From the Magic Circle to Identity: A Case Study on Becoming a Videogame Designer in Singapore

This study examines how aspiring videogame designers in Singapore renegotiate their relationship to games as they move from play to professional practice. Drawing on fourteen interviews with students and instructors at a Singapore tertiary institution, supplemented by six respondents from esports organizations, the authors argue that the central transformation is not simply a shift between play and work but a change in identity. Students are guided away from a "hobbyist" view of games as fun, naïve, and mysterious toward a "game designer" identity that is critical, analytical, and capable of distancing itself from the games they play. One instructor's remark that the aim is "to ruin games for you" captures the deliberate character of this pedagogical project.

The findings show that this identity shift is neither painless nor uniformly welcomed. As time for recreational play diminished, students experienced identity conflict, with some reporting a richer appreciation of games through a design lens and others expressing resentment at the loss of escapism. The authors frame the game-designer identity as a role identity that requires role-taking: students must learn to imagine and design for diverse, specific player audiences rather than for themselves.

The study further documents how this role-taking extends across disciplines. Students were required to complete art and programming coursework, and project-based, team-assessed learning made reciprocal role-taking a routine element of training, with instructors urging designers to "empathise professionally" with the needs of artists and programmers. The authors position these collaborative practices as evidence that the boundary between play and work is increasingly blurred in both game-design education and industry practice.