Higher Education Studies; Vol. 11, No.

2; 2021
ISSN 1925-4741 E-ISSN 1925-475X
Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education

Remote Collaboration in Higher Game Development Education.

Online Practices and Learning Processes of Students between
Professional Routines and Psychosocial Challenges
André Czauderna1 & Emmanuel Guardiola1
1
Cologne Game Lab, TH Köln, Cologne, Germany
Correspondence: André Czauderna, Cologne Game Lab, Technische Hochschule Köln, Schanzenstr. 28, 51063
Köln, Germany. E-mail: [email protected]

Received: January 14, 2021 Accepted: February 8, 2021 Online Published: February 20, 2021
doi:10.5539/hes.v11n2p1 URL: https://doi.org/10.5539/hes.v11n2p1

Abstract
The development of digital games over physical distance is a common practice in the gaming industry, yet
widely neglected in the curricula of digital game development programs at university level. The coronavirus
pandemic, however, pushed project-oriented game programs all over the world towards an implementation of ad
hoc approaches to remote development in their project-based courses. The present article demonstrates
practice-based research examining such a course and its 30 third-year undergraduate students of game arts, game
design, and game programming, who remotely collaborated in interdisciplinary groups of two to five persons
over the course of half a semester during Germany‟s logdown in spring 2020. Applying a mixed-method
approach including quantitative and qualitative analyses of survey data (n=22) and qualitative content analyses
of students‟ postmortem documentations (n=30), this exploratory study reconstructed the online practices,
experiences, and learning processes of these students between their professional routines and psychosocial
challenges. The results of this study can be used in curriculum development to inform the advancement of
courses focused on the development of prototypes over physical distance, which may not only be relevant for the
field of games education, but also for related creative and project-oriented fields of higher education, such as
design, digital media, and software engineering.
Keywords: community of practice, coronavirus pandemic, covid-19, distance education, game development,
higher education, online collaboration, remote learning, remote work.
1. Introduction
The development of digital products over physical distance is a common practice in the gaming industry as well
as other creative industries and software engineering. It includes both the development over multiple sites in
different countries and remote work (respectively telework) of individuals. A single game title by studios such as
Ubisoft may feature the work of hundreds of collaborators from a variety of disciplinary and cultural
backgrounds, split between multiple studios and supporting structures (e.g. concerned with testing, localization,
and marketing) in different countries and time zones. Furthermore, additional employees and freelancers
contribute remotely from their home offices. As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, remote work saw an
immense increase during 2020 (Francis, 2020).
In contrast, so far, at least prior to the coronavirus pandemic, most higher education game development programs
have neglected the development of games over physical distance. This is insofar problematic as remote
collaboration requires particular knowledge and skills when it comes to workflows, project and knowledge
management, communication, psychology, etc. (e.g. Damian & Zowghi, 2003). In particular, the psychosocial
challenges of working remotely and/or over countries including time differences and cultural diversities should
not be underestimated (e.g. Olson & Olson, 2000).
In spring 2020, the coronavirus pandemic forced higher education to switch from traditional on-site instruction
to synchronous and asynchronous forms of distance education at a moment‟s notice (Bozkurt et al., 2020; Kerres,
2020). Thereby, many universities could not rely on pre-planned distance education, but needed to improvise and
implement “an emergency remote education” (Bozkurt et al., 2020). For game development education in its
project-oriented form (Czauderna, 2018), it was not only about substituting lectures and seminars by their online

