Browsing by Author "Park, Solip"
Now showing 1 - 15 of 15
- Results Per Page
- Sort Options
- Comic-making to Study Game-making: Using Comics in Qualitative Longitudinal Research on Game Development
A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa(2024) Park, Solip; Hämäläinen, Perttu; Kultima, AnnakaisaThis paper reports the research method of the “Game Expats Story (GES)” project that used qualitative longitudinal research (“QLR”) incorporated with art-based research (“ABR”) in the context of game research. To facilitate greater participant engagement and a higher retention rate of longitudinal participants, we created comic artworks simultaneously while researching the case of migrant/expatriate game developers (“game expats”) in Finland 2020-2023 in two phases: (i) art creation as part of the qualitative data analysis to supplement the researcher’s inductive abstraction of the patterns, and (ii) artwork as a communication and recall tool when periodically engaging with the informants over the multi-year project span. Our findings suggest that the method of QLR-ABR helps game research as it positively influences the researcher’s abstractions of longitudinal data and participants’ continuous engagement with a high retention rate of 89%. We conclude that incorporating artistic methods provides new opportunities for ethnographic research on game development. - Cross-cultural Online Game Jams: Fostering cultural competencies through jams in game education setting
A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa(2023-08-30) Park, Solip; Kultima, Annakaisa; Ono, Kenji; Choi, BuhoThis paper discusses cross-cultural online game jams in a game educational setting, drawing on the experience gained from the project "Games Now! Online Jam" (henceforth "GNOJ") conducted by Aalto University in Finland during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021-2022. Each GNOJ lasted a week, and jammers utilized various online tools, cloud services, communication platforms, and open-source software. Ninety jammers from Finland, Sweden, South Korea, and Japan participated virtually from their home countries. Through post-survey and observation data, we found that jammers highly valued the cultural learning experience offered by jamming. Notably, they encountered unexpected surprises stemming from the diverse local game development practices and different conceptual and terminological connotations across countries during the jam. But jammers displayed proactive engagement in overcoming such cultural differences, with a heightened motivation to learn other languages, cultures, and local game development practices across the world. These findings highlight the pedagogical benefits that cross-cultural online jams can bring to game education. By fostering cultural awareness and competencies in understanding local nuances in game development and communication styles, such initiatives can help future (and current) game developers to effectively prepare multinational work environments and cooperative workflow with remote teams spanning multiple time zones. - Designing Games as Playable Concepts: Five Design Values for Tiny Embedded Educational Games
A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa(2020) Kultima, Annakaisa; Park, Solip; Lassheikki, Christina; Kauppinen, TomiDigital games transform our lives; they provide an opportunity to engage with other worlds in a playful way, in many ways similarly to what other forms of audio-visual communication (like movies, paintings or photos) have offered for a longer time. However, learning materials still use rather traditional ways for accompanying media, ranging from static figures and graphs to videos and animations. In this paper, we explore the notion of Playable Concepts: tiny games that are embedded as part of educational material instead of separate and standalone products. We argue that games could be in a similar role as static graphical elements in educational and communicational material, embedded in the text, together with other media formats. We suggest that the design space of Playable Concepts can be framed with five distinct design values: Value of Partiality, Value of Embeddedness, Value of Simplicity and Immediacy, and Value of Reusability. - Designing tailored gamification: A mixed-methods study on expert perspectives and user behavior in a gamified app for sustainability at work
A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa(2023) Krath, Jeanine; Klock, Ana Carolina Tomé; Morschheuser, Benedikt; Legaki, Nikoletta-Zampeta; Park, Solip; von Korflesch, Harald F. O.; Hamari, JuhoThe establishment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has put the transition to a sustainable society on the global agenda. In this respect, gamification has gained increasing attention as a tool for companies to motivate employees to adopt sustainable behaviors. Specifically, adapting gamification design to the preferences and needs of individual users has been strongly advocated. However, knowledge of personalized gamification design is largely based on conceptual assumptions and self-reported preferences. It remains thus unclear whether actual behavior of different user types matches theoretical conjectures and how user typologies can drive successful gamification design in sustainability contexts. This work addresses this gap by evaluating the design of a gamified app for sustainability at work by comparing expert evaluation (n=10) and analysis of actual user behavior (n=37) of different Hexad player types over a two-month period. In juxtaposing expert opinions and user behavior, our results reveal that actual user behavior greatly differs from expert suggestions and theoretical assumptions. Our results contribute to future research on tailored gamification by questioning the current state of tailored design theory mainly driven by self-report and pointing to the relevance of the context and non-stereotypical approaches for future personalization efforts. - Display the gameplay but playfully
