6.3. Methodology retrospective

at least not in the traditional, physical sense of inputting commands, instead preferring to soak in the output of the game and the sights and sounds of its virtual environment. Slow strolling is a practice without optimal routes or detailed strategies, as it is taken to satisfy a very different pattern of taste. In contrast to the speedrunner, whose ludic habitus is attuned to kinesthetic, performative pleasures, the overcoming of a challenge, or the breaking of a personal record, the ludic habitus of slow strollers is attuned to the pleasures of observing, thinking, and interpreting. In both cases, only certain game design configurations can satisfy these requirements and be suitable for generating these kinds of practices53 .

The examples listed here, of the various kinds of speedrunning and of slow strolling, showcase the analytical applicability of the general framework of digital gaming practice and of the concept of ludic habitus. With its comprehensive perspective on the act of playing and the capability to account for both its momentary and long-term aspects, the framework can help us to better make sense of a wide variety of digital gaming practices, on different levels of granularity. Understanding these practices is essential for anyone engaging with games in an analytical, creative, critical, or simply playful capacity – that is to say, to researchers, designers, game critics, and players alike – which, at a time when digital games represent a more profitable industry than cinema (see e.g. Witkowski, 2020), lends the framework a high degree of relevance.

6.3.Methodology retrospective

The goal of this research project has been to create a general framework of digital gaming practice, one which would feature a more detailed understanding of both the player and the game component of the practical act of playing games than those in similar frameworks. This goal was pursued using a novel interdisciplinary methodology, combining theoretical research, game design and development, and empirical player studies, and progressively developing the understanding of digital gaming practice and the ludic habitus. The approach can broadly be understood as a move from theory (i.e. reviews and syntheses of prior research from domains of game and player studies and Bourdieusian practice theory) through practice (i.e. exploratory studies with different players, as well as game design and playtesting practice which featured

53 Although one can always (to a greater or lesser extent) impose their own style of play onto a game, no matter its design.

hands-on experimentation with design elements and configurations) to a theory of gaming practice (i.e. the framework).

As an approach to theory development, this methodology had several notable benefits. Firstly, it enabled a multiplicity of perspectives on the project’s topic, principally that of a researcher, a game designer, and a game player. These perspectives resulted in a richer, multifaceted understanding of the topic of gaming practice, one suited for the project’s holistic focus and research goals. As the project moved from one stage to the next, this understanding also progressively developed, with the final framework and model representing a synthesis of knowledge gathered from multiple sources – literature reviews, design and playing practice, and player data. Secondly, this methodology allowed for greater control over the empirical player studies, resulting in the possibility of examining highly specific topics of interest. This resulted in studies that could both stand alone as contributions to game research, and that fit together with each other to lead to broader findings about ludic habitus and digital gaming practice. The choice to use custom game prototypes and multiple qualitative methods of data collection meant that indepth player profiles could be made for each participant in each of the studies, and that specific and highly granular comparison could be made between each of the participants. In turn, this lead to a better understanding of the participants’ own unique ludic habitus, and generated knowledge about its general structure and functioning in digital gaming practice. This depth of focus on each participant’s ludic habitus as a unique and characterizing construct was directly facilitated by the project’s methodology and its study design: without the use of these methods, and the integration of game design with laboratory playtesting, it would not have been possible to achieve depth, specificity, and comparability of player data at the same time.

That being said, the methodology did provide some unique challenges during the duration of the project, chief of which was switching between the different perspectives – researcher, designer, player – taken on the topic of digital gaming practice. The three player studies were conducted over the course of three years; each was preceded by a period of specific literature review and game design development, and followed by write-ups into individual study papers. This process necessitated frequent shifts in workflow and therefore flexibility of focus, as not all perspectives were able to (or could) be employed at the same time – in other words, depending on the situation, certain modes of working were dominant over others and influenced the project’s progression and development. One example of this was the development of Inglenook, the game prototype used in the second study, which began during the research stay at Concordia University’s TAG Lab in Montréal, Canada, in the fall of 2019. The initial version of Inglenook

was finished by the time the research stay was completed in December, and afterwards successfully deployed in the second study to research the topic of playstyle manifestation. However, the game design work took far longer than originally intended, and the designer perspective dominated the project for the duration of the Montréal research stay. As the house of words was being constructed, more and more elements were progressively added to it; in turn, this prolonged design and development time pushed back the process of participant recruitment and the practicalities of organizing the second study. The Inglenook example is perhaps the most prominent one from this project of the dominance of one perspective or mode of working over others. It illustrates the need for flexibility and balance, in order to keep the project progressing without changes to the overall project plan.

In the initial stages of the research project, other methodologies and approaches were considered and discussed with the principal supervisor, but then rejected for various reasons. Among others, these included:

• a quantitative methodology, e.g. surveys. This approach was deemed unsuitable due to the preliminary, exploratory character of the research, which necessitated methods that could account for depth rather than breadth, and establish theory rather than test it. This was also the reason for the decision to go with a fully qualitative methodology, rather than attempt a mixed-methods approach. • a longitudinal study format, e.g. the recruitment and tracking of multiple participants over the course of several years. This approach was deemed unsuitable for its lack of flexibility, as it required that the project be defined and structured extensively and in great detail in its early stages – in turn, this would not leave enough time for a detailed literature review prior to the studies to establish initial definitions and understandings, nor space for game design experimentation to influence the focus of the individual studies. • a focus on a single genre/type of game with/without the same group of players, e.g. the development of several platformer games that would become incrementally more complex and/or difficult as the project progressed, and using those to track participants’ evolving skills and relations with that genre. This approach was deemed too limited both in terms of game design elements (focusing only on a single set of design conventions/configurations) and in terms of one’s ludic habitus (the setup, in particular when conducted with the same group of players, put too much emphasis on the level of skill acquisition and development in relation to platformer gameplay, at the expense of other levels/aspects of one’s relationship with digital games). • a focus on habitus adaptation with the same group of players, e.g. creating a series of versions of a digital game that would progressively break more and more design conventions associated with its genre/type, and investigating how/if the players’ ludic habitus patterns changed from one version to the next. This