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adaptations, but also about enabling students to collaborate in interdisciplinary teams on game prototypes
without having any physical meeting point on campus.
At the Cologne Game Lab (CGL) of TH Köln, these challenges were interpreted as a chance to iterate on
approaches to instruct students in the development of digital games over physical distance. In the summer term
2020, in the BA program “Digital Games”, all project-based courses required students to develop their games
remotely. This paper reports on practice-based exploratory research examining one of these project-based
courses and its 30 third-year undergraduate students of game arts, game design, and game programming (see
section 2.1 for a detailed description of this course).
Applying a mixed-method approach – namely, quantitative and qualitative analysis of survey data and qualitative
content analysis of students‟ postmortem documentations – the paper discusses the following research questions:
 How do students communicate and collaborate in a team-based development project over physical
distance using a variety of digital tools?
 How do students judge their experiences when it comes to challenges and enjoyment – considering both
professional practice and psychosocial well-being?
 How do students perceive their learning processes and outcomes? How do they learn together and
support each other as members of a community of practice?
Our study looks at collaborative practices and learning processes from the perspective of social theories of
learning, as suggested e.g. by Jean Lave and Étienne Wenger in their theory of situated learning (Lave & Wenger,
1991). In this sense, learning is observed less as an individual, psychological phenomenon, but in particular as a
social, collective process. It is assessed not only as a change of individual cognition, but also as “changing
participation in changing practices” (Lave, 1996, p. 150). Consequently, our object of study is not only the
individual learning in isolation, but the learning individual as part of a community of practice (Wenger, 2008),
and thus the social interaction of a community of practice. More precisely, in the case of the present study, we
examine collaborative practices and learning processes inside a small team of two to five students – as members
of a community of practice, connected by technological tools – developing digital games together.
The results of our practice-based exploratory research should allow curriculum developers and faculty members
to derive conclusions for future educational practices in game development education and related fields of higher
education.
2. Method
This chapter outlines the examined remote development project as well as it describes our methods of data
collection and analysis.
2.1 Outline of the Remote Development Project
We conducted our practice-based exploratory research in a project-centered course in the sixth semester of our
BA program “Digital Games”. In the examined course – which was led by one of the authors (E.G.), while the
other author (A.C.) acted as one of several additional mentors and examiners from different disciplines –
third-year students received the task of collaboratively developing so-called impact games, i.e., games with a
purpose beyond entertainment trying to make a real-world impact. The objective of an impact game is to have a
measurable effect on people, society, or organizations. This impact could be of different kinds including
knowledge, awareness of a cause, behavioral changes, cognitive or physical changes for health purpose,
promotion of a culture or an idea, etc. In the observed course, the impact games were supposed to have a topical
relation to “the corona situation”. Over the period of seven weeks and three days, students worked in eleven
groups with two to five students each. During the time of the project, students were not required to take other
courses. They thus had a lot of time to concentrate on the project.
After one week, each group had to submit a five-minute video to the online platform Spaces (which is a merger
between a social network and an e-learning platform developed by the Köln International School of Design) in
order to explain their project (first pitch). Three weeks later, students were required to exhibit a ten-minute video
on the same platform to show their progress (intermediate presentation). Both presentations – in asynchronous
mode – offered students the opportunity to receive written feedback from peers and faculty. For students, it was
mandatory to comment in written form on at least two other projects subsequent to the above-mentioned
presentations. At the end of the project, students needed to present their final results in a Zoom meeting (in a
ten-minute final presentation) as well as to deliver a digital game and a protocol of how to measure the impact of
their game. One week after the end of the actual project work, each student was obliged to submit a postmortem

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documentation on their individual work.

In their previous semesters, students had developed a variety of games in interdisciplinary teams, but never in a
setting exclusively grounded on remote development. The majority of this collaborative project, which ran from
April 1 to May 22, 2020, took place during the first coronavirus lockdown in Germany. Therefore, all facilities of
the Cologne Game Lab were closed, and students and faculty members alike were forced to physically stay away
from each other (unless in the rare case of students living together). It can be assumed that under these
circumstances many students were exposed to additional psychosocial stress. Discussions revealed that many
lost their jobs early in the pandemic, suffered from social isolation, and/or worried about their own health and
the health of relatives and friends. In addition, it must be taken into account that online learning and remote work
as such can be linked to stress and communication issues (e.g. Mheidly et al., 2020).
2.2 Data Collection and Analysis
In order to answer our research questions, we applied a mixed-method approach. First, we collected data through
a survey we mailed out to all students after the end of the project (n=22). In addition to standardized questions,
this survey included a couple of open questions. Second, we collected postmortem documentations (of 1500 to
2000 words) from all students who worked in eleven groups of two to five students – including one student who
collaborated with external contributors (n=30). A postmortem is a well-established tool in the gaming industry
and game development education which consists of a reflection of successful and unsuccessful aspects of a
project and concludes with lessons learned. For this project, students were asked to include a section on their
experiences with remote work during the project.
The sample of this study consists of students from our own project-centered course in the sixth semester of the
BA program “Digital Games” (as described in section 2.1). Due to our practice-based research design, it would
not have been feasible to include students from other institutions. Our sample thus cannot be representative of all
game development students and programs. The postmortem sample (n=30) is bigger than the survey sample
(n=22), because the submission of a postmortem was a requirement to pass the course, whereas the completion
of the survey was optional. In the survey, we collected demographic data, such as age and gender. Our survey
respondents were between 20 and 39 years old. The average age was 25.8 years. 27.3% of respondents were
female and 63.6% male, while 9.1% preferred not to say. We did not collect students‟ nationality, but it should be
noted that the group consisted of students from a variety of nationalities and cultural backgrounds.
Answers to open survey questions as well as postmortems were analyzed using qualitative content analysis
(Mayring, 2004) with the help of MAXQDA, a software package for qualitative data analysis. The code system
consists of the following categories: “description of remote work”, “judgement of remote work”, and “perception
of learning processes and outcomes”. The results, presented in the next chapter, are based on a triangulation of
the quantitative analysis of survey data as well as the qualitative content analysis of answers to open questions
and postmortems.
3. Results
This chapter illustrates the results of our study in three sections: (1) Communication and Collaboration, (2)
Challenges and Enjoyment, (3) Learning Processes and Outcomes.
3.1 Communication and Collaboration
This section outlines how students communicated and collaborated during their projects in teams of two to five
members.
3.1.1 Context
Most of our students (71.43%) perceived their routines and environments as significantly different than before
the coronavirus pandemic (see Figure 1). Therefore, the results of our study must be seen in light of the
particular conditions during Germany‟s coronavirus logdown in spring 2020.