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis(2019) Park, SolipThe term ’game museum’ refers to an institution that conserves, archives, and exhibits the history of games. This thesis qualitatively compares the case of the Finnish Museum of Games (FMG, Finland) and Nexon Computer Museum (NCM, South Korea), concentrating on their choices of the object and the aesthetical expressions in the exhibition space. The goal of this thesis is to find the influence of curators and potential game museum visitors on the game museum’s choice of object and aesthetical expressions. This thesis used a combined multi-method of Visual Discourse Analysis and Comic-Based Research. The research questions of this thesis are: 1) How do the FMG and NCM display games differently in the museum space? 2) How do curators and potential museum visitors’ gaming memories relate to the choices of displayed objects and aesthetical expressions in FMG and NCM? 3) How can comics, as a research tool, supplement the study of game museums and their potential visitors? The findings from the thesis indicate that the choice of the objects and aesthetical expressions in FMG and NCM were linked with the sociopolitical discourses upon their establishment and the personal gaming memories of curators. Another important factor discovered is that both game museum curators and potential visitors tend to reflect their memories when perceiving the topic of game museum and their exhibitions. Moreover, both the curators and potential visitors were motivated to establish a positive cultural message on gaming. The thesis suggests that game museums may have to update their exhibitions frequently in order to remain engaging for future generations. This would involve game museums to learn the trend and memories of potential visitors and the games that they enjoy. The use of educational comics, like this thesis research, could be one of those methods for game museums to learn potential visitor’s interest. - Embracing Global and Local: How Game Industry Expatriates Work Between Global and Local Game Development Practices
A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa(2024-08-23) Park, SolipThe paper explores cases of immigrant/expatriate game developers (“game expats”) in Finland, focusing on the influence of global platforms and local game development practices. Results from qualitatively analyzing longitudinal interview transcripts (n=64) collected from 2020 to 2023 indicate that the migration of game expats is inherently bound to globally shared and fast-changing game development tools and platforms (e.g., shared game engines, publishing channels). Thus, an individual’s digital compatibility with global technical practices positively affects the motivation to migrate. Meanwhile, countries and companies each have different ways of implementing game development practices into work (e.g., different terminology, prioritization). The individuals’ ability to adapt to such local interpretations of practices positively affects settlement and motivation to stay. However, despite the pluralistic nature of game development — of both global and local factor’s influence — the incidents of cultural encounters and tryouts were often perceived as a risk amongst game developers. This negative perception leads to game expats’ assimilation and self-exploitative work attitudes. Therefore, the paper calls for a joint effort of industrial and societal game ecosystem stakeholders to encourage cultural competence and tolerance in the ecosystem to nurture sustainable talent pools and inclusive game work environments. - Everywhere but Nowhere: Development Experiences of the International Game Developers in Finland during the Covid-19 Pandemic and Remote Work
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä(2022-10-29) Park, Solip; Kultima, Annakaisa; Lehtonen, Miikka J.; Krath, JeanineThe Covid-19 pandemic has influenced people's views on work, and a significant portion of the global game industry converted to remote work during the pandemic. To explore the status of game development in this pivotal moment, we have conducted semi-structured interviews with 27 immigrant/expatriate game developers ("game expats") in Finland analyzing their migration push and pull on societal, industrial, social, and individual factors. The results indicate societal and industrial factors simultaneously influencing game expats' migration intention, but with an increasing influence of game corporation's role on developers' both on-the-job and off-the-job embeddedness due to an absence of (local) community activities during the pandemic. The data also reveals that game developers are valuing the physical workspace for face-to-face interactions, despite the industrial norm of digital tools and seamless transition to remote work. Furthermore, an alarming stratification and hierarchization within the game industrywere identified, which game developers self-dividing in-house versus outsourced workforce even if they were both required to work remotely. This paper contributes to game studies on game developers' experiences as an attempt to investigate the local context of game development. It is also one of the first snapshots of game work practices in Finland during the Covid-19 era. - Exploring the Dark Side of Multiplayer Online Games: The Relationship between contact experiences and sexism
