Critical Play and Interdisciplinary Discourse at the Games Institute

In 2022, the Games Institute (GI) ran a seed grant competition, awarding and supporting eight interdisciplinary collaborations with over $110,000 of funding. This past April, the Games Institute (GI) celebrated the conclusion of the program with “Disrupting Disciplinary Divides for Digital Futures” – a research symposium. We’ve highlighted the impact and importance of these interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary projects over the past few weeks, but we’d also like to reflect on how the GI has always championed and encouraged interdisciplinary collaborations. Written by the GI’s Interdisciplinary Project and Communication Manager, Pamela Maria Schmidt, we revisit experts from her award-winning co-op work placement report, from when she was an active graduate student and member of the GI in 2019.  

Schmidt’s report outlines how the GI curates an interdisciplinary environment by encouraging staff, students, and faculty to critically play together—and how that act of play creates a common language where research ideas begin to flow. Looking back, the findings of this report continue to ring true today and we hope to continue sponsoring research excellence with this unique method of interdisciplinary creation.

Schmidt first realized that playing games at the Games Institute (GI) wasn’t just a form of social and team bonding during a round of One Night Ultimate Werewolf in which the win condition of the game from the werewolf’s perspective, was to turn the villagers against each other until one of them was singled out and “killed”. This gruesome setting of the game led to a critical discussion about the bystander effect, the historical maltreatment of women, the Salem Witch Trials, and eventually, toward hive mentalities in the present-day world. This wasn’t a unique phenomenon. In fact, conversations like this are the norm at the GI and are often heard during casual engagements which then inspire and lead to future. GI members see the value of mixed disciplinary conversations as a cradle for interdisciplinary collaboration, as opposed to having a group put together in which they are told to be “interdisciplinary”.  

This is the GI’s speciality—creating an environment that allows research in interactive and immersive technologies to flourish; creating partnerships outside of academia where research is not only used to further knowledge but also for social impact. All methodologies and all styles of research are welcome at the GI; the collision of different disciplinary approaches creates new, weird, wacky, and wonderful projects that respond to the University’s mandate of innovation.  

“Interdisciplinary” is a buzzword in academia and company-funded projects with multiple suffixes used interchangeably (multi-, trans-, inter-, etc.), multiple definitions, and purposes. In a study regarding interdisciplinary collaboration in the health sciences, Aboelela et al. note that beyond academia, there has been a “wider societal interest in holistic perspectives that do not reduce human experience to a single dimension of descriptors,” and that many fields of study, such as biophysics, democracy, etc. are inherently interdisciplinary despite not considering themselves as such¹.

The exploding popularity of all things “interdisciplinary” has resulted in the term becoming evermore slippery and difficult to apply. Moreso, simply creating a space that invites researchers to collide does not ensure that the environmental conditions will produce “interdisciplinary” collaboration to occur. Based on her experiences at the Games Institute, Schmidt realized that everyone uses the term differently—an observation that that Aboelela et al. had as well.  

Schmidt argues that interdisciplinarity is a spectrum rather than a clear breakdown of collaborations between disciplines. This, more fluid, approach has been successfully used and facilitated at the Games Institute for almost 15 years (figure 2).  

Figure 2: Schmidt’s model of collaboration between disciplines with characteristics of Multidisciplinary, Interdisciplinary, and Transdisciplinary Research Curated at the Games Institute (GI). A selection of the projects listed below can be found on the "Our Research" page for more details.

Links to all mentioned projects within Figure 2 are noted below for further exploration.)

Much like academia, working environments deal with multidisciplinary teams, different academic backgrounds, and different positions on methodology, knowledge, and implementation of projects.  

On the surface, interdisciplinary collaboration demands an unbiased outlook toward other disciplines, however the reality is that there are many different varieties of biases including race, religion, gender, and sexuality that are as challenging as disciplinary divides. Dutton et al. argue that one of their most crucial findings is the evidence of ‘real engagement’: people using the same vocabulary, especially if one discipline adopts the terminology of another. This is not limited to academia—interdisciplinary collaborations, or fostering ‘real engagement’ significantly benefits everyone, including administrative work in the corporate realm².

Realizing that all problems in life are multifaceted is something that is becoming more widely accepted, however, fostering productive relationships is difficult. Dutton et al. give an example of an interdisciplinary project that almost failed because of the misunderstandings between the engineers and social scientists involved in the work³.

Part of GI success in facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration, is the research space in all its manifestations (co-located labs, shared collaboration facilities, administrative support, social spaces, etc.) Whether it is a round of Werewolf between staff, play-testing GI member projects, or a one-shot of Dungeons and Dragons, the GI not only facilitates a space where play is normalized, but an environment where feedback is just as important as performance. This feedback is where critical thinking elopes with play to make “critical play”: a place where scholars of all disciplines find a common language to work collaboratively.  

Mary Flanagan, a founding figure in game studies who published the seminal text Critical Play, admits that play is difficult to define, noting that it can be grouped into four categories: learning, power, fantasy, and self⁴. However, in this text, her definitions of both play and game remain fairly abstract and she never truly makes a connection on how play can be critical.  

Bo Kampmann Walther notes that “play is an open-ended territory” that oscillates between actual “play” and “non-play”⁵. Mutual participation of both acts is required and often, breaking out of a play space to facilitate feedback, such as reframing rules before retuning to the game, is what makes the experience enriching. As such, “play is a meta-communication that refers exclusively to itself” and these moments where participants return to reality is where Schmidt believes “critical play,”. Before a game is played, rules are negotiated so that everyone is on the same page and is crucial before play begins. It’s a type of exploration and investigation before creating an interactive experience. Although there is a contextual feedback loop within the liminal boundaries of play, it connects to an external one that allows for real world knowledge to pour over and allow conversation to happen. Whether or not this conversation is academic is irrelevant—it creates conversation, using the common language produced by play, to break down barriers. This common language is a type of interdisciplinary discourse.  

Play functions much like interdisciplinarity. It lies on a spectrum and can be fully encompassing (transdisciplinary) or base level (multidisciplinary). Where collaboration falls on the interdisciplinary spectrum is in itself a methodology that is dependent on individuals, their play styles, and what the collaboration calls for. It’s an important cultural element that feeds the GI ecosystem and allows for interdisciplinarity to occur naturally. 

Schmidt’s findings provide insight into how play has the uncanny ability to break down bias, create new language, and is a key tool in facilitating interdisciplinary collaborations. Schmidt stresses that individuals working together do not necessarily collaborate in an interdisciplinary manner. A specific ecosystem of support with productive environmental triggers is required to encourage students, faculty, and staff to think with an interdisciplinary mindset—or at the very least—to start considering alternative disciplinary perspectives.  

To create an environment where interdisciplinary collaboration occurs naturally, an interdisciplinary organization must do more than just provide a holistic view of knowledge. For interdisciplinarity to truly resonate with the researchers and become second nature in their work, creation of a common language is crucial. GI’s experience shows that playing together is the most effective way for individuals to appreciate one another.  

This is where the magic happens—broadening of knowledge that resonates across disciplines, impacts society, and allows for us to connect with one another.