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Figure 1. Self-perceived change of routines and environments during the coronavirus pandemic (answered by 21,
skipped by 1)

As sixth-semester students, they bring at least two and a half years‟ experience in game development. All of
them have at least some experience with remote development; more than a quarter of them own a lot (23.81%) or
even a great deal (4.76%) of experience (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Prior experience in developing games remotely / over physical distance (answered by 21, skipped by 1)

3.1.2 Usage of Tools

During the observed collaborative project, students were free to choose their own digital tools. As shown in
Table 1, two tools stood out: The majority of students used Discord (90.5%) and Google Drive (61.9%) several
times a week. In contrast, email, for instance, has not been a common means of project-related communication or
collaboration.

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Table 1. How often did you use the following tools in the impact games development project inside of your own
team? (answered by 21, skipped by 1)

Discord is an instant messaging and digital distribution platform. It allows users to create communities called
servers and to communicate via voice calls, video calls, and text messaging. The particular popularity of this
platform may be explained by its prevalence in the gaming community as well as a perceived functional
superiority over other tools, as the following statement by a student points out (Endnote 1):
We decided to use Discord as our main means of communication, as we all already had accounts and
are well aware of how it works. Also, it offers better voice quality than most other platforms while
adding the option to have multiple text channels to organize the project. (G6/S1)
A lot of the above-mentioned tools have been used by many of our students prior to the observed collaborative
project in a game development context. Discord, for instance, has been previously applied by all of our
respondents (see Figure 3).

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Figure 3. Tools used prior to the remote development project (answered by 21, skipped by 1)

3.1.3 Written vs. Oral Communication

Asked to compare written and oral forms of communication respectively the underlying tools in the digital
sphere, most students (65%) assessed text-based channels on the one hand and audio- and/or video-based
channels on the other hand as equally important for the success of their project, while nobody assumed that
text-based channels alone were more important for their successful professional communication (see Figure 4).

Figure 4. Importance of channel types (answered by 20, skipped by 2)

In the following statement, a student illustrated the perceived superiority of oral communication over written
communication for their particular purpose:

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Whenever we had a presentation to prepare, we would have discord calls during which we prepared the
entire presentation together, making sure all aspects of our process were captured accurately in them.
This went surprisingly well and I realized that it‟s a lot more productive to do these things via calls than
in written form over emails/chats. (G10/S1)
3.1.4 Audio and Video Conferences
While the majority of our students (61.91%) met in video conferences “once or twice a week” or even “several
times a week”, a third of our students (33.33%) never organized a video conference during the project – though
they may be involved in audio conferences (see Figure 5):

Figure 5. Frequency of video conferences (answered by 21, skipped by 1)

According to our survey data, the video conferences covered a variety of topics that came up “in many” or even
“in every or almost every conference”. The “distribution and sharing of work” was the most frequently covered
topic, at least it has the highest number of respondents (69.2%) who said that this topic was covered “in every or
almost every conference” (see Table 2):
Table 2. How often did you cover the following topics during videoconferences? (answered by 13, skipped by 9)

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The following statements offer insights into how students‟ communication and collaboration in audio and video
conferences were structured:
We voice chatted at varying intervals during the project. When everyone knew what to do, we could go
a week without voice chatting and just writing on discord every day. But when closer to the
presentations, we talked every day or every other day. During our calls, we would talk about what
needed to be done the soonest, assign tasks, brainstorm ideas and prepare our presentations. (G6/S2)
As our main communication tool, we used Discord. Twice the week we would have a meeting. Our
usual agenda was:
1. What did we work on
2. Discussing the work and how to develop it further, if needed
3. What are our next tasks
4. Giving out „homework‟ for everyone
5. Setting a new date for our meeting
While these meetings were always really really long in the past while meeting face to face, ours were
really short and quick to the point. Usually it would take around an hour, 2 hours Maximum. (G5/S1)
In some cases, the conferences spilled to the rest of the work day; some students kept in touch all over the day:
We met quite frequently to discuss the state of the project on Discord on then started working on our
individual tasks that were derived from our desired outcome of the current segment of the project we
were in. While not everything required us to collaborate all of the time, most of the time we stayed in
voice chat to exchange ourselves not only about the project but also about things happening around us.
This set a really nice working atmosphere and helped me quite a bit with focusing on working on the
project instead of doing everything else. (G9/S1)
With us both being programmers, [my colleague] and I ended up working together over Discord a lot,
with us working on the project while at the same time being on a call with Discords screen share
function running so we could easily help each other with any problems that might occur. Especially
during the last two weeks of development, we spent a lot of time fine-tweaking systems together, which
ended up being extremely productive. (G6/S3)
Another thing that we found out while working remotely is that it‟s 10 times more productive to work
together in a call, than to just give out a task and wait until we meet again to check on everybody‟s
progress. Writing on Discord was useful, but working while on call surely beats everything else.
(G2/S2)
In general, the communication during audio and video conferences was embedded in a complex network of
digital tools and developer practices, as the following statement reveals:
Firstly, we had set up a Discord server with different channels to keep everything sorted out. Secondly,
we created a Google Drive folder dedicated to this project along with permission for everyone in the
team. Drive folder is also sorted out based on different aspects and specializations for the game. Besides,
we have found that „G Suit by Google‟ provides tools such as Jamboard, Sheets, Docs, Slides etc. These
tools helped us tremendously to work together in a digital space. Additionally, the whole team decided
to adapt the Scrum method for project management using „Trello‟ to keep count on tasks and their
progress. The team decided to communicate minimum two times in a week to inform the team about the
progress and directions. In some weeks it has been seen that we have contacted each other several times
in a week and use screen sharing to show progress or ideas or solve problems together. Being in an
online space, it was not easier. However, we have managed to do it regularly. […] In the ideation phase,
we have created a Google Jamboard to work together and throw up our ideas. (G4/SUK)
3.1.5 Recreational Communication and Activities
Some of our students assume that social interactions beyond game development inside the development team is
good for team members‟ well-being as well as it improves work dynamics. The following statement offers an
example of such an opinion:
Addressing the elephant in the room: This project came with the unique challenge of not being able to
meet up in person whatsoever because of the COVID-19 pandemic. While I certainly didn‟t miss
travelling to Cologne for 2 hours back and forth respectively, I do feel like a certain aspect of