A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa(2022) Kordyaka, Bastian; Krath, Jeanine; Laato, Samuli; Park, Solip; Jahn, Katharina; Niehaves, Björn - The History of Quantum Games
A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa(2023) Piispanen, Laura; Morrell, Edward; Park, Solip; Pfaffhauser, Marcell; Kultima, AnnakaisaIn this paper, we explore the historical development of playable quantum physics related games (“quantum games”). For the purpose of this examination, we have collected over 260 quantum games ranging from commercial games, applied and serious games, and games that have been developed at quantum themed game jams and educational courses. We provide an overview of the journey of quantum games across three dimensions: the perceivable dimension of quantum physics, the dimension of scientific purposes, and the dimension of quantum technologies. We then further reflect on the definition of quantum games and its implications. While motivations behind developing quantum games have typically been educational or academic, themes related to quantum physics have begun to be more broadly utilised across a range of commercial games. In addition, as the availability of quantum computer hardware has grown, entirely new variants of quantum games have emerged to take advantage of these machines' inherent capabilities, Quantum Computer Games. - Learnings From The Case of Maple Refugees: A Story of Loot Boxes, Probability Disclosures, and Gamer Consumer Activism
A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa(2023-10-03) Park, Solip; Denoo, Maarten; Grosemans, Eva; Petrovskaya, Elena; Jin, Yaewon; Xiao, Leon Y.The article synthesises what we learned from reviewing the player activism of the “Maple refugee” incident and applies the insights to the European video game industry and commercial context. The Maple Refugee incident was perhaps one of the most disruptive video game incidents that occurred in South Korea in recent years. It saw tens of thousands of Korean players from the game Maple Story (Nexon, 2003) mobilised in unprecedented online and offline protests in Spring 2021. Together with players from other free-to-play (F2P) games, Maple Story players rallied against the industry norms of monetising with loot boxes and the industry self-regulatory approach to probability disclosures to address potential harms. This culminated in the social phenomenon of the proxy activism method of ’truck protests,’ rallies of crowdfunded rented trucks displaying protest messages instead of people mass-gathering in public during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the English timeline of the incident collated by Park et al. (2023), we dive deeper into the case with a multidisciplinary group of experts from game studies, law, and human-computer interaction and highlight various issues present in this case: the regulation of loot boxes and probability disclosures, the social pillars of player activism, player trust and theorycrafting, and game production. The paper contributes to the deepening of the industry’s understanding of F2P game business while diversifying the Western-centric discourse of the game research landscape by calling for further cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary inquiries into current video game issues. - Migrated/ing game work: A case study of Korean game expats in Finland
A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa(2021) Park, SolipThe number of immigrant and expatriate game creators is steady on the rise, becoming one of the critical, creative experts in the video game industry. In Finland, 27% of the workforce in Finnish video game companies are coming from abroad. However, despite their growing numbers, little is known about these foreign workers' status and their experiences with cultural interpretations in game production. To fill this gap, in this research I interviewed and observed South Korean game creators who migrated to Finland, focusing on their motivation for relocation and experiences in country-to-country transition. Data revealed three (3) patterns of value clashes and two (2) contextual factors, as well as an indication of alarming obstacles that hinder the bilateral cultural exchange within game production. This paper offers a first in-depth analysis of one of the expatriate groups in Finnish video game industry, extending the existing discussion of game work in the contemporary multicultural society. - Move to Design: Tactics and Challenges of Playful Movement-based Interaction Designers’ Experiences during the Covid-19 Pandemic
A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa(2022-11-04) Park, Solip; Hämäläinen, Perttu; Kultima, Annakaisa; Vidal, Laia Turmo; Segura, Elena Márquez; Reidsma, DennisDesign practices targeting playful movement-based interaction are changing rapidly with both technological and societal developments. In this paper, we provide a snapshot of movement-based interaction designers’ experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic, by interviewing designers working in diverse roles that integrate physical human body movement and digital technologies (i.e., exergame and wearable game designers, playground and landscape architects, sports and dance trainers, and Sports-HCI professionals). Using grounded theory, we have identified two tactics from the designers’ experiences: (i) the significance of face-to-face embodied interactions throughout the entire movement-based interaction design process, and (ii) the importance of positive, yet critical, attitudes to technology for designing bodily experiences, including mixed use of non-technical materials and tools for rapid prototyping and iteration. However, it was evident that such tactics are often not feasible without physical interaction between the designer and users. The restrictions imposed by Covid-19, therefore, further revealed the importance of body movement to designing a playful movement-based interaction — from ideation to execution and testing. This paper offers a worrying view of movement-based interaction design during the Covid-19 era, while calling for further investigation to enrich the discourse that could contribute to this field, possibly also beyond the circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic. - Playable (Research) Concepts Workshop: Translating Your Topics into Tiny Games
