Playful by Design: A Third Space Community of Practice for Game Studies & Design

"Playful by Design" presents the development of an interdisciplinary Game Studies & Design program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as a case study in building a "third space" community of practice. The central argument is that games now permeate many academic disciplines, yet persistent tensions separate critical game studies from professional design training and qualitative humanities from quantitative STEM methods. Given that game studies is inherently multidisciplinary, the authors contend the field is better served by re-centering on design practice and by cultivating interdisciplinary third spaces that support collaborative teaching and research.

The account traces the program's institutional history, beginning with a 2015–2016 campus census that revealed game-related teaching and research scattered across colleges without a unifying structure. Key milestones included the "Playful by Design" research cluster grant in 2017, whose first symposium drew more than 300 attendees, and a Provost's Office grant that established a Game Studies & Design unit offering undergraduate and graduate minors, followed by an online professional Master's program. Success is attributed in part to the precedent of the Informatics Institute's interdisciplinary minor and PhD, while administrative barriers, a lack of incentives for cross-unit work, and the absence of existing professional arts training are identified as principal obstacles.

The authors argue that third space communities can bridge disciplinary divides by bringing together faculty, students, industry professionals, and local stakeholders around shared interests. Specialized faculty, staff, and graduate students often drive this work, and reducing status hierarchies within these networks is presented as essential to fostering genuine collaboration and transdisciplinary aims. The approach is framed as a flexible complement to formal degree programs, valued in part because structural constraints such as tenure obligations and entrenched disciplinary norms make conventional routes difficult. The scope is a single US public research university, with the documented work spanning roughly 2015 through the program's expansion into online graduate education.