As one of the community activities, ISAGA has Special Interest Groups. In 2022, a new SIG started, initiated by Jan Klabbers, to work on the identification of Game Science. After an open call and a phase of defining the scope, a small and dedicated team remained and worked over several years together in a structured format. The starting point was to follow up on the Symposium: On the Architecture of Game Science.
During the ISAGA 2025 conference, a workshop was held to present some of the progress. ‘Into the Future of Simulation Gaming – Furthering the Foundations of Game Science / WS#12’
The ISAGA SIG on Game Science has produced three articles so far.
The foundational article is:
Meijer, S.A., H. Lukosch, M. de Wijse-van Heeswijk, J.H.C. Klabbers (2026) “Positioning Game Science for Gaming and Simulation: A Reflection on the Research Philosophical Underpinnings,” 2025 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC), Seattle, WA, USA, 2025, pp. 2204-2215, doi: 10.1109/WSC68292.2025.11339030.
The final published version is available in IEEE Xplore and the ACM Digital Library, and a pre-print version is shared here: 25WSC_Paper_183 2
In this article, the SIG positions a guide for the ontological, epistemological and theoretical position of gaming and simulation as a field. It also includes 5 statements with recommendations. The recommendations are:
- We recommend that studies in the game science domain include Actors, Rules and Resources in their game description, to create a generically recognizable structure to the methods section.
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To properly understand a game science study, the action space, the meaning of constructs and symbols used needs to be documented. Given that players co-create meaning, a game science study needs to describe the combination of game and players to be scientifically valuable.
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The act of play is an essential component of game science studies. Play needs to be captured as element of the player’s creation of meaning. Further study is needed on how to best capture and design rules-bound and free-form games for scientifically valid studies within game science.
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A study within game science can encapsulate goals of both design science and analytical science nature, but we recommend addressing the explicit scientific assumptions of both approaches for each study.
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A game in a game science study is, by definition, an abstraction of reality. The way this abstraction is made, both in the design of the game and in the roles and facilitation of the game needs to be documented to increase the scientific rigor of a study. Facilitation is needed to create linkages between the two levels of design related to gaming and simulation.
We highly recommend all authors of ISAGA2026 contributions to read this paper and to take these recommendations into account while describing their own work.
The second article is:
De Wijse-van Heeswijk, M., Klabbers, J. H. G., & Meijer, S. (2025). Advancing the Role of the Facilitator in Game Science: A Systems Theory Approach to Learning and Adaptation in Rule-Based and Open Games. Simulation & Gaming, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/10468781251384139
This article dives deeper into the structure of how to describe learning and adaptation in the typical ISAGA tradition of games: representing systems, and having either rule-based or open / free-flow structures.
This article is recommended for ISAGA2026 contributions that include learning dimensions.
The third article is forthcoming and will be shared here when available.