A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa(2020-01-29) Park, Solip; Kultima, Annakaisa; Lassheikki, ChristinaIn this workshop, the participants bring their own research topics and concepts to create small games with the game making tool - Construct 3. We invite the participants of Academic Mindtrek to think about and experiment with how, for instance, figures in their research papers would translate into interactive experiences. What if instead of pictures, tables and charts, research or articles would use small embedded interactive games? What would such games be like, and what are the ways in which games can communicate? We call these "playable concepts". - Understanding Game Work Migration: Game Expats in Finland
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Doctoral dissertation (article-based)(2024) Park, SolipThis dissertation explores the experiences and creative work practices of migrant game developers ("game expats") in Finland, focusing on the factors that motivate them to move to or leave the country, as well as the cultural adaptations they encounter in their work practices. Additionally, the study includes methodological and pedagogical explorations aimed at enhancing multinational game development work. There has been a significant growth in the number of game expats in recent years. In Finland, game expats now occupy nearly one-third of the nation's entire game industry workforce. However, academic inquiries into game expats' work, life, and migration experiences have been overlooked. As of writing, this dissertation is the first scholarly attempt to study the microscopic landscape of game work migration, by asking: (i) What are the factors that affect game expats' migration and settlement intention?, (ii) How do those factors affect the game expats' practices of game development?, (iii) How could one improve the multicultural practices of game development? My research methodology focused on capturing the experiences of game expats, using qualitative longitudinal research combined with arts-based research methods while engaging with the participants for four years. Semi-structured interviews collected from the participants were analysed using thematic analysis and grounded theory, supplemented by inductive visual abstractions and research popularisation through comic art making (a web-comic series titled "Game Expats Story"). My research offers three key contributions. First, it highlights the multifaceted nature of game development and its influence on game work migration, including globally shared technical skills that motivate game expats to relocate, locally distinctive practices that encourage settlement, and the role of the occupational community in bridging global and local boundaries. Second, it exposes the worrying talent import tactic of "cultural fit" normalised in the Finnish game industry, and the precarious nature of the game industry that pressures game expats to achieve immediate productivity at work promptly upon relocation. By profiling expats based on "cultural fit", the industry forces rapid assimilation, hindering game expats' natural integration and requiring them to abandon their established development practices to quickly demonstrate adaptability in Finland. Third, to address these challenges, the dissertation introduces a pedagogical exploration designed to enhance the cultural competencies of future game developers and calls for industry-wide collaboration to rethink talent import strategies. Further interdisciplinary research is essential to deepen the scientific understanding of game development practices globally, fostering a game industry that is culturally diverse, inclusive, and equitable. - Understanding toxicity in multiplayer online games: The roles of national culture and demographic variables
A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa(2022) Kordyaka, Bastian; Krath, Jeanine; Park, Solip; Wesseloch, Henrik; Laato, SamuliToxic behavior (TB) is a negative response to in-game frustration in multiplayer online games (MOG) that can ruin the playing experience, causing financial damage to MOG operators. Understanding the drivers of TB is an important step to curb the behavior. In this work, we consult the model of national culture (MNC) as well as demographic variables (e.g., education, gender, and age) as antecedent variables of TB using an exploratory design. We surveyed players of League of Legends and Dota 2 with two samples, based on the MNC, from North America (n=155) and India (n=119). We observed significant cultural differences in TB, with higher levels of self-reported toxicity in the Indian sample. In both samples, consistent with previous findings, age was negatively associated with TB. However surprisingly, there was a statistically significant difference among the two groups in terms of the relationship between education and TB.