thechineseroom
adventures in first person gaming
(the research page of dan pinchbeck, games researcher, uk)
In summer 2007, we were awarded a speculative research grant from the Arts & Humanities Research Council, UK, to develop three experimental mods, each pushing the narrative possibilities of first-person gaming in a new direction.
These mods are now available for public download from Moddb. You can find out more about them, and the project staff behind the mods by using the links below (repeated at the bottom of each page).
We are also working on a new mod, titled Korsakovia, exploring players' responses to ambiguity, and loss of anthropomorphic cues.
All of this is part of a wider research focus, which probably falls within the category of practice-led research, although I think it probably can be called development-led research. The idea behind it is two-pronged. Firstly, there are just questions that are really important for researchers to ask about games that youy can't answer by just studying commercial releases. For a whole bunch of reasons, you aren't going to find an FPS game based around non-lethal force. for example. Or one that ditches traditional gameplay to explore a contradictory, ambigious story. This doesn't mean to say that the question of what these kinds of games would be like, whether they would succeed, how players would respond to them, etc, are not really valid and interesting, but if you want to answer them you have to go ahead and actually build.
Secondly, it's good for researchers to have to think and act a little like developers. Building a game tells you a huge amount about games in general, not to mention quickly makes you respect the act of development in a realistic way. You can't learn that in a book - not to devalue the fantastic research out there that is purely theoretical, but the first time to make a compromise because the engine won't allow it, or it'll take just that bit longer than you have, or it just doesn't fit the gameplay, that's really important learning experience. Also, releasing research projects out into the gaming community, where players may not give a damn about the research merits of what you are doing, but expect a high standard of gameplay - that forces you to deal with games on their own terms, and that's also very healthy.
Finally, I love the mod community. There is brilliant work appearing every day and it really gives the lie to the idea that gaming still hasn't developed a proper independent scene or avant-garde. Not only are commercial releases proving this totally fallacious, but the work of enthusiasts and amateurs (and semi-professionals) speaks volumes about a community that is pushing hard at the edges of what is possible with this great medium, and that's incredibly rewarding to be part of. Like Henry Jenkins says, there's no contradiction between being a scholar and a fan.
| Korsakovia | Dear Esther | Antlion Soccer | Conscientious Objector | Project Staff |
contact me via email
or via moddb
i said come in, don't just stand there...