Hybrid Knowing: Preserving Physically and Digitally Entangled Traces in Hybrid Game Design

Jess Rowan Marcotte

This dissertation represents the written portion of an interdisciplinary research-creation project that explores ways of studying creative practices with a focus on a kind of interactive experience called a hybrid game. It represents a contribution to the field of critical game design research. It builds on research from an extensive range of fields, including queer game design, intersectional feminist theory, critical design, critical game design, game design practice and methods, practice-based research and research-creation research, performance and theatre, live-action roleplay studies, alternative controller studies, autoethnography, and archival studies. From there, this research proposes and uses a methodology for studying the practice of creating interactive experiences that have non-standard, custom physical elements along with digital ones, especially those involving a facilitator. I make the case that autoethnography, though it has some limitations, is a well-suited method for research-creators engaged in design research.

Read the full project here.