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Abstract: "HCI scholars have been among those attracted to the study of online, computer-supported gaming. "Big Data" approaches, which analyze electronic traces left by game play, are an increasingly popular way to study it. This paper identifies basic epistemological problems in some such approaches, focusing on those that implicitly depend on the assumption that game play is fundamentally the same as other social activity. The paper explains why this and related assumptions are questionable, and why these Big Data approaches cannot establish their validity on their own. The paper then reports some results of a preliminary ethnographic study of Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs), in order to illustrate a way that ethnography can provide an initial purchase on how the underlying similarity/dissimilarity issue can be studied. It concludes by explaining how methodological triangulation, involving a dialectical discourse between ethnography, on the one hand, and Big Data and similar approaches, on the other, may be able to place Game Studies on a firmer epistemological foundation. It is the attempt to achieve such significant objectives, in particular to justify a foundational critique of a major new development in Game Studies, and to do so in a single paper, that justify inclusion of the paper in alt.chi. "

From the introduction: "In this paper, we focus on theorizing the design of digital games to support the learning of core scientific concepts and representational practices. Theoretically, we consider two frameworks: Knowledge in Pieces (or KiP) (diSessa 1993; Hammer 1996; Sherin 2001; Clark et al. 2009) and Science as Practice (or SaP) (Pickering 1995; Lehrer and Schauble 2006a; Duschl et al. 2007). While KiP is a theory about the structure of human knowledge, SaP is a theoretical perspective about the development of scientific expertise. Grounded in the history of science, SaP argues that the development of scientific concepts is deeply intertwined with the development of epistemic and representational practices (e.g., modeling). We report how these theoretical frameworks have shaped the design of our digital games for learning Newtonian dynamics across an extended design experiment. We show how shifting from KiP to SaP as the underlying theoretical anchor has ena bled a shift from designing games that focus on conceptual integration (Clark and Martinez-Garza 2012) to games that focus on disciplinary integration. Whereas conceptually integrated games integrate the targeted conceptual relationships directly into the mechanics of the core game environment, disciplinary integration extends conceptual integration by incorporating disciplinary practices as well as conceptual relationships into the mechanics of interacting with, manipulating, or navigating the core game environment. "