News

Prototyping Games for the Online Hybrid Lab's Game Production Pipeline - Read our latest research for the FDG '23 Conference.

Participants from the Online Hybrid Lab presented insights into the development of academic games for the FDG Conference in Portugal.

New research from the Online Hybrid Lab has been published in the Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. "Promotypes - Prototyping Games for a University Game Production Pipeline" by Edward Morrell, Annakaisa Kultima, Ylva Grufstedt and Tomi Kauppinen was presented and highlighted as a feature paper for the 2nd Workshop on Academic Game Development. All four authors were able to attend the workshop at Lusófona University where they engaged in many constructive dialogues relating to the role of game creation within academia. The conference paper has been made available Open Access via the ACM library in agreement with Aalto University.

Promotypes - Prototyping Games for a University Game Production Pipeline

Read a new research from the Online Hybrid Lab that has been published in the Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, April 2023.

Read more
Lisbon city_photo by Liam McKay on Unsplash

The conference paper

The research paper is framed as a game development 'post-mortem', wherein the challenges and constraints of making educational games are expanded upon through the reflections of the game designer, further contextualised within the boundaries of academic game making. The paper details the development of several 'promotypes', promotional prototype games created to demonstrate some of the potential outcomes of the Online Hybrid Lab's Game Production Pipeline. In developing a pipeline that is measured, non-intensive and research-oriented, further complexities are added to a development process that already has to balance the needs of educators, proficiencies of developers and expectations of players. Through this publication and future research, we hope to improve the process of educational game development by openly communicating both the problems and solutions we encounter in developing a production model that aims to better support online learning.

The workshop

The FDG workshop provided an opportunity for members from our team to collaborate alongside other professionals and educators interested in how game development can better fit within the academic context. As a theme for the day, we looked closer into how game literacy and expectations can widely vary across the different stakeholders associated with a game project, across funding consortiums to coordinators, evaluators and students. This is an important topic to us at the Online Hybrid Lab as we understand that educators may not always be familiar with how games can function both as a medium and as an extension of learning, alongside all of their potential benefits to students. As discussed in our paper, we have been developing games at the Online Hybrid Lab to provide example cases to help in managing the expectations of what can be achieved within certain constraints. Our role has always been to facilitate communication between those parties interested in educational games and the developers capable of implementing them. In expanding this discourse through our academic publications and collaborations we expect to further ever more innovative and effective approaches to game development for education and research.

Game picture

Game production pipeline

Looking to develop your own educational game within Aalto? Come to talk with us! Online Hybrid Lab offers support in educational game production.

Aalto Online Learning - Online Hybrid Lab
Lisbon city_photo by Liam McKay on Unsplash

FDG 2023 Workshop program, Academic Game Development (external link)

The workshop on Academic Game Development is taking place on April 11, 2023 from 9:00 – 18:00 as part of the FDG 2023 conference. For this workshop, we focus on the challenges in academic game development that arise from differences in Game Literacy and Expectations. Participants are encouraged to reflect on their own experiences relating to this topic in preparation for the workshop.

a photo of Aalto University BIZ main building by Mika Huisman

Aalto Online Learning - Online Hybrid Lab

Aalto Online Learning - Online Hybrid Hub design, test, and promote production models and best practices in the field of online learning.

More information:

Edward Morrell

Game Researcher, Design and Development
 Tomi Kauppinen

Tomi Kauppinen

Head, Aalto Online Learning - Online Hybrid Lab
  • Published:
  • Updated:

Read more news

A man and a woman looking up in a room
Research & Art Published:

How to educate for innovation? New report sheds light on the best practices

The report by Aalto Design Factory dives into the core elements of creating a collaborative learning environment that prioritizes student-centered, real-world problem-solving.
Valkoinen kukka edessä, ihmisiä taustalla
Press releases, Research & Art Published:

Men, Swedish speakers and Master's degree holders most likely to own shares in unlisted companies

The first comprehensive study of Finnish owners of privately held firms found, among other things, that only three per cent of the population own shares in these companies.
Nautakarjaa laitumella.
Press releases Published:

Small reductions to meat production in wealthier countries may help fight climate change, new analysis concludes

Eliminating even a small fraction of current beef production could remove three years’ worth of global fossil fuel emissions
Kolme opiskelijaa ryhmätyön äärellä
Research & Art Published:

The School of Business’ approach to sustainability in business education stands out in Europe

With over 30-year history of research in sustainability topics, we can back up the classroom experience with top level research, Dean Timo Korkeamäki says