty, staff, students, and members of the University of Illinois and the greater Champaign-Urbana community who study and design games, understood as interactive narratives, new media, art works, platforms, websites, exhibits, virtual worlds and digital learning environments, those who research and develop emerging technologies (AR/VR/AI…), and who study and develop playful/gameful pedagogies. The Playful by Design community grew from a deep history of games and gaming at the University of Illinois and surrounding community of Urbana-Champaign and quickly became a broadly interdisciplinary campus network, offering a model of an interdisciplinary community of practice that surrounds game studies and design programs – on a single campus, or across a network of institutions that aims to widen the space of the possible in higher education. This community of practice functions as a Third Space, in which game studies, game design, gameful pedagogies and emerging technologies can be explored collaboratively, in both multi- and inter-disciplinary ways within a global community of practice woven together by shared values of accessibility and inclusion in classrooms, in game studios, and reflected in how and what we design.
We see four areas of interest in Playful by Design community on a lotus shaped venn-diagram, to add nuance to the kinds of activities that were happening across our University. As the intersections became visible, we began to think about how our experience might be relevant to the organization of academic game studies communities beyond our campus.
- At the intersection of Game Design and Game Studies emerges the critical study of game design practices and of the organizational structures and cultures of the gaming industry. The value added by game studies courses in the professional training of game design students includes social awareness and cultural fluency, providing students with the relational skills they will need to understand, challenge and transform the studios and other workplaces they enter for the better. But design also feeds back on game studies, offering new methodologies for research, and new awareness of design principles and practices.
- At the intersection of Game Design and Pedagogy, both educational activities and serious games are designed to enhance engagement, increase immersion, improve learning outcomes, and produce feelings of empathy in students or players. Where Game Studies and Pedagogy meet, educational researchers evaluate the efficacy of playful interventions, looking for measurable outcomes from educational games, gamified and gameful classrooms, and serious games. Where all three intersect, the pedagogical practices of Game Studies & Design themselves may be evaluated and transformed.
- At the intersection of Game Design and Technology games are redesigned and new games are developed to take advantage of interactive, immersive, and AI driven applications and technologies. Where Game Studies and Technology meet, user experience research and critical study of new platforms and technologies feed back into the design process, preferably before a product has been released. Where all three intersect, new technologies allow games and simulations to be developed as a research method for studying phenomena in any possible domain.
- At the intersection of Technology and Pedagogy, interactive and immersive technologies are implemented in classrooms and released as serious games after being Designed and Studied . Where all four: Research, Design, Technology, and Pedagogy meet that the center for a community of practice like Playful by Design, which encourages and supports multidisciplinary as well as interdisciplinary collaboration in all directions.
Playful by Design is a community of practice that surrounds game studies and design programs – on a single campus, or across a network of institutions. The model is simple, but also transgressive. It is based on the premise that the common interest can cut across academic units, bringing together people who wouldn’t meet if they remained in their own narrow track. It offers a framework for interaction between different kinds of people who contribute to the creation of a game studies and design community, and collaborate on weaving its social fabric.
This approach is non-hierarchical, emphasizing collaboration rather than competitive. It is inclusive of all stakeholders, faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students, administrators, staff, librarians, technicians, game designers, game players, researchers, writers, artists, teachers, teaching assistants, visiting instructors, local school children, local businesses. And including, particularly, those professionals who create and maintain maker spaces, VR labs, and media commons which are intended to support faculty and students in their intellectual and creative endeavors. Such units have been described as “third spaces,” providing collaborative, generative, and supportive environments. The labor of people who work there, like other kinds of caretaking labor, may become invisible and overlooked.[1] The Playful by Design model recognizes the significance of third spaces and third space professionals who build and maintain them, as an essential part of a successful game studies and design community of practice.
A Playful by Design community can be created around an existing degree-granting program, or it can be the creative catalyst for the kinds of interdisciplinary conversations that allow one to come into being, as occurred at the University of Illinois. But the Illinois story also testifies to the fact that it is possible to create a Playful by Design community on a college campus that has no academic game studies and design program at all, and no plans to have one. Just because an institution doesn’t offer a diploma with the word “game” on it, doesn’t mean that game studies and game design aren’t happening there.
Playful by Design doesn’t provide a template for the organization of ideal game studies program. Creating undergraduate and graduate minor degree program was an appropriate choice at the University of Illinois. But many institutions around the world have no minors, and at others, the organizational structure doesn’t lend itself to interdisciplinary course sharing across programs. So our programmatic strategy won’t work for everyone. That’s not a problem, since every institution must, in any event, come up with a plan that meets their strategic needs and adapts to their unique histories and constraints. The undergraduate degree program in Videogames at Universidade Lusófona on their Lisboa campus, and the program in Videogames and Multimedia Design on the Porto campus, for example, both offer their student comprehensive interdisciplinary course content. The programs differ because their campus cultures, program goals, resources, capacities, and the inclinations, experiences, interests and pedagogical approaches of directors and faculty are different, as they are different again from game programs in other institutions and in other places.[2] Difference is inevitable, and also of benefit to students because it provides them with meaningful choices.
For more about the history of Playful by Design and Third Spaces, see Playful by Design: A Third Space Community of Practice for Game Studies & Design, a paper by Judith Pintar and Lisa Bievenue published in The International Journal of Games and Social Impact.
[1] Whitchurch, C. (2012). Reconstructing Identities in Higher Education: The rise of third space professionals. London: Routledge.
[2] Universidade Lusófona Lisboa, Undergraduate Videogames, https://www.ulusofona.pt/en/lisboa/undergraduate/videogames; Universidade Lusófona Porto, Undergraduate Videogames and Multimedia Design, https://www.ulusofona.pt/en/porto/undergraduate/videogames-and-multimedia-design.
PBD HISTORY
Sponsored in academic years 2017-2018 and 1018-2019 by the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities (IPRH), now the Humanities Research Institute (HRI), the Playful by Design: Gaming Pedagogies, Digital Literacies and the Public Humanities Research Cluster facilitated the growth of an interdisciplinary community of practice organized around the emergent capacities of play and the design of playful pedagogical spaces, both virtual and real. Through a series of participatory workshops and events we shared our research, experiences, and skills during monthly gatherings, leading to the first spring Playful by Design Spring Symposium in April 2018
In the second year of IPRH sponsorship, Playful by Design supported the creation of game studies and design courses, and investigated possibilities for creating game studies degree programs. The Playful by Design Spring Symposium in April 2019 added a third track to its programming and drew a larger slate of presenters and audience members than the first year.
PBD Symposium History
Our planned Spring Symposium for 2020 was cancelled due to the COVID pandemic; however, the event was held virtually in the Fall. That year, interdisciplinary curriculum committees were formed to create Graduate and Undergraduate Game Studies Minor degree programs, to be administered by Informatics.
The 2021 Playful by Design Symposium was held in Siebel Center for Design, in coordination with the CU Community Fab Lab, and the CUDO Plays. During this event it was announced that the Undergraduate Game Studies Minor had been approved by the faculty senate.
The 2022 Playful by Design Symposium took place in the new academic home for Game Studies & Design on the fourth floor of the Hub Building on 614 E. Daniel Street, featured keynote presentations by Stuart Moulthrop, author of newly re-released hypertext classic Victory Garden, and Eevin Jennings, an experimental psychologist at the CU game company, Volition.