The Duality of Game Studies

Being interactive media, games provide the opportunity to look at them in two distinct ways. One is the approach typical for literary studies (analysing the particular product as this is done also in film studies). The other is an approach taken in product usability - analysing the lived experience or mental models that game players create when playing games.

The literary approach is the one taken by the Game Studies online journal and researchers like the ones in GeorgiaTech's School of Literature, Communication and Culture. It is the approach of examining games as artefacts themselves and the horizons that the inherent interactivity opens. Jane Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck is a classic exemplifying the tradition and Ian Bogost's Persuasive Games is an attempt for exploring the identity a whole genre of games.

The other approach is the one examining rather the experience than the object of games. Although this is something that could be thought as an extension of product usability research, it is much more than that, because games actually allow their players to express themselves through the game. Thus it is much more than techniques like the above mentioned lived experience or mental models, because players develop their own identities in the game. A very good illustration of this are studies that have engaged with players in World of Warcraft, esp. ones done at Stanford University by Byron Reeves and Nick Yee. I personally also have made an attempt to conduct some opportunistic (non-invasive and exploring the artefacts of player experiences) with my study on the game We the giants.
In short, games deliver the complexity of collaboration with usually distinct roles of developer and player. This turns them into interactive experiences that can be seen from different perspectives. Ultimately making game experiences very subjective, but universally insightful.