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community is lost when working exclusively from home. However, I feel like our team handled the
restrictions really well. We ended up scheduling Discord-meetings very regularly to not only discuss
gameplay, art and programming-related issues and plan our roadmap going forward, but also to chat
with each other and socialize. I genuinely believe that this aspect of us coming together helped keep us
all sane during development and helped raise morale in these crazy times. (G6/S3)
Around half of our respondents (47.3%) said in our survey that they had online conversations and/or activities
with team members during the impact games project that resembled and/or substituted similar on-site
conversations and/or activities. In an open question of our survey, some students described these recreational
activities. In addition to chatting, playing games online was a popular shared activity among game development
students, as described in the following sample statements:
We often stayed in the chat after our usual meetings (every 2-3 days) and shared news and chatted about
private stuff going on. (SUK)
We played online some games together and talked over voice chat about the game or personal stuff. We
also sometimes just stayed inside the vc after our meetings to talk to each other, while working. (SUK)
Regular chatting about how things are going with our families/friends etc. (We‟re also close friends
outside of the project), how everybody is handling the situation and random discussions about literally
anything - We sometimes met up with other friends after work (over discord) and played games like
Boardgame Simulator, Jackbox or Minecraft. (SUK)
3.2 Challenges and Enjoyment
This section reports on students‟ judgements of their experiences when it comes to challenges and enjoyment, i.e.,
their perceived challenges and enjoyment.
3.2.1 Perceived Challenges
Table 3 offers evidence on the occurrence of problems related to the conditions of remote work and social
distancing. Overall, more students perceived problems when it comes to social and psychological aspects
(including their well-being) than in the areas of technology, management, communication, and collaboration. 75%
of students “agree” or “strongly agree” that they “had more difficulties than usual to separate private and
university activities”. 85% said (i.e., “agree” or “strongly agree”) that they “missed being together with their
team members in „real life‟”. In this context, it does not come as a surprise that 60% had more difficulties than
usual to motivate themselves and 55% found it harder to concentrate on the project.

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Table 3. Problems that occurred during development due to the fact that students worked remotely / under the
conditions of social distancing – in comparison to previous collaborative projects (answered by 20, skipped by 2)

Reflecting on their experiences with remote development in their statements (both in the survey and the
postmortems) – which include an implicit comparison with their experiences from previous game development
projects – students came to different conclusions. While the majority of students emphasized the challenges that
come with remote development in pandemic times, others did not perceive major challenges, partly because of
prior experiences in developing remotely from previous projects in- and outside university. A few students even
stress the advantages of remote development over local development.
With the following comprehensive collection of statements, we document the majority opinion that remote
development during pandemic times was rather challenging – although some of our students reported that they
could build on previous experiences from past development projects (which included various forms of remote
works) and/or that they were able to overcome the perceived challenges. As already seen in the analysis of this
survey‟s data, the reported challenges were mostly psychosocial. Many times, the perceived challenges imply
and/or correlate with a lack of motivation:
Less and less direct contact with team members, no working together/in parallel and at location, less
motivation, less opportunities for team building in the beginning, less „fixed‟ times working on the
project because of the missing on location work days. (SUK)
No motivation because no possibility of working at cgl, which has been essential in the past to make
good games. Talking via technology is simply not good enough. Lack of communication leads to
frustration. In the end it was doable, but no fun at all. (SUK)
We were slightly slower and it ws harder to track the progress of all team-members sometimes. Working
side by side gives a better overview about the current state of the project, since sometimes it appears
that a bad connection (or a team-member forgot the meeting) made it impossible to share daily progress.
(SUK)
Previously we would meet 2-3 times a week in person. This sped up alot of difficult discussions and

