Professional practice, amateur profile: mapping amateur game design communities

Abstract

Amateur game design communities are fruitful spaces for research in professional and technical communication (PTC) [9, 10, 16]; these communities often mirror many professional practices such as iterative design and the creation of extensive documentation. Before crossing into these spaces, however, researchers and practitioners must understand the makeup of these communities, which may (anecdotally) serve as potential spaces for marginalized people in ways the games industry does not. In this study, we used the International Game Developers' Association's Developer Satisfaction Survey as a base for our own surveys of three amateur game design communities. In mapping these communities, we found that each mirrored the games industry in several categories, but that each community also displayed unique differences that necessitate a variety of approaches to conducting research in or on such sites.