Case Studies
Deep dives into specific videogames, analyzing how they implement the concepts in this knowledge base.
Available Case Studies
Celeste
- Dash - The dash as perfect Gesture
- Assist Mode - Accessibility as design, not compromise
Dark Souls
- Bonfire - The bonfire as transformed Aesthetic Heritage
Hades
- God Mode - Automatic accessibility through escalating resistance
Portal
- Level One - Implicit teaching through spatial constraint
Undertale
- Genocide Route - Permissions as moral architecture
Planned Case Studies
Future case studies will examine:
Celeste (continued)
- Chapter Structure - Pacing and progression
Dark Souls (continued)
- Interconnected World - Spatial communication masterclass
- Difficulty As Meaning - Permissions and meaning
Other Videogames
- Portal: Momentum (Gesture and physics feel)
- Undertale: Mercy Mechanic (Permissions as moral architecture)
- Breath of the Wild: Physics Systems (designed emergence), Great Plateau (tutorial through world)
- Hades: Narrative Repetition (story through roguelike structure)
- Noita: Emergent Behavior (systemic interaction)
By Concept
| Concept | Case Studies |
|---|---|
| Gesture | Celeste/Dash |
| Aesthetic Heritage | Dark Souls/Bonfire |
| Permissions | Undertale/Genocide Route |
| Accessibility | Celeste/Assist Mode, Hades/God Mode |
| Emergence | (Planned: Breath of the Wild/Physics, Noita) |
| Tutorial Design | Portal/Level One |
How to Read Case Studies
Each case study follows a consistent structure:
- Describes the specific design element
- Analyzes how it implements concepts from this KB
- Connects to broader principles
- Questions what's unresolved or debatable
Case studies aren't celebrations. They're examinations. Even great videogames have questionable choices.
Using Case Studies in Teaching
Case studies work best when students have already played the videogame. If that's not possible, video footage can substitute, but the haptic experience is lost.
Teaching sequence:
- Students play the relevant section (or watch footage)
- Discuss: What did you notice? What did you feel?
- Read the case study together
- Discuss: Did the analysis match your experience? What did it miss?
- Connect to framework concepts (Gesture, The 4 A's, etc.)
Writing Case Studies
If you want to add a case study:
- Pick a specific element (not "Dark Souls is good" but "the bonfire as checkpoint")
- Use concepts from this KB - especially Gesture, The 4 A's, Aesthetic Heritage, and Permissions
- Include your interpretation but also acknowledge other readings
- Connect to at least 2-3 other entries
Why Case Studies
Videogame design knowledge is often tacit - designers know what works but struggle to articulate why. Case studies make tacit knowledge explicit by examining specific decisions in context.
The case study method comes from business and law education, where students learn through detailed analysis of real situations rather than abstract principles. For videogames, this means examining actual design decisions rather than hypothetical scenarios.
The Specificity Principle
Case studies must be specific. "Dark Souls has good level design" teaches nothing. "The bonfire creates a checkpoint with meaningful cost" teaches a principle.
Specificity enables transfer: once you understand how the bonfire transforms checkpoint heritage, you can apply that thinking to your own work.
Limitations
Case studies are retrospective. They explain what worked, not how to discover what will work. They're tools for analysis and vocabulary, not prediction.
Case studies also risk canonization - treating analyzed videogames as "correct" examples rather than one set of choices among many. Every case study implicitly argues for the importance of its subject.
References
- Fullerton, Tracy. A Playful Production Process (2024) - on iterative analysis
- Schon, Donald. The Reflective Practitioner (1983) - on tacit knowledge
- Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games (2007) - procedural analysis method