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problems we faced during every development. Now we replaced these meetings with online sessions
where we mostly use screenshare to show progress, discuss problems etc. Keeping motivation high was
definitely much more difficult this time around. Feeling socially isolated did not motivate me to work
more at all. (SUK)
While the project clearly showed us that working remotely is not necessarily bad, I think that working
together closely face to face and spending time together like going to the cinema or getting dinner
together is very important for mental health and team spirit and I personally would most likely not be
able to work like this for a very long project. For me, game development is a very challenging
interdisciplinary task and having a good atmosphere and a good state of mind is crucial not only for
creativity but also for productivity and to endure tricky phases of a project. (G9/S3)
My other big takeaway is that (surprise surprise) communication is important, but this time regarding
the COVID-19 pandemic. Working from home without the possibility of meeting up and discussing
things in person, or simply working next to each other, was, in my opinion, disastrous. In previous
projects, I heavily relied on this to get up to date on the state of the game, or debate gameplay decisions
and plan future mechanics, but this time I felt very much on my own. Of course, there are a myriad of
ways to stay in touch over the internet, but none of them come close to real life. I see now that meetings
are crucial and hugely facilitate a smooth development phase. (G8/S1)
However, I could really feel the repetitive nature of being inside and essentially alternating between
coding and playing video games or reading taking a toll on me mentally after a while. Without setting
aside some days to rest and focus on physical training at home or just talking to my team members for
fun, I feel like this project could have led to some mental burnout. (G6/S3)
Not being able to meet or to have a proper schedule really took a toll on my concentration and work
ethic. By not being in a work placelike university i had a hard time actually getting into a work mindset,
because connecting the leisure and relaxing focused atmosphere of my room with work is not
something i‟m used to doing. You know, work is at work, break is at home. (G6/S4)
Not but least, we all burned out at some point of the project. Using online tools may be a solution to
work simultaneously and from being home, but it doesn‟t give any emotion from the other side of the
screen. Staying in front of the screen for many hours obviously takes some toll into our physical and
mental health. Sometimes it induces back pain or gets into a „fight or flight‟ situation. […] As being in a
foreign country, thinking about home and family members‟ conditions, upcoming financial depression,
adopting the new way of working etc. make it harder sometimes to keep concentrating on the project.
Additionally, living in a small space, at some point it became hard to differentiate between the
workspace and relaxation space. Without usual person to person contact with team members, sometimes
it made me feel like a cyborg. On top of that, connection problems, the usual crashing of the game
engine, learning to use new tools etc didn‟t make it easy. It took some initiative to keep the whole team
safe from burning out and it was not a simple task. (G4/S1)
I don‟t know if it‟s the fact that it feels too impersonal but trying to communicate ideas in meetings
proved to be one of the hardest things for me in this project. Not only that, but the fact that everything
I‟m doing had to be done on the computer, at my own home, kind of gave me the feeling like I couldn‟t
escape from the project even when it wasn‟t even necessary for me to work on it. So yeah, it might be
cool to work remotely when you have a separate room as an office, but not when you live in a small
apartment where there‟s no escape. (G2/S2)
I work, eat and sleep in the same room, so it is sometimes difficult to detach from the project and clear
one‟s mind. [The game] always seemed to be looming over me. A related but different problem was also
how easy it was to get distracted. Home and its comforts do not always inspire a very productive work
environment. (G2/S5)
In contrast to the above-documented statements of students who emphasized on the challenges, the following
statements come from students who did not perceive major difficulties and stated that everything went smoothly:
In the majority of time working remotely worked way better than expected. (G1/S3)
From the start of the project, we updated each other almost daily on our tasks, what we were working
on, and where our priorities were during each milestone. The communication between all of us went
smoothly and whenever someone faced an issue, everyone was very forward coming and up to help.
(G10/S1)

