Six Positive Words for Talking about Theory in Games Research (in Pursuit of Interdisciplinarity)

Abstract

We propose six words for talking about what a given theory or idea in games research is or does. Talking about the strengths and specialisations of each other's ideas is more likely to foster interdisciplinarity than enforcing ontological accord across our field's expanding landscape. First, we [1] review recent discussions about interdisciplinary games research and say why their recommendations don't seem optimally pluralistic. We zero in on what we take to be a promising compromise for most games scholars: Embracing middle-range theory. To bolster our rationale, we [2] discuss theoretical debates in two other young fields (film studies and organisational research) and show how they arrived at—and have been well served by—middle-range theory. Centrally, we then [3] argue for the value of six meta-synthetically derived dimensions of theory: Importance, interestingness, actionability, generality, simplicity, and accuracy. We review these six dimensions and demonstrate the framework in use. Weaknesses of our proposal are flagged prior to concluding.