Qualitative Analysis Summary: Follow-up Interviews

Qualitative Analysis Summary: Follow-up Interviews

The interview responses are summarized in Figure 1 and Table 1. As anticipated, the majority favoured designing for a specific closure, representing subjective knowledge and tolerating an iterative development process. A minority of designers were committed to representing objective knowledge and some desired a greater emphasis on pre-planning. However, game designers reported a significant willingness to accommodate the perspectives of professor/instructors. These results were not anticipated.

Commercial game designers had a non-trivial commitment to represent objective knowledge. Five designers indicated a preference for an emphasis on objective information while eight were committed to both (objective and subjective representations). Most were willing to design for open exploration but required to design for specific closure in order for their products to meet demands of the market. Five designers wanted to emphasize pre-planning because they had previously experienced chaotic development efforts where there was no pre-planning. Their preference for pre-planning was intended to prevent the occurrence of problems. When presented with a possible remedy to the professor/instructor disjunctions—the development team ‘buying-in’ to the same vision from the start—thirteen respondents indicated that it was necessary for the development team to ‘buy-in’. Six respondents indicated that ‘buying-in’ to the vision was not necessary. Excerpts from the interviews provide a more detailed picture of game designer perspectives.