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In conclusion, I am very happy with the final result. Not only the game itself but also with the
teamwork. We kept ourselves updated at all times through discord by sharing our progress and talking
about possible improvements. For the presentations, we always made a call and worked together at the
same time on the slides and the presentation texts which I then recorded and put over the slides.
(G10/S3)
The remote teamwork went a lot better than anticipated. We held long meetings twice a day and used
the same methods and tools as always, and surprisingly, it just worked. (G9/S3)
In regards to the team I couldn‟t have wished for better teammates. The organization worked perfectly
over Trello and after a while we were so familiar with each other that members often took up supportive
tasks such as looking for fitting audio, while the other was busy cutting the video for example by
themselves. Sometimes we overscheduled and did a meeting that turned out to be a quick confirmation
call that took maybe 12 minutes out of our day, but given the circumstances I believe we could have
done worse and we all agreed that one meeting to many may be better than one to few. (G5/S2)
If somebody would ask me what type of game developer I am, I would answer, that I am the type that
would meet their team every work day to develop together. Even on weekends, if possible. I liked
meeting up. It‟s an easy way to communicate, as everyone is at the same spot. You can ask questions,
show a quick sketch or ask for advice. With the pandemic running over us like the armies of Mordor
over Helm‟s Deep, I felt really worried about the communication for our game project. In the past often
happened, the lesser we met, the worse got our communication and productivity. But beside all my fears
of us failing, it just didn‟t happen. The communication only over discord worked unbelievable well. For
myself I can say, that especially because of this new situation out of my comfort zone, I felt even more
ambitious to work well. (G5/S1)
A couple of students explained the absence of bigger difficulties with their previous experiences in remote
development in- or outside university:
Working from home was another huge aspect of our project phase this year. However, to us, this was
normality in our lives long before the Corona Pandemic. All of us are used to freelancing or working on
semester projects remotely, therefore we were very comfortable with the situation in this regard. I think
that‟s one of the main factors why our project phase went so smoothly since no one had to adjust to
working from home. (G10/S1)
Working remotely went pretty well for us. I imagine that is because a lot of collaborative projects are
largely remote to begin with, so this is not a huge adjustment. (G6/S2)
Besides the in-person meeting that we had in the previous semesters, everything was the same for me. I
have been working remote in the previous semesters as well. (SUK)
I have experience working remotely on different projects and I‟ve worked with my teammates in other
projects before so I didn‟t have any problem working at home. (SUK)
While this was my first remotely done university project, I have already been working remotely on
other things so that was not a deal breaker to me. (G1/S1)
Finally, a few students point to the advantages of working remotely:
We were more focused, as doing voice chat becomes over time really exhausting. Therefore, we tried to
work more efficient. We also had less problems with people being not on time, as nobody could have
trouble with local transportation. (SUK)
I think i worked way more focused and effective. (SUK)
I have written a lot rather than previous time. I was able to write design document in more detail. And
think more. (SUK)
Refreshingly, I could work at my own pace, and own times. I prefer getting up early, and would prepare
documents etc. before the meetings with others, something that would not have happened as routinely if
we worked on site as usual. Workdays for me also got longer, as there was no clear distinction between
work time and place, and leisure time. My Game Design Documentation also got a lot more detailed,
self-explanatory and was updated more regularly. (SUK)
3.2.2 Perceived Enjoyment
Although some students have enjoyed remote development (“Honestly, working remotely was kind of fun and I

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wouldn‟t mind doing this again.” – G7/S1), most of them favor developing games without physical distance.
52.64% (strongly) disagreed with the claim that working from home is more enjoyable than working from
campus (CGL), a studio, or a co-working space (see Figure 6). A couple of students even detest remote
development, as they explicitly told us in the survey or their postmortem. For these students, game development
is an inherently social activity which requires physical presence. In their opinion, remote work “takes the fun out
of game development” (SUK). However, qualitative data also reveal that in many cases, students‟ dislike of pure
remote development does not correlate with a negative assessment of their final product.

Figure 6. Perceived enjoyment of working from home (answered by 19, skipped by 3)

Statements expressing an aversion to pure remote development were more prevalent and partly stronger in tone
than those stating enjoyment. In a lot of cases, the aversion correlates with demotivation:
It is actively detrimental to the project, demotivates, and takes the fun out of game development by
adding a layer of communication to every single decision or question. It is fine to work from home if
there are regular meetings in person, but doing the entire project „on your own‟ was not a good
experience at all. (SUK)
Working Remotely: I do not like it. I actually kind of hate it. (G2/S2)
That said, for me the joy in game development comes largely from the social interactions around
making games, and I want to return to working together in person as soon as possible. (G9/S3)
3.3 Learning Processes and Outcomes
According to our survey data, the majority of students (68.42%) rated their personal improvements of knowledge
and/or skills in the domain of online collaboration at 4 or 5 on a scale from 1 (low) to 5 (high), while a lower
number of students (47.37%) assessed their progress in online communication in this range. The perceived
learnings in both of these domains – which are directly related to remote development – prevail over learnings in
the domain of developing impact games (42.1%), which is usually the main learning outcome addressed in the
syllabus of the impact games project when it is not designed as a remote development learning experience (see
Table 4).

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Table 4. How would you rate your personal improvements of knowledge and/or skills in the following domains?
(answered by 19, skipped by 3)

