A new game-based research approach - Institute for Ludology
The inception of the Institute for Ludology raised a number of questions regarding the contents and meanings of this research field.
Ludology? “What is that?” Everyone knows Biology, Psychology and Philosophy. After founding our Institute for Ludology at “design akademie berlin – SRH Hochschule für Kommunikation und Design” we in part encountered clueless faces. “So what do you do exactly?” Others felt embarrassed by the alleged equivocalness of the German word Ludologie. Players and Gamers, on the other hand, couldn’t hold back their excitement: “Hey, great, exciting, finally!”
“Ludos” (Latin for game) and “logos” (Greek for teaching) make for the “teaching about games”, Ludology, for game studies. In recent years, game studies have strongly focused on digital games, which resulted in many questions concerning topics such as gameplay, game design, educational games, virtual worlds, artificial intelligence but also impact research, investigating the societal impact of video games.
We consider play behavior to be culture-shaping and even culture-forming. So what can we learn from or with games in or for other disciplines? Our interest clearly requires a transdisciplinary research approach.
We already exert this aspiration in several research projects. In doing so, the minds of the Institute each have their very own pressing research questions and specific strategies.
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