Thesis Chapters
09. Appendices

09. Appendices

Appendices

The appendices of this thesis begin with an extended section which contains vignettes have been extracted activity within video recordings of screen capture files and where possible or profitable, augmented with descriptions of physical interactions taken from 360 camera data. At times data from interviews with participants are used to triangulate findings to add greater validity. The process is described in detail in Chapter 4.

Appendix V: Vignettes

INSERT THEM HERE.

Appendix A: Ethics and recruitment

A2: Game Making Club follow up email

My name is Mick Chesterman. I am a tutor and PhD student in the Manchester Met Faculty of Education. I am looking for families to take part in a Game Making club to learn how to make video games together.

The weekly game making activities start on take place on ___________ and the Manchester Met Brooks campus and will last until __________________.

These activities are part of a study looking at collaboration, creativity and problem solving in a family learning environment. Taking part in the study will involve some of the sessions being recorded and some interviews with you about your experiences. More details will be provided as part of a fuller participant information sheet.

If you do not wish to be a part of this study that’s not a problem. You should still apply to take part as one version of the club will not be a part of the study. This version of the club will undertake equivalent activities.

To register your interest in taking part. Please email me on m.chesterman@mmu.ac.uk

Many Thanks

Mick Chesterman.

Appendix A3: Full Participant Information Sheets

Investigating the Potential of Family Game Making to Support Collaborative Production: Participatory research with Families

A3a. Information Sheet for Parents

You and your child/children are being invited to be involved in this research study. Before you decide whether you want your child to take part, it is important for you to understand why the research is being done and what your participation will involve. Please take time to read the following information carefully to help you decide whether you wish to take part. If anything is unclear or if you would like more information please contact Mick Chesterman (email: m.chesterman@mmu.ac.uk)

What is the purpose of the study?

The project hopes to understand the process of making digital games. Two or more family members will join a larger group to explore creativity and problem solving in this context. The aim is that this understanding will help inform good practice for wider game making activities as part of family learning projects and venue programmes.

What will participation involve?

We would like to observe you and your child/children’s participation in an approximately 8-week (2 hours per week) game making programme. The activities are designed to support participants to review and make your own digital games that can be played on web browsers. Some of the work will involve using paper, pens, textiles, and other materials to make picture prototypes and generate sounds to include in the games created.

These sessions will occur during Autumn 2019 / 2020 at Manchester Metropolitan University (Brooks Building) during school time, facilitated by the researcher. You will be expected to accompany your child/children and participate in the activities.

There are no known risks, inconveniences or direct benefits, although we expect participants may increase their understanding of game making concepts and practices.

All written, drawn and material artefacts produced will be treated as research data. The researcher will make descriptive notes during sessions. Some activities will also be audio and video recorded. These recordings may be used for reflective interviews. These interviews will also be audio recorded, with the content analysed to inform reports or academic publications.

Approximately three weeks after the sessions are complete, each family unit will be invited to a follow-up interview.

Identities will be kept confidential through coding and the use of pseudonyms. Any images used in reports will be altered using Photoshop to create anonymised line art sketches. Video used in research presentations will be edited to maximise anonymity. All data will be stored on a password-protected external drive in a locked office at MMU.

Please note:

  • Names will be removed from all data, and information will be anonymised.
  • If there is any risk of indirect identification, we will consult with you.
  • You and your child can withdraw at any time by emailing Mick Chesterman.
  • If you withdraw, your data will not be analysed, and you may still take part in other activities.

Who to contact

For questions about the study:

  • Mick Chesterman, ESRI, MMU, Room 1.43, Birley Building
  • Email: m.chesterman@mmu.ac.uk
  • Phone: +44 161 124 72060

To raise a concern:

A3b. Information Sheet for Young Participants

Dear Student,

We are asking you to take part in a research project called Investigating the Potential of Family Game Making to Support Collaborative Production. We’re interested in how young people and their family members can work together to solve problems and create new ideas when making simple video games.

If you agree to join in, you and other students will come to Manchester Metropolitan University with your parent or guardian. You will use fun equipment and technology to explore and make digital games.

These activities will happen over about 8 days. Your parent or guardian will be with you the whole time and take you to and from the university.

We will video and record what happens while you work together and on the computer. When we show or write about the project, we’ll change your name and turn any pictures of you into cartoon-style line drawings, so no one knows it’s you.

