Department of Games and Arts

BA (Hons) Game Design and Production

BA (Hons) Computer Arts

MProf Games Development

MSc Technical Art and Visual Effects

Please see below for our areas of research focus in this Division.

Or, if you are looking for something specific, visit the full list of university research opportunities in our course list.

Performance and Play explores communities of play and experimental practice-research utilising digital and traditional media, the incorporation of game development, screen technologies and extended reality (XR) applications into site-specific performance and art, and studies of performance audiences. Working closely with industrial partners (e.g., Microsoft, Sony) to explore the potentials of emerging technologies for immersive storytelling and new forms of creativity and play. Current international collaborations integrate storytelling and game development, with a focus on energy use, climate change and conflict. This includes a strong focus on immersive technologies, with research focused on novel applications of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality. Recent work includes developing an app for street level play outside the V&A Dundee during the Covid-19 lock down.

A prime example of leading practice-based research in exploring the intersection between play and performance is the Inchcolm Project, a proof of concept hybrid of game design, theatre design and promenade performance.

Our arts research involves the creation of original works as a commentary on contemporary society, in support of communities, and in exhibition and festivals. This includes art practice that challenges norms and provides artistic commentary on geopolitics, digital graphic design that explores differences in visual perception and experience including the perceptions of partially sighted communities, and engagement with and leadership of digital arts festivals.

More broadly, our research staff are actively engaged with the design, development, and showcasing of experimental game design. Our practice-based game design research includes experimentation with novel and original controller designs, explorations of play and play styles, and playable critiques of games and technology.

Applied Games draws on its academic and industrial expertise to engage a range of research methodologies – from play as interrogation and ideation in serious game jams to data driven design in full development projects – to explore the role and value of games in education, in training, and in science communication. Researchers seek to develop new game design frameworks following practice-based approaches, for instance by applying media archaeology to game design. Applied Games brings together expertise in computing, mathematics, design, and psychology to develop and evaluate both hardware and software. For example, recent work in agri-tech has brought Augmented Reality (AR) technologies and Artificial Intelligence (AI) together with animal husbandry to increase efficiency and animal health.

Our games and History research activity relates to how games, interactive media, and immersive experience design engages audiences with history, with collective memory, and with the aesthetics of nostalgia. Abertay has a strong track record of applied games research ans examples include:

• Collaboration with the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service to develop game-based learning solutions for professional training.
• Development of an educational game on the life of Andrew Carnegie for use in secondary education (with the support of the Carnegie Birthplace Museum).
• The use of game jams to engage in knowledge exchange with private sector partners in aviation, cybersecurity and policing.
• Their Memory, a collaboration between Abertay, Poppyscotland, Pocket Sized Hands and Ruffian Games that led to the creation of a prototype VR experience that allows participants to explore the memories of veterans.
• Games that seek to represent the social and ethical impact of the sugar trade on 19^thcentury Scotland.

Working with our colleagues in the Department of Games Technology and Mathematics, we are also conducting practice-led research into the design of games to support families adversely affected by cancer diagnosis.

Games studies research underpins both Performance & Play and Applied Games areas in which we undertake theoretical and empirical research into the design, production, and reception of games, to encompass game production studies, interactive narrative, immersive storytelling, and critical analysis of games culture.

Specifically, our focus includes:

• Game narratives, genres, media literacy, and performance in games.
• Gamification
• Ludification
• Transmedia
• Game production studies, communities of practice, and game jams.
• The history of game audio, visual design, and gaming nostalgia.
• Curation, collection, and archiving of games and interactive media.

Our arts research involves the creation of original works as a commentary on contemporary society, in support of communities, and in exhibition and festivals.

This includes art practice that challenges norms and provides artistic commentary on geopolitics, digital graphic design that explores differences in visual perception and experience including the perceptions of partially sighted communities, and engagement with and leadership of digital arts festivals.