The pervasive impact of working within the game industry upon the creative practice of its artists
type: CreativeWork
description: Whether seeking to improve their own practice, or the alignment of academia and students with their own particular domain, professional computer game developers believed that claims their work was inherently creative could prove disingenuous. They believed that new knowledge and theorem regarding the reality of their practice and its impact upon them would encourage more synergistic education models, workplaces, and careers. As the industry is itself complex and multidisciplinary, it was determined that the most appropriate scope for a single thesis would be a single development discipline, with any generated theory capable of adaptation to other disciplines in the future. The discipline chosen for such immediate consideration was that of the Game Artists, the aim of the research then being to discover,” The pervasive impact of working within the game industry upon the creative practice of its artists”. It became apparent that while established theory regarding creativity and creative practice might offer some guidance, the incidence of either within the game industry and its artists’ own practice was indeed presumptive and incomplete. Their actual activities were vague, their personal goals or motivations garnering little if any prior research, even while creativity scholars recognised these to be essential elements of its practice. The incidence and influence of each required contextual illumination and insight. The methodological approach of the phenomenologists was the most appropriate to achieve this, being ideally suited to exploring the incidence and influence of specific key phenomena within a particular populace. Accordingly, an autoethnographic reflection was followed by interviews with 26 veteran game developers whose roles and experience offered key representations of the leading international domains and territories. The subsequent analysis of these informed the design and execution of eight case studies with game artists themselves, the encoding and an…
abstract: Whether seeking to improve their own practice, or the alignment of academia and students with their own particular domain, professional computer game developers believed that claims their work was inherently creative could prove disingenuous. They believed that new knowledge and theorem regarding the reality of their practice and its impact upon them would encourage more synergistic education models, workplaces, and careers. As the industry is itself complex and multidisciplinary, it was determined that the most appropriate scope for a single thesis would be a single development discipline, with any generated theory capable of adaptation to other disciplines in the future. The discipline chosen for such immediate consideration was that of the Game Artists, the aim of the research then being to discover,” The pervasive impact of working within the game industry upon the creative practice of its artists”. It became apparent that while established theory regarding creativity and creative practice might offer some guidance, the incidence of either within the game industry and its artists’ own practice was indeed presumptive and incomplete. Their actual activities were vague, their personal goals or motivations garnering little if any prior research, even while creativity scholars recognised these to be essential elements of its practice. The incidence and influence of each required contextual illumination and insight. The methodological approach of the phenomenologists was the most appropriate to achieve this, being ideally suited to exploring the incidence and influence of specific key phenomena within a particular populace. Accordingly, an autoethnographic reflection was followed by interviews with 26 veteran game developers whose roles and experience offered key representations of the leading international domains and territories. The subsequent analysis of these informed the design and execution of eight case studies with game artists themselves, the encoding and an…
author: Fee, Kenneth
language: eng
keywords: Games industry, Creativity, Creative practice, Game artists, Careers, Ethnography, Motivation, Industry
date published: 2023-10-27
date modified: 2026-07-24T00:50:29Z
provider: Abertay University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Abertay University