Spatial Levels in Informal Game Making

SPATIAL LEVELS IN INFORMAL GAME MAKING: DECODING CODE/SPACE & RECODING GENDER

Dr Aphra Kerr, Senior Lecturer, Sociology, Maynooth University, Ireland. 

IASH-SSPS Digital Scholarship Fellow, Spring 2019.

Gamejams are ad hoc informal learning events, presented as a fun place to learn, a place for socialising and open to all. Previous research on gamejams have presented them as an informal learning space for creativity, innovation and inclusion (Ryan et al. 2015; Kultima, A. 2015). Others have argued that all female gamejams and incubators are effective interventions to improve diversity in the games industry and games culture (Kennedy, H. 2018; Harvey and Fischer, 2015). But are gamejams open to all, and are they potentially a route into the industry and game makers for atypical game makers?

The digital games industry and game playing cultures are often highly gendered spaces (Kerr, 2017). Despite the rise of indie games and seemingly endless proliferation of game apps, the industry in the UK, Ireland and the US is still dominated by young heterosexual white men. In this talk I draw upon an ongoing three-year study of gamejams in different cities in Ireland to understand who organises informal gamejams, who attends them and what types of pedagogies are deployed. Despite gamejams being open to all we found a range of barriers to inclusion – both in terms of participants and in terms of pedagogies. We draw upon the work of Kitchin and Dodge (2011) to distinguish between coded spaces and code/spaces in relation to creativity, pedagogy, and inclusion. We also draw upon the feminist work of Judy Wajcman (2014) and others to develop strategies for reducing barriers to inclusion and increasing creativity in informal game making. This project is part of a larger international research project ‘Refiguring Innovation in Digital Games’.



Dr Aphra Kerr is a Senior Lecturer at Maynooth University in Ireland where she led the development of the MA (Internet and Society). In Spring 2019 she is an IASH-SSPS digitalscholarship fellows at the University of Edinburghworking on a new project entitled ‘Data Intermediaries, Data Work & Data Inequalities’.

Lunch will be provided.