If you change your mind, you can stop taking part at any time. Just tell us or let your parent or guardian know.

Questions?

A3c. Information Sheet for Practitioners

You are being invited to take part in a research study. Before you decide, it’s important you understand why the research is being done and what it will involve. If anything is unclear or you want more information, please contact Mick Chesterman (m.chesterman@mmu.ac.uk).

What is the purpose of the study?

he project explores how families make digital games together and how this process supports collaboration. The goal is to develop good practice for family learning and public programme delivery.

Why have you been chosen?

You have experience working with different age groups in digital game making. Your insights are valuable for the study.

This is a personal academic study. Whether or not you participate will have no bearing on your professional relationship with MMU.

What will participation involve?

You will take part in an interview about your experience, held at MMU or another convenient location. The interview will be audio recorded, and notes will be taken. These will be used to inform the researcher’s doctoral thesis and related academic work.

Participation is voluntary. You can withdraw at any time, and any data already collected will be destroyed and excluded from analysis.

Who to contact

For questions about the study:

  • Mick Chesterman, ESRI, MMU, Room 1.43, Birley Building
  • Email: m.chesterman@mmu.ac.uk
  • Phone: +44 161 124 72060

To raise a concern:

Appendix B: Methodology contributions

B.x Methodology - Extract of 5 minute transcripts

Timespan Content
15:00.0 - 20:00.0 Fok -

Ed is looking for an animation frame already created

Mark still reading documentation on how to add animation to a character.

Mark: Quite complicated. But we can do it. But it would mean a lot of mucking around
Ed: Ah Er
Mark: Which is difficult to do while we’re here. But it’s doable.
Mark: It’s like a project in itself really.
Ed: Project in itself?
Mark: Yeah! (laughing). I just want to know like. We can get him in. So if I ask about the sizing.
Ed: Hmmn
Mark: I think you can edit the size here.
Ed: Why don’t you go here for a computer and you can do that?
Mark: Why. What. While you’re doing what?
Ed: Um making a sound track or something. I could do something like that.
Mark: Ok. Yeah. I’ll see if there’s any more computers in the cupboard.

Plan – Polish
Child Solo – creating assets –
20:00.0 - 25:00.0 Ed then creates a head – struggling
Seems a bit stuck – not able to recreate work

Making noises to indicate stuckness after 10 mins

Create – Polish
Child Solo – creating assets –
Pair – navigating to assets

B.x Methodology - Participants Interview questions - semi structured

Introductory Questions

  • In a nutshell, can you tell me about what you have done on the game making activities?
  • What are some of the background factors that motivate you taking part in these activities?
  • Is there anything that jumped out as successful
  • Was anything unexpected?

Personal Dimensions

  • What knowledge or skills are you trying to build by taking part?
  • What about personal attributes / qualities
  • Can you tell me more about any specific activities that did built knowledge or attributes?
  • Tell me about any  times you felt you could bring your own identities or interests into your making processes?
  • Tell me more about how that happened and any impact it had on you.
  • Tell me any times you felt you could choose your next steps or your own path of progression in your activities
  • Tell me more about how that happened and any impact it had on you.

Material Dimensions

  • Tell me about the software or hardware tools or materials you used
  • How did they impact on how or how much you were able to collaborate?
  • Did they make some of your goals easier or harder?
  • What was your general thinking around these tools or materials, any other reactions?
  • What about the resources used, printed or online? Similar questions to the above.

Social Dimensions

  • What are your recollections of any  social dimensions of learning you recall from the game making programme? Either Unstructured interaction or more structured, directed interaction
  • Tell me about any specific activities or resources that you think may have supported this social approach to learning?
  • What challenges do you think existed in this area?
  • What are the pros and cons of working with families?
  • What are the pros and cons of working with other families?
  • Do you think the family nature of the programme impacted on how activities evolved?
  • What observations about intergenerational interaction did you made?
  • Are there particular any emerging patterns or roles of collaborative interaction that started to happen?
  • Is there any other impact that the family learning environment have on the overall programme?

Cultural Dimensions

  • Were you able to bring in interests of identities from family life to the programme
  • Could you draw on any other activities or groups you are a part of?
  • Did you make any links to any real life groups of people or communities outside the game making programme
  • Are there tensions or challenges or advantages about concerning linking with outside communities?
  • Are there other cultural factors which interacted with the game making programme?

