The game research group at Södertörn University resides within the Department of Media Technology.
Contact: Petri Lankoski (petri.lankoski@sh.se)
Our research focus topics:
- game design research
- games and playing experience
- interactive narratives and games as fiction,
- gamification
- games and marketing communications
- video game industry
- game research methods
Researchers
Petri Lankoski (D.Arts) is an associate professor in game studies where he teaches game development and game research. He is a DiGRA (Digital Games Research Association) distinguished scholar. His research focuses on games and emotions, game character design, and game design. Petri also develops games as part of the research. His publications include Character-driven game design (Aalto University, 2010), Game research methods: An overview (co-edited with Staffan Björk, ETC Press, 2015), and Game design research (co-edited with Jussi Holopainen, 2017). His research interest include game design research, methods in game design research, games as fiction, and games and emotions. [Contact info] [Blog][Publications]
Projects: [Game development in Baltic], [Planning with Youth], [Pornograhic Indie Games]
Mikolaj Dymek (PhD) is a senior lecturer in media technology and teaches game development, game research as well as interactive media, business intelligence, and game marketing among others. Previously of the Royal Institute of Technology where he presented his Ph.D. thesis on the global video game industry, Uppsala University during his post-doctoral research project on digital media and marketing communications, Mid Sweden University as a senior lecturer in strategic communications, researches at the intersection of game research, marketing communications, public relations, and digital media. He has also been active for several years as a marketing analyst as part of a three-year participative research programme at a consumer communication agency, but currently also an independent consultant. [Contact info]
Projects: [Game development in Baltic], [Pornograhic Indie Games]
Kai-Mikael Jää-Aro (PhD) is a senior lecturer in media technology, teaching programming and software development courses for the Computer games programme. Jää-Aro has an M.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering and a Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction from the Royal Institute of Technology, with a thesis on computer-supported collaborative work in virtual environments. After graduation Jää-Aro has worked as a UX designer, technical writer and quality control engineer at Telestream AB and Vizrt Sweden before returning to academia. Jää-Aro’s research interest is multi-modal and interactive visualisation. [Contact info]
Past projects: [SmartZoos]
Alumni
Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari (PhD) is an associate professor at the Stockholm University. Mirjam is a game designer, researcher, and developer who entered the video game industry as a programmer in 2000. Her dissertation work (Teesside, 2010) explored characterisation and story construction in MMO’s focusing semi-autonomous avatars. Having focused on intelligent agents and story construction, her present research foci are AI based game design and story-making games. Her approach includes exploration of the game design space through experimental prototypes. She has worked as a game designer in various research projects, most recently in C2Learn. She is a co-founder of the Virtual Institute of Computational Expression, and recently founded the indie studio Otter Play.