I want to get in the habit of writing semi-regular public updates about my current research. I feel like this is an important thing to do in part to help me work through my evolving ideas and in part because I’m using a large chunk of public money to do this research so some public reflection on it seems fair.

I mentioned previously in my general life update about the new project I’ve started. I’ve received funding through the Australia Research Council to undertake a three-year research project titled “Informal, Formal, Embedded: Australia Skill Developers and Skills Transfer“. The idea is to paint a more nuanced picture of what videogame development is, who does it, why they do it, and how it is contextualised within the broader Australian culture and economy. The focus on ‘skills’ is in part to get away from a focus on ‘jobs’. There are more people using ‘videogame development skillsets’ than there are people employed in ‘the videogame industry’. So focusing on skills and experiences is a way to draw that out.

I’m now about four months into the project. So far it has been a lot of project design, planning, and general administrative processes like sorting out ethics approval and budgeting. Most of that is pretty boring. Here’s some of the more interesting methodological/theoretical stuff that I’ve been working through: Continue reading →