An analysis of students‟ descriptions of their individual learnings about developing games remotely (based on
their answers in the survey to the open question what they have learned in the project about developing games
over distance) reveals three major areas of soft skill development:
 Organization: “time management - Saying no - set deadlines”; “the importance of documentation.
having regular calls. managing the structure of our calls to make it more efficient.”; “Meetings need an
agenda or it gets our if Hand”.
 Communication: “All in all, I had seen this project phase as a chance to improve my communication
skills within a team in a remote working context and believe that I have succeeded in doing so”; “I
would say I learned many things like […] how to communicate very well […] to clarify the tasks for
team member to avoid any missing Understanding”.
 Psychology – to cope with the psychosocial challenges of remote work (during a pandemic): “You have
to learn to do more things independently and ask for constant feedback. You have to be able to seperate
work and „fun‟ when you work from home.”; “It also teaches me how to cope up with different
situations and going on forward - even in pandemic times.”; “I have also learned how to keep my
mental health safe in anxiety moments.”; “be open to deal with problems like bad internet connection or
sometimes not traceable progress, keep following up afterwards and don‟t get upset too fast - meeting
up regularly is important to share progress and keep the teams motivation on track - force yourself to
take care about the project and don‟t procrestinate when running into problems or have distracting
things going on at home - care about youtr teammates, since not everybody is dealing the same with the
current situation and the occuring problems and the stress of the project phase”.
In addition to individual learning and social learning processes inside of the development teams, learning also
took place beyond teams, inside the broader network of students which can be interpreted as a community of
practice. A lot of students interacted many times with students from other groups on a professional level – by
offering feedback and/or replying to feedback they received. A few postings on the online platform Spaces were
mandated by the syllabus, but a lot of students went beyond the required number of postings. According to data
from our survey, 31.58% interacted a “few times a month”, 15.79% “once or twice a week”, and 15.79 “several
time a week” with members of other groups on a professional level (see Figure 7). These interactions occurred
not only in Spaces – as stipulated by the syllabus – but also on Discord. 82.35% of students who have been
engaged in these kinds of conversations said that the interactions took place on Discord (see Figure 8). It
becomes apparent that students‟ own communication preferences prevail over those prescribed by the institution.
While we have not observed students‟ interactions on Discord, we have collected all open intergroup
communication in Spaces. A look into the threads of this online platform alone discloses promising forms of
peer-to-peer learning and mentorships relationships (which cannot be discussed in this article due to its scope
and restrictions of space).

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Figure 7. Interaction beyond groups (answered by 19, skipped by 3)

Figure 8. Platforms of inter-group interactions (answered by 17, skipped by 5 – multiple choices possible)

In the course of the project, the team of instructors tested two forms of project presentations: (1) live
presentations / video conferences with everyone in a virtual classroom at the same time (synchronous mode – as
applied in the final presentation via Zoom) (2) the upload of presentations on a platform that can be approached
whenever students and lecturers like (asynchronous mode – as applied in the intermediate presentation via
Spaces). The majority of students preferred the asynchronous format (63.16%), whereas only a minority (10.53%)
favored the synchronous format (see Figure 9). This is insofar interesting as this preference stands in opposition
to the current mainstream of distance learning in higher education which builds on the synchronous model,
oftentimes based on Zoom meetings.

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Figure 9. Preferred mode of classroom presentations (answered by 19, skipped by 3)

Finally, 57.89% of students believe that it is a good idea to offer a project-based module in remote development
independent of the occurrence of a pandemic (see Figure 10):

Figure 10. Importance of remote development module (answered by 19, skipped by 3)

4. Discussion
The present paper illustrated results of a practice-based exploratory research which examined 30 third-year
undergraduate students of game arts, game design, and game programming who remotely collaborated in groups
of two to five persons over the course of half a semester in order to design digital impact games during
Germany‟s logdown in spring 2020 caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Applying a mixed-method approach
including quantitative and qualitative analyses of survey data (n=22) and qualitative content analyses of students‟
postmortem documentations (n=30), the study reconstructed the online practices, experiences, and learning
processes of these students.
Although most students have not conducted a formal remote development course at university level previously, a
lot of them were already familiar with remote work in general and a variety of relevant tools and practices in
particular. Most of these experiences have been obtained from prior game projects in and outside of university in

