StudyGame.dev is a collection of writing, research, and projects exploring games as designed systems, creative media, and communities.
Created by Ryan Callard, the site documents ideas from game development, education, player experience, and interactive technology. It exists as a place to examine how games are built, how players engage with them, and how the communities around games are formed.
Games are complex creative systems: combining mechanics, technology, storytelling, psychology, and human interaction. This site explores those layers through practical development experience, academic research, and reflections from working within games education.
Focus Areas
StudyGame.dev covers several connected areas:
- Game Design & Development: mechanics, systems design, gameplay programming, prototyping, production workflows, and the practical challenges of creating games.
- Player Experience: tutorial design, onboarding, accessibility, UX, player psychology, player modelling, and adaptive systems.
- Games Education: teaching game development, curriculum design, student communities, assessment, and preparing future developers.
- Projects & Communities: behind-the-scenes documentation of games, events, game jams, experiments, and collaborative creative work.
About Ryan
Ryan Callard is a game developer, educator, curriculum designer, and researcher based in West London.
He is a lecturer in Games and Esports at the University of West London, where he teaches across game design, development, programming, production, project management, interactive media, and emerging technologies. He has designed and led curriculum development for both the BA (Hons) Esports programme and the BSc (Hons) Games Design and Development degree.
His academic interests include game design theory, systems design, gameplay mechanics, player psychology, user experience, human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, player modelling, procedural systems, adaptive game mechanics, accessibility, transmedia storytelling, and game-based learning.
Game Development Practice
Alongside his academic work, Ryan is a developer and director at independent studio Arrogant Pixel, where he works across a range of commercial and experimental game projects.
His development practice has covered a broad range of disciplines, reflecting the multidisciplinary nature of modern game creation. On The Tale of Doris and the Dragon series, Ryan contributed across narrative and audio production, including directing, recording, and editing character dialogue, with additional narrative writing responsibilities for The Tale of Doris and the Dragon Episode 2.
His current projects continue to expand this practice. On Terratorial, a real-time strategy game currently in development, Ryan works as a design lead, focusing on gameplay systems, mechanics, player experience, and the wider direction of the project. For Traders of the Silk Road, he has contributed to game design alongside supporting the visual and print design requirements of the physical card game.
Ryan is also a design and programming lead on Nephilim Resurrection, a retro-inspired first-person shooter project, contributing to gameplay development, systems design, and implementation alongside other members of the development team. Across these projects, his role has consistently focused on connecting creative vision with practical development: understanding how ideas become playable experiences.
This practical experience informs his teaching and research interests, particularly around game systems, player experience, mechanics, and the relationship between design decisions and the way people interact with games.
Beyond Development
Before joining the University of West London, Ryan developed a multidisciplinary career across games, media, and broadcast production.
He has contributed to charity livestream events including Hugs.tf, a long-running Team Fortress 2 community event which has raised more than £75,000 for SpecialEffect, and Tip of the Hats, where he worked as a videographer and video editor ("the outro guy") contributing to an event which raised more than US$1.4 million for charity.
This background in production, storytelling, and technical media has informed a broad approach to game development, where design, technology, narrative, audio, visual communication, and community all intersect.
Community and Education
Within the University of West London, Ryan works with colleagues to develop the Games and Esports community through curriculum design, industry engagement, collaborative projects, and extracurricular opportunities.
He has played a leading role in establishing initiatives including the UWL Game Awards, UWL Summer Game Jam, student showcases, industry events, and interdisciplinary collaborations across the university. He also directs, films, and edits the annual Game Jam documentary series, helping to document and celebrate student achievements.
Through his teaching, mentoring, and community work, Ryan aims to create opportunities for students to explore games as both a creative medium and a technical discipline: encouraging experimentation, collaboration, and a deeper understanding of how games are designed and built.
Areas of Expertise
- Game Design
- Game Development
- Unity & C#
- Gameplay Programming
- Player Modelling
- Artificial Intelligence in Games
- Game-Based Learning
- Esports & Livestream Production
- Curriculum Design
- Interactive Media