Reflections on the ethics concepts, along with the requirements and goals of upcoming research.

Market research is an important part of game design, even if I only want to build games for myself. I have to consider if the idea is innovative and novel. Is there an audience for the design? When it comes to ethics and risk, these are interesting factors, as I value my friend’s input and opinions. I have a network of friends and colleagues who play similar games and enjoy similar aesthetics. Aside from the obvious ethical issues of experimenting on my friends, I need to find another outlet for testing ideas and early versions of games.

Exploration of communities

Engaging and participating in communities is an important way (Collins 2018) to not only further your education, but as support and idea generation. Game Jams were fun, however the time requirements on developing new games from scratch is too disruptive. The meshtastic community is active and well engaged but very specialist. Reddit has a number of communities relating to game design, game development, or specific game genres including tycoon, base building and incrementals.

The subreddits in general are very positive, providing general encouragement and recommendations on new discoveries. I believe these may be a good area to explore for audience research and idea generation. Reflecting on the general principles of ethics

  • Gathering the proper consent Participation in the communities is voluntary, and posts are often used to identify and gather feedback on game concepts or prototypes.
  • Avoid influencing the outcome The communities are focused around certain game genres will naturally have a bias towards those game types, which is desirable in this instance.
  • Respect Treating your research subjects with respect applies to time, so ensuring that the prototype is of sufficient quality and consistency before requesting feedback.
  • Principles should not be diluted by the findings This key principle is to protect against “for the greater good” style approaches of overlooking certain principles for the purpose of improvement.

By approaching each of the general principles, I feel more confident in approaching and applying for research authorization in the future.

Future Actions

  • Ethical Dilemmas (Robson 1993:33)
  • Explore doing a cognitive walkthrough where the user explains what it is they are doing and why.
  • Consider how audience research could be applied to rapid ideation artifacts

References

  • COLLINS, Harry. 2018. ‘A Sociological/Philosophical Perspective on Expertise: The Acquisition of Expertise through Socialization’. In Robert EVANS, K. Anders ERICSSON, Robert R. HOFFMAN, and Aaron KOZBELT (eds.). Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance. Cambridge University Press. Available at: http://ezproxy.falmouth.ac.uk:2048/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fsearch.credoreference.com%2Fcontent%2Fentry%2Fcupexpert%2Fa_sociological_philosophical_perspective_on_expertise_the_acquisition_of_expertise_through_socialization%2F0 [accessed 20 Nov 2020].