Appendix C - Interview data & participant feedback or detailed observations

Appendix C.2 - Email to participants in mid-P1 - Never mind the bees. I need your help too!

Mick ChestermanM.Chesterman@mmu.ac.uk

Hi there,

Never mind the bees. I need your help too!

I really appreciate all your energy going into the game making club over the last weeks. This is an experimental process and you guys are really going for it.

Also special thanks to J* for doing the Sonic Pi session on Tuesday that was great, and I learned some useful things for doing that one in the future.

It was a bit of a hard session for me on Wednesday as I was a bit low on confidence about how to pull all of your creativity into a finished game! It started to feel like a bit of a fantasy!

So I think I realised something. I said in the past that the idea of the club is for you to follow your interests and I’ll do the job of pulling together that creativity into a game.

But I realised that I can’t do it alone!

So I think part of the work we have to do is to visually map somehow what we have now at the start of every session. Via prints outs, or sheets where we map what we have and what we are missing.

I’m happy to give it a go at the start of next session to try to explore one way of doing it.

But ideas via email would be very useful too.

And let’s also have a break out group at the end to work out a bit more of a team approach as I need your help!

Thanks loads for reading this far… Mick

ps: I guess the challenge is to do this so that it’s a map, with different learning directions and possibilities, but that we are all still on the same map in our groups.

So supporting autonomous learning but also team work.

Appendix.C.3 - Case study with Anastasia’s family

One family in P1 chose not to continue with most other families after the Xmas break.

Members of this family had engaged in planning on paper and in particularly in creating pixel art, however tensions began to emerge when the introduced code framework framework did not support the desired features of one child. The feature they wanted to add to the game was bee design roaming a 3D landscape.

When the family withdrew, they shared in feedback (see below) that at one point the family looked around and just saw people doing “hardcore coding” and no longer felt that they belonged".

In the end stages of the game production process, due to the dynamic of the larger group, they had been reliant on others to implement code changes for their imagined game, unable to contribute fully at this point and found themselves isolated.

Thus a contributing factor to this families alienation were tensions engendered by the large group size and compounded by frustrations stemming from unfamiliarity with tools and processes.

In participant feedback, the parent of this family described in the previous section indicated that it took too long before in the planning stage and called for more hands on play and use of the tools of production before being called on to make creative decisions. The parent likened this to an arts studio approach. This feedback contributed to choices outlined in other sections of this chapter. (WHICH ONES)

When the family withdrew, in my journal notes I reflected that the they shared of alienation from the group process occurred in a session where, due to a sense of urgency to complete games, I had omitted drama-based warm up activities. Instead as participant entered I began to support to help some participants debug some pressing code errors.

For some families and individual participants there were conflicts to do with a sense of anxiety and alienation from the group coding environment and associated peer working dynamics.

One family dropped out and in their exit interview they shared that at one point we looked around and just saw people doing hardcore coding and we no longer felt at home in the environment. In this emergent design, they had mostly completed asset design and narrative development and the only coding remained. I thus wanted to address the tension between completing the project and alienation from just coding.

The value of playfulness is illustrated with one exit interview with a parent where they shared their reasons for leaving the program. At one stage after a week where they had missed a session, their family looked around and saw other groups involved in ‘hardcore coding’ and no longer felt at home. They compared this previous sessions which had more fun and group oriented activity.

I was struck that his incident happened during a session where I had not played customary drama games to create an inclusive environment. The games had been omitted as I was responding to a sense of urgency coming from families to solve problems. The scarcity in facilitator time drove me to crack on supporting families to debug code errors.

Anastasia shared reflections on the issues of family and home education dynamics, suggesting that parents may get in the way of young people’s ability to move into other’s spaces to learn things, and that parental helping roles may therefore be a hindrance. The following is an excerpt from end of P1 reflection notes based a short interview with Anastasia.

Process could have worked well if just kids.
Adults have more social rules.
Kids don’t mind copying, invading space.
But adults do. Some lack spontaneous approach.
If parents and kids work together, social rules are stuck to, in that the adults lead a learning process.

In feedback the parent shared she didn’t want to bother other families with problems via the email list, and also noted the hesitancy caused by parental involvement compared to the kids ability to jump in and learn from each other less self-consciously.

Thus this surfaced a tension, the value of a peer learning balanced with the need for low pressure. In other words avoiding a negative sense of obligation.

Appendix D - Learning design appendix

Appendix D.1 - On software tools

Appendix D.1.a - Summary of software tool use

  • Piskel - a graphical editor used to create pixel art sprite characters;
  • Audacity - a desktop based application to record and edit audio using audio effects and filters like delay and echo;
  • freesound.org - an open repository of audio files which could be downloaded, used directly or altered using Audacity;
  • Sonic Pi - an education music application allowing the creation of music using text coding;
  • Bfxr & jsfxr - web based tools to create sound effects aimed at game production;
  • Scratch - while scratch was not use for game production, I encouraged participants to use its intuitive graphical editor to create backgrounds for the game;

SHOULD THIS BE IN THE GLOSSARY INSTEAD?

Print out of cards with simple coding missions

Updated incomplete game template

Drama scenario Interactive chat page in glitch

Appendix D.1.x - Facilitator Toolkit

A summary of what’s included

https://micksphd.flossmanuals.net/tech_appendix/00_facilitator_toolkit/

Appendix D.3.x - Maker types and social missions

Appendix referred to in Chapters 5 and 7.

The process of exploring identity in this way surfaced the cheekiness of some young people and the pleasure they took in demonstrating their playful mischievousness. I began to make journal notes on this subject and talk to other games study practitioners. I began to ask the question can the surfacing maker types (as per player types) encourage awareness and celebrate the emerging practices that the community was producing.

Appendix.bartle - Summary of interactive Bartle test

EDIT DOWN LOADS - MOVE SOME TO BLOG POST INTRO OF JOHN’S INPUT?

As part of attempts to try to build into the program, activities which help build the participants sense of their own identities of game makers or more generally digital designers. I saw potential value here to address the danger internal bias about the kind of process that a computer programmer should adopt, echoing the call for pluralism in approaches [@papert_epistemological_1990]. I introduce a warm-up activity trialled in P2 where participants took part in an physical version of the Bartle Player Test, a framework used to categorise players of multiplayer games based on their preferred play style [@hamari_player_2014].

It identifies four main player types: Achievers (motivated by goals and rewards), Explorers (interested in discovery), Socialisers (driven by interaction with others), and Griefers (focused on disruption of other people’s game experience). The test helps game designers understand what motivates different players.

While this activity is not key to the main thesis, it forms the genesis of later interventions related as such a longer blog reflection is relevant here. INSERT LINK TO BLOG REFLECTION

The process of exploring identity in this way surfaced the cheekiness of some young people and the pleasure they took in demonstrating their playful mischievousness. I began to make journal notes reflectinG on the potential value of surfacing maker types (from player types) to encourage awareness and celebrate the emerging practices that the community was producing. In particular, linking griefing in digital play with similar disruptive practices in digital making, in this case the process of messing with game play conventions other people’s creations. As an example some players created impossible or overly easy game levels. They appeared aware of implications for game balance but is taking pleasure in this seeming destruction of the key challenge of the game as an act of disruptive play. They seem to take pleasure from ignoring concepts of what should be done to maintain game balance and from the sense of shock from their current audience her parent. Going against this convention is a type of playful destruction in this context. The process mirrors play theory concept of playing against the game or dark play [@sutton-smith_ambiguity_2001].

I translated player types to maker types based on notes in my observation journal and extracts from screen capture data. The following list of Game Maker types:

  • Social makers: form relationships with other game makers and players by finding out more about their work and telling stories in their game -
  • Planners: like to study to get a full knowledge of the tools and what is possible before they build up their game step-by-step
  • Magpie makers: like trying out lots of different things and happy to borrow code, images and sound from anywhere for quick results
  • Glitchers: mess around with the code trying to see if they can break it interesting ways and cause a bit of havoc for other users

Participants, particularly older ones, used playtesting as a way of showing support for fellow game makers. Example behaviours included: praising graphical content; making links with home interests of participants through questioning; and building rapport. Madiha in particular used playtesting to show her appreciation of the graphical work of others especially in the creation of cute animal characters. In response to one game which featured an image of a dog, other participants asked: Do you like dogs? Do you have a dog at home?.

It is worth stating that, the reflections on game maker types or styles above are not imagined or proposed as an exclusive or unchangeable styles. This statement addresses concerns on learning styles advanced by Fleming. The main problem with Fleming’s learning styles (VARK) is that there is little scientific evidence of improved outcomes or even for set styles in learners. Instead the styles are advanced as a reflective tool and as a prompt for exploratory activities in the learning design.

Adapting the learning design to encourage activities exploring different maker types

My journal notes detail an evolution of attempts to try to build into the program, activities which help build the participants sense of their own identities of game makers or more generally digital designers. By the end of P2 most of the tools and main processes were in place. But I wanted to decrease reliance of my role as facilitator, to increase organic reflective processes and to celebrate emerging participant identities. To do this I began to integrate my observations of different game maker styles in to the learning design more explicitly.

I used the question “What kind of game maker are you?” as an indicator to participants that one aim of the project was to create a space where different approaches are possible and celebrated. To communicate this approach, as well as starting game activity, I incorporated the question into an animation of the resources home page (see illustration 4.x). In P3 the underlying ideas were incorporated into the process drama described in the next section.

Illustration 4.x - What kind of game maker are you {width=95%}

Side missions

Full table of side missions

Your Alien Mission (social) Your Secret Alien Mission:
Find out the names of 3 games that are being made. Change the variables at the start of someone else’s game to make it play in a funny way.
Make a list of characters in two other games being made. Change of the images in someone else’s project to a totally different image and see if they notice.
Find out the favourite computer games of 4 people. Change the level design of the first level of someone else’s project to make it impossible but try to change as little as possible to do that.
Find out who plays the most computer games per week in your group. Change of the images in someone else’s project to a very similar but slightly different version and see if they notice.
Find out what other people are planning. Give some friendly feedback to one other person / group. Why don’t you try… Add a rude sound to someone else’s project.
Ask 2 different groups if they have thought about what sounds they are going to put in their game. Swap over some sounds in someone else’s project and see if they notice.
Find out from three groups if they are going to try any totally new ideas. Delete all of the code of someone else as they are editing it and see how they react. Then help them get it back using the Rewind function.

In the transcript above of vignette 4.1.b we see that in the end-of-session reporting back participants engage in a lively discussion about the secret missions they had been given. Encouraged by her mother Madiha, Nasrin shares that she has been highly engaged in a disruptive secret mission. Dan and Toby express playful frustration. Mark and Ed contribute by sharing their more subtle disruption and Richie is keen to have his rude noise mission noticed and commented on. Some public missions had a noticeable impact in this session particularly in stimulating a discussion among parents around which arcade games they played as youths.

Side missions or side quests are also used in open world games are used in part to appeal to different kinds of players and are often models on Bartle’s taxonomy of game player types [@bartle_hearts_nodate]. In this phase, parents Madiha and Mark both used the prompts of the social missions to take a break from their creative work using the software toolset to talk to other parents and children.

Mark: Right we’ve got a background in. Do you. Do you want to reply to the Weean.
Ed: Yes. (Ed starts to type very slowly)
Mark: (after some time) While you do that I’m going to go do my mission.
Ed: What's your mission?
Mark: To find out about other people's favourite games.
Ed: Alright.

In later reflections parent Mark made the following comment in post-session interviews; “We used the instructions, we like to plod.”.

Playful Playtesting and maker types

Referenced in Chapter 7.

The maker types listed above were in particular played out in the playtesting process. Some children added additional playful elements to playtesting. Because these interactions were mobile between workstations is it hard to extract audio and transcribe their speech. However, it is possible to communicate the characteristics of this play via a description of a typical encounter and the gestures of participants.

Play is initiated by calling across the room as an invitation to play, or as a provocation. When playtesting is underway it is normally undertaken with two or three participants standing around the computer rather than being seated. The core of those involved take turns to play the game, exclaiming frustration or triumph at completing levels or failing. Failure may be extremely performative with a rapid pulling way from the screen and keyboard. This may be followed with a battle to wrestle control of the keyboard to play the game next. This may involving playful pushing, and wrestling of hands and arms and vocalisations. While this play is happening it may attract other participants who remain on outskirts of the activity looking on able to watch what is happening on the screen and respond non-verbally with smiles or laughs.

These changes to the form and function of playtesting by young participants is another example of expression of agency by participants that widens the scope of possibility of actions.

Appendix E - Technical appendices

The following technical appendices are included as online documentation.

08. Conclusion10. Glossary