Dr Cenk Köknar

Cenk is a video game design scholar and gaming industry practitioner with an emphasis on gameplay, narrative, and user experience design.

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Email: cenk.koknar@aru.ac.uk

Background

Cenk has completed a PhD in Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication with a specialization in game studies and game design. His PhD dissertation, titled Negotiating the Right Way to Play Video Games, has been awarded as the best dissertation.

He has five years of professional experience working in industries ranging from defence to simulation to gaming. In addition, Cenk develops critical games that transform social and political issues into interactive narratives.

Research interests

• Gameplay design
• Narrative design
• Game studies
• User experience design
• Applied games
• Critical game design
• Critical media studies

Areas of research supervision

See Research Interests above

Qualifications

• PGCert in Higher Education, University of East London (Fellow of HEA)
• PhD in Arts, Technology and Emerging Communication, The University of Texas at Dallas
• MSc in Game Technologies, Middle East Technical University
• BSc in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Middle East Technical University

Selected recent publications

Guadagno, R.E., Gonzenbach, V., Puddy, H., Fishwick, P., Kitagawa, M., Urquhart, M., Kesden, M., Suura, K., Hale, B., Koknar, C. and Tran, N., 2021. A Usability Study of Classical Mechanics Education Based on Hybrid Modeling: Implications for Sustainability in Learning. Sustainability, 13(20), p.11225.

Köknar, C., 2019, July. Who is at the center?: designing playful experiences by using player-centered approach. In International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 11-21). Springer, Cham.

Koknar, C., 2020. A Review of Bonnie Ruberg's 'Video games have always been queer'.