Dr Douglas Brown

Dean of the Faculty of Screen, Technology & Performance

Previously part of international games developer and publisher Square-Enix, and credited on several of their high-profile titles including the award winning Final Fantasy XII, Doug made the move into higher education from the games industry just as game design courses were being founded, and has contributed to games being taken seriously by academia, founding the Games Academy alongside Professor Tanya Krzywinska in 2014. Doug holds a BA in English from Oxford University, and an MA and PhD in Digital Games from Brunel University. Having previously built up and led leading games design courses at Brunel, Doug was attracted to the Falmouth approach to game development by its focus on entrepreneurship and teamwork alongside the opportunities which the view of games as an art form and the Falmouth art school tradition offered for the medium.

Fascinated by games of all kinds, from board games to text adventures to AAA titles, Doug has always seen games as a medium with the most immense potential for reshaping how we engage with stories and messages. He has published work on games and franchise adaptation, MMO-RPG design and game analysis, Keynoted conferences on Games Education and contributed to consultations on game regulation with the UK government. He has a wealth of experience developing and teaching courses that complement and synergise with games design learning alongside numerous connections in the UK games industry and games academia, and was accepted as a full member of BAFTA Games in 2026. Doug's focus is on developing the Games courses at Falmouth towards a distinctive and effective programme of study, and helping unlock Cornwall's potential as a hub for indie game development.

The distinctiveness of Falmouth's games courses has seen Games Academy grow into a major part of Falmouth University, and alongside it Doug has moved from Head of Games to Director of the academy, and is now Dean of the faculty of Screen, Technology and Performance. A big part of his role is finding the alignments and opportunities for collaboration between the different subject areas in the faculty - Film, Theatre, Games, Music and Computing. This has made immersive experience design and the use of games in other media more substantial areas of interest, alongside the different ways Play, Teamwork and Artificial Intelligence feed into the various workflows and onto the different screens the faculty's staff and students work toward.

Douglas Brown

Contact details

Telephone 01326 259266
Email douglas.brown@falmouth.ac.uk

    Qualifications

    Qualifications

    Year Qualification Awarding body
    2012 PhD Digital Games Brunel University
    2007 MA Digital Games Theory & Design Brunel University
    2005 BA English Oxford University

    Research Interests

    Research interests and expertise

    Doug's research interests surround how games tell stories, and have expanded to include the use of games well beyond the digital and the screen. Boardgames are a major interest and part of a field-defining anthology he edited with Prof. Esther Macallum-Stewart. The use of games in other media is also an aligned interest, from immersive experience design to FMV games and the use of games / game mechanics in live performance. The way audiences operate around games and play was the subject of his PhD thesis and a topic he often returns to in his research work.

    Research topics 

    • Digital Games Theory & Design
    • Narrative in Games
    • Analog Games and Culture
    • Gaming in Society
    • Suspension of Disbelief
    • Games and Adaptation
    • Immersive Experience Design
    • Media convergence and Transmedia Storytelling

    Externally funded research grants

    • 2021 – Creative tourism in the UK and China.: Augmented Reality for Gardens in Cornwall and Suzhou, AHRC, £125k PI in collaboration with M.Ma and T.Krzywinska

    Research Outputs

    Publications and research outputs

    • Summerley, Rory

      Brown, Douglas, (2023), Tandem Analysis and Other Methodologies Inspired by Interdisciplinary Approaches, In: Nordic DiGRA 2023, 27-28 April 2023, Uppsala, Sweden, (Submitted), Item availability may be restricted.

    • Scott, Michael

      Mitchell, Alexander and Brown, Douglas, (2023), Retention in First Stage Undergraduate Computing: Lessons Learned from a Collaborative Learning Intervention, In: Proceedings of the 2023 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, July 8--12, Turku, Finland

    • Mitchell, Alexander

      Scott, Michael, (2023), Peer Evaluation in Group Projects: Insight into Effective Student Critique and Feedback, In: AdvanceHE Assessment and Feedback Symposium, 7th November 2023, Reading, UK, (Submitted)

    • Mitchell, Alexander

      New, Warwick and Brown, Douglas, (2022), An Exploratory Analysis of Student Experiences with Peer Evaluation in Group Game Development Projects, In: