Growth and interest in games research
Professor Frans Mäyrä feels that the future of games research is bright. The continuing rapid development of the game industry will also increase the demand for research.– We’re world leaders in research into pervasive games, says Professor Frans Mäyrä from Game Research Laboratory.
Games are a relatively young but rapidly growing target for research. In Finland this research, which has forged an international reputation, is carried out in several universities and institutes. The Game Research Laboratory, which started in 2002, is a research group operating at Tampere University and studying the design, making and playing of games and the development of game cultures from as many viewpoints as possible.
Several research projects are under way. For example, a project funded by the Academy of Finland ‘Creation of Game Cultures: The Case of Finland’ examines from the perspective of Finnish society how digital game playing came to Finland and what kind of game cultures have been created in Finland.
– We study playing as a digital form of culture and art, says Mäyrä, who adds that in global terms the Nordic countries are at the forefront as developers of modern games research. Finland comes a good second to Denmark. Internationally, Finns have considerable expertise in the field of game-design research in addition to pervasive games.
The Game Research Laboratory is involved in an EU-funded project entitled ‘Integrated Project on Pervasive Gaming (IPerG)’. The research group is developing socially adaptable games, investigating how a game adapts to a normal, social background.
Pervasive games create new game experiences that are tied in with everyday life, using tools, items and people that surround us.
– Pervasive games expand playing both temporally, locally and socially. The limits of the game world and reality become blurred, and a player does not necessarily always know what elements in the surroundings are part of the game, Mäyrä says.
There are many kinds of pervasive games: LARPS, role-plays and virtual reality games. What almost all of them have in common is the use of everyday communication technologies such as the mobile phone, Internet, Bluetooth technology and RFID identifiers.
– A good example of easily transmittable pervasive gaming is the globally popular Geocaching, in which the participants look for hidden geocaches around the world using GPS.
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Source: Finnfacts Newsletter 9/2009
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