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which they voluntarily applied a hybrid approach of developing games, combining team meetings and work on
location with remote work respectively. Consequently, most students were able to smoothly adapt to the full
remote work format and assessed the processes and outcomes of their work as successful from an academic and
professional perspective. They were well aware that remote work requires additional attention and efforts when it
comes to aspects such as time management, allocation of work, and mutual understanding. At the same time,
they assume that these issues as well as technical problems can be overcome. However, a lot of students
struggled with psychosocial challenges which may not only stem from the remote work setting as such, but also
from the special situation during the pandemic and logdown (e.g. Marston et al., 2020; Mheidly et al., 2020). As
a matter of fact, the present study cannot clearly differentiate between both (interconnected) reasons, i.e., cannot
finally identify the causality of students‟ struggles. Fortunately, a lot of student groups were able to cope with the
above-mentioned challenges by proactively maintaining/substituting parts of their work-related social life with
the help of technology.
In its core, our study sheds light on the groups‟ collaborative practices, mediated by a variety of tools facilitating
written and oral communication, real-time collaboration, exchange of data, etc. between the members of the
communities of practice (Wenger, 2008; Wenger et al., 2009). For their practices, most groups heavily relied on
the community platform Discord, which was already well-established among our students prior to the project as
well as it is seen as superior to similar tools.
While some students did not like or even detested to work exclusively over physical distance, a small part of
students enthusiastically embraced remote work. This difference in experience and opinion may most likely be
explained by different personalities and/or social circumstances. Yet, further research is needed to explore this
question.
All in all, the results of our study indicate a potential danger of remote work: that it may lead to unhappiness and
psychological struggles for students/workers which might not only be to the detriment of their well-being, but
also – in the long-run – their professional performance. However, it must be considered that our study examined
a unique situation in which not only the working world, but also private life had to go “remote”. Under normal
circumstances, remote work may have been perceived as relieving to a far greater extent, as it would have
allowed private real-world contacts, while still saving commuting time. Similarly, it may be hypothesized that
the well-being of most students/workers as well as the processes and outcomes of their professional practices
might benefit from hybrid forms of work more than from pure remote approaches – in both higher educational
and vocational contexts. Further research is required to investigate these relationships.
Interestingly, in our study, some teams were able to manage their well-being internally by engaging themselves
purposefully in recreational communication and activities on a regular basis. These activities included, in many
cases, playing online games together, which is insofar obvious because games are their shared passion, but worth
mentioning as recent research has shown a positive correlation between video game play and well-being
(Johannes et al., 2020). It can be concluded that future courses on remote work should explicitly educate students
in coping with the psychosocial challenges of working remotely over physical distance.
The study also explored students‟ self-perceived learnings. A higher number of students reported greater personal
improvements of knowledge and/or skills in the domain of online collaboration than in the domain of online
communication. This difference may be explained by evidence from our survey as well as students‟ postmortems
which let us assume that they were already highly familiar with most applied tools of online communication,
from private as well as professional experiences, which left a smaller margin for improvements. Strikingly, the
perceived learnings in those domains related to remote work (online communication and online collaboration)
prevail over perceived learnings in the domain of developing impact games, which is usually the main learning
outcome addressed in the syllabus of the impact games project when it is not designed as remote development
learning experience. In their qualitative statements, students described significant learnings in the area of soft
skills, which are essential when it comes to remote work in particular, but also project work in general. Most of
these self-reported soft skills can be categorized in the areas of (1) organization, (2) communication, (3)
psychology – to cope with the psychosocial challenges of remote work (during a pandemic).
Finally, the results point to the importance of a wider network of learners – beyond the team level, encompassing
all students of the class, who constitute a community of practice whose members are digitally connected via a
variety of tools (Wenger, 2008; Wenger et al., 2009). A look into threads of the online platform Spaces alone
discloses promising forms of peer-to-peer learning and mentorship relationships between students and mentoring
instructors. Although we possess the mentioned data, we haven‟t investigated them in this article due to its scope
and restrictions of space. We will analyze these data in a future study.

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Certainly, the present study – based on an exploratory mixed-method design – focusing on students‟ practices,
experiences, and learnings in one course of a game development program in Germany, during the special
situation of the early coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020, has its limitations. Among other things, it cannot be
representative for all game development students across universities, let alone for students of other study
programs, who presumably differ from game development students in several ways. Students from other, less
project-oriented and less digital-focused programs, for instance, may bring a lower level of prior experiences
with online communication and collaboration in interdisciplinary teams. Future studies should therefore broaden
the perspective and investigate programs beyond games education.
As stated in the introduction, the coronavirus pandemic hit universities rather unprepared for distance education
(Bozkurt et al., 2020), which is in particular true in the German case (Kerres, 2020) and – despite its digital focus
– also true for the examined game development program. In addition, games education had also neglected the
design of courses for remote work and distance development notwithstanding their prevalence in the gaming
industry even prior to the pandemic. By offering insights into game development students‟ experiences, opinions,
and particular needs, the results of this study can be used to inform the creation of accurately fitting
well-designed curricula for remote game work and distance development that go beyond “emergency remote
education” (Bozkurt et al., 2020). Since communication and collaboration skills are similarly relevant for other
project-focused disciplines, such as design, digital media, and software engineering, the results of this study may
be useful for these disciplines as well.
Lastly, it can be concluded that physical distance still matters (Olson & Olson, 2000). Thus, the development of
curricula focusing on remote work and distance development including interdisciplinary and intercultural
communication and collaboration should be of paramount importance across disciplines. As such, these curricula
must not only address professional practices, but also psychosocial challenges.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank our students for offering us valuable insights into their work and thought processes,
Alexandra Petrus for copyediting the manuscript, and Gundolf S. Freyermuth for providing constructive
feedback on an earlier version of this paper.
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Endnotes
Endnote 1. Spelling and grammatical errors in students‟ written statements from the survey and postmortems
have not been corrected. In case of the statements from the postmortems, we added an anonymized identifier
referring to the respective student/author after the statement in brackets which includes a group number as well
as a student number (at group level, i.e., from 1 to 5). G6/S1, for instance, means group 6, student 1, in other
words, student 1 from group 6. In case of statements from the survey, our data do not allow to credit statements
to a particular student. In this case, statements are ascribed to the label SUK which means student unknown.

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This is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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