Game development is commonly articulated through abstract production models and generalized pipelines (cf. Fullerton, 2014; Adams, 2010; Lemarchand, 2021). While these frameworks remain pedagogically and organizationally useful, they often oversimplify the diverse, situated, contingent, and negotiated character of game development as it unfolds in practice. Ethnographic studies of game development have shown that game making is rarely linear (Kultima, 2015, 2018; O’Donnell, 2014). Instead, development is shaped by uncertainty, shifting trends, and social factors of design work — demanding continuous adjusting and problem-solving across the domains (cf. Washburn et al., 2016; Kultima, 2025; Kultima 2018; Politowski et al., 2021).
Despite the expansion of game studies, human–computer interaction research, and production studies, a systematic empirical understanding of game development as practice remains comparatively underdeveloped. Although existing research forums increasingly welcome scholars interested in studying game development, there remains a need to actively facilitate collaboration among researchers working on these topics. The scale and complexity of this undertaking exceed what can be achieved through fragmented or isolated contributions alone. More purposeful coordination is therefore essential for supporting robust theory building, deepening the understanding of practice, and advancing methodological development (cf. Khaled & Barr 2023a, Khaled & Barr 2023b, Kultima et al. 2024, Godin et al. 2020).
This seminar position Game Design Praxiology (Kultima 2018, Kultima 2015, cf. Cross 2007) — the study of design and development practices as situated activities — as a necessary foundation for advancing scholarship on games and play. The seminar seeks to advance methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of game design and development practices, moving together toward answering the inherently multifaceted question: How are games actually made? How can we research this together?
PRAXI 2026 