Tuuli Saarinen
I have recently finished my Master's thesis, and will graduate as a Master of Science in a few weeks.
After graduating, I will start working as a game designer for a start-up in Montreal, Canada. Despite this change from academia to industry, I am hoping to keep doing research in the future as well, even if I might not end up doing it full-time again.
I am always interested in job opportunities, co-operation, and volunteer work related to games - both digital and non-digital.
Supervisors: Annakaisa Kultima
After graduating, I will start working as a game designer for a start-up in Montreal, Canada. Despite this change from academia to industry, I am hoping to keep doing research in the future as well, even if I might not end up doing it full-time again.
I am always interested in job opportunities, co-operation, and volunteer work related to games - both digital and non-digital.
Supervisors: Annakaisa Kultima
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Papers by Tuuli Saarinen
I will be using a method called affinity diagram to analyse two sets of data: interview data on future trends industry professionals are following, and a selection of articles gathered from Gamasutra.com. The interview data is used for placing the emotion discussion on the map of contemporary industry trends, whereas the data gathered from Gamasutra gives us a more in-depth look into the topics and themes that industry professionals bring up when talking about emotion.
The data shows that not only is emotion considered an important element in all games, but the discussion is moving away from the very high-level ”there should be more emotion” -type to the more solution-focused ”how to bring in more emotion” -type. It also shows that games are believed to have notable potential, and that emotion is seen as being closely tied to reaching this potential.
the people working on the teams.
The most important question that needs answering before I can do anything else is: Will I be able to get the answers I need through this method and from these people? From these test interviews I can see that there may be a difficulty proving, with interviews, the need for emotional grammar in game design. Since proving this hypothesis is vital for the rest of my research, I will have to reconsider the method and the focus group. One possibility would be collecting massive amounts of questionnaire data for proving the hypothesis, allowing me to build my further research on a solid, quantitative base.
If the hypothesis proves to be correct, I am planning on doing interviews on three game designer groups: game design students/hobbyists, indie game designers and established game designers. I would also include another factor – nationality – and do comparative research on game designers of the Western and Eastern cultural domains. The aim of this would be to map whether there are differences in opinions and values between these three groups, in these two cultural domains. As a result and with the help of these different informant groups, I am hoping to be able to create more communication between the groups and to form a set of tools for creating emotion in games.
I will be using a method called affinity diagram to analyse two sets of data: interview data on future trends industry professionals are following, and a selection of articles gathered from Gamasutra.com. The interview data is used for placing the emotion discussion on the map of contemporary industry trends, whereas the data gathered from Gamasutra gives us a more in-depth look into the topics and themes that industry professionals bring up when talking about emotion.
The data shows that not only is emotion considered an important element in all games, but the discussion is moving away from the very high-level ”there should be more emotion” -type to the more solution-focused ”how to bring in more emotion” -type. It also shows that games are believed to have notable potential, and that emotion is seen as being closely tied to reaching this potential.
the people working on the teams.
The most important question that needs answering before I can do anything else is: Will I be able to get the answers I need through this method and from these people? From these test interviews I can see that there may be a difficulty proving, with interviews, the need for emotional grammar in game design. Since proving this hypothesis is vital for the rest of my research, I will have to reconsider the method and the focus group. One possibility would be collecting massive amounts of questionnaire data for proving the hypothesis, allowing me to build my further research on a solid, quantitative base.
If the hypothesis proves to be correct, I am planning on doing interviews on three game designer groups: game design students/hobbyists, indie game designers and established game designers. I would also include another factor – nationality – and do comparative research on game designers of the Western and Eastern cultural domains. The aim of this would be to map whether there are differences in opinions and values between these three groups, in these two cultural domains. As a result and with the help of these different informant groups, I am hoping to be able to create more communication between the groups and to form a set of tools for creating emotion in games.