A
new
paper
by
Drs.
Katta
Spiel
and
Lennart
Nacke,
“What
Is
It
Like
to
Be
a
Game?—Object
Oriented
Inquiry
for
Games
Research,
Design,
and
Evaluation”,
published
in
the
journal
Frontiers
in
Computer
Science
as
part
of
the
Research
Topic
"Games
and
Play
in
HCI",
explores
how
an
object-oriented
philosophy
could
provide
new
insights
to
the
way
Human-Computer
Interaction
scholars
approach
games
user
research,
essentially
removing
the
users
from
the
equation
and
playfully
engaging
with
the
game.
Spiel
and
Nacke
explain
that
an
Object-Oriented
Inquiry
would
disentangle
our
assumption
that
technologies
are
objects
and
humans
are
subjects.
Instead,
it
offers
a
speculative
lens
to
consider
technologies
as
subjects,
allowing
the
authors
to
explore
questions
like
“what’s
it
like
to
be
a
game?”.
According
to
the
authors,
attending
to
a
game’s
perspective
can
be
useful
in
generating
meaningful
insights
for
game
design
and
evaluation.
“It
was
not
our
aim
to
establish
what
a
given
game
is”,
explains
Dr.
Lennart
Nacke,
“but
rather
explored
how
we
can
know
what
it
might
be
like
to
be
a
game
and
how
we
might
know
about
it
differently
using
speculative
object-oriented
approaches”.
Holistic
game
design
–
designing
for
the
game
as
a
complete
experience
with
emotions
and
materiality
beyond
the
core
features
–
creates
opportunities
for
broader
playful
engagements.
The
methodological
explorations
offered
by
Spiel
and
Nacke
explain
how
to
achieve
this
by
breaking
the
process
down
into
becoming,
being,
and
acting
as
a
game.
An
object-oriented
approach
can
be
limited
in
the
ways
it
takes
player
experience
account:
“it
is
a
somewhat
apolitical
perspective
to
take,
one
that
does
not
lend
itself
well
to
transformative
research,”
note
the
authors.
“Given the political and transformative potential speculative design itself has brought forward, we see potential in the development of object-oriented methods that include such considerations.”
- Dr. Katta Spiel