Starting with Research

Hey everyone! This is the blog for my masters project! Due to a recent death in my family, I have decided to look into grief processing through game design for my project and create a catalogue of design principles for this practice through gathering research in the field and making a grief game myself.

Over the last few days, I read some really interesting literature on grief games and games that are inspired by real life experiences. I want to highlight two books in particular that really helped me get a grip for how such a grief inspired design process could work.

For one, Sabine Harrer’s “Games and Bereavement” really encapsulates everything you need to know on the topic of grief in games. She speaks about her coined term, the “loss gestalt”, which describes the gestalt of loss in games and how the feeling of loss can be brought about impactfully within the player. Then, she analyzes various games in which this loss gestalt can be found and lastly talks about her own efforts in the grief game field. This case study approach really allows the reader to get a good feeling for how loss and grief could be meaningfully portrayed in one’s own game. You can find the book here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330799132_Games_and_Bereavement_How_Video_Games_Represent_Attachment_Loss_and_Grief

On the other hand, the work of Doris Rusch, titled “Making Deep Games: Designing Games with Meaning and Purpose” is a manual on how to draw from real life experiences when making games, both your own and others, and provides many exercises and tools that help to extract accurate and real emotions from yourself and others, distill them into metaphors and allegories and then package them in a game that is holistically inspired by your muse material. It is a must read for anyone who looks to find inspiration in real human experiences when it comes to game design! The book can be found here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-Deep-Games-Designing-Meaning/dp/1138812137

I will get back to you soon with more information about my own game!