Collaboration and Team Composition in Applied Game Creation Processes

Key insights

6 takeaways

01
Team composition and collaboration, rather than any single design method, are the main determinants of whether applied games can balance entertainment with their out-of-game objectives.
02
A subject matter expert is involved from the start in nearly all projects, usually as the client or someone working for the client, yet only half of SME-involved companies treated the expert as a full team member, reflecting unclear authority over content.
03
None of the eight projects included a pedagogical or transfer expert, despite theoretical frameworks treating such expertise as central to achieving learning outcomes.
04
Instructional designers are virtually absent from applied game teams, and none of the ten Dutch designers interviewed would hire one even if budget allowed.
05
Only one company employed a dedicated content manager to mediate between content and design, and the authors propose content managers and transfer or pedagogical experts as remedies to the content-gameplay integration gap.
06
The findings are exploratory, drawn from ten interviews with Dutch applied game designers and eight projects, so they may not generalise beyond that context.

Summary

Applied game creation, the development of games with goals beyond entertainment such as learning, training, or persuasion, is shaped more by how teams are composed and how they collaborate than by any single design method. Drawing on interviews with ten Dutch applied game designers and a close look at eight projects involving Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), this study examines who participates in these projects and how their roles interact. Its central argument is that the integration of domain content with game design is a persistent challenge, and that team structure is a key determinant of whether applied games can successfully balance entertainment with their out-of-game objectives.

The most consistent finding concerns the SME. In nearly all cases, a subject matter expert is involved from the beginning of the project, and that expert is usually the client or someone working for the client. Yet only half of the SME-involved companies treated the expert as a full team member, reflecting a structural ambiguity about authority and ownership over content. Notably, none of the projects included a pedagogical or transfer expert, despite theoretical frameworks that treat such expertise as central to achieving learning outcomes. Only one company employed a dedicated content manager to mediate between content and design.

The study also finds that instructional designers are virtually absent from applied game teams, with none of the ten designers indicating they would hire one even if budget allowed. This suggests a gap between theory and practice, in which designers and SMEs struggle to reconcile gameplay with content. The authors propose a content manager and a transfer or pedagogical expert as remedies.

The conclusions are explorative, based on a small sample of ten interviews within the Dutch context and a limited set of projects. The authors call for further research on SME roles, playtesting frequency, and the ongoing interplay between game designers and domain experts.