A research blog for speculative game design focusing on Animals and Play.
Author: Alan Hook
Alan Hook is a Lecturer in Interactive Media and a Researcher in New Media and Play at Ulster University. Alan teaches Games Studies and Interactive Media within the School of Media Film and Journalism. His teaching and research focusing on play as a form of interaction and how participation in games and transmedia texts effects and shapes behaviour both in and outside of the game.
Alan is currently studying towards a PhD in Design at Lancaster University in Imagination Lancaster, the open and exploratory design-led research centre with Prof Paul Coulton (Chair of Speculative and Game Design).
As part of my research I have been interested in how game designers design for players as an audience. This research has lead through a range of work trying to outline player-centred research methodologies. I have been trying to outline the process of designing for a specific audience, and how games as systems and texts are designed for specific players. This research has been used to address the CFP from the new journal TRACE which is an online peer-reviewed collections in ecology, posthumanism, and media studies. Providing an interdisciplinary forum for scholars, focusing on the ethical and material impact of technology.
The first CFP looks at the intersection of Animal Studies and Digital Media Studies. I have submitted the following for for their consideration;