Games on Games: Game Design as Critical Reflexive Practice

This editorial introduction to Issue 05 of GAME, The Italian Journal of Game Studies (2016), argues that video game design can function as a legitimate form of critical and scholarly inquiry, a practice the authors term "research through design" or "critical making." The issue grows out of a 2013 DiGRA panel in Atlanta that explored self-reflexive games as a "playable theory" of game studies. The editors frame the publication as a provisional and partly formalized outcome of an ongoing, informal research network, and they pose central questions about whether games can serve as an epistemological vehicle comparable to papers, books, and conference presentations.

The authors document a marked rise in self-reflexive games over the three years since the panel. Independent, theoretically inclined designers have produced games-on-games that critique design, development, and distribution practices, while mainstream titles such as Portal, Saints Row IV, Grand Theft Auto V, and The Stanley Parable have helped normalize meta-referential humour and critical commentary as acceptable modes of expression. The editors observe that the medium's conventions are increasingly open to self-critique, though the foundational questions raised in 2013 remain largely unresolved.

The issue is itself self-reflexive in two respects. It deliberately stretches the scholarly journal format by accepting playable games alongside papers and design documents, adopting a hybrid policy that mixes textual and interactive contributions. It also publishes extracts from the peer-review process, exposing the submission-review-resubmission cycle as part of its contribution to research through practice. Contributions span Stefano Gualeni's Necessary Evil, Pippin Barr's critiques of Hotline Miami and Octodad, Robin Sloan's nostalgia-based readings, Brian Schrank's analog game Bust A Cup, and Evan Torner's study of self-reflexivity in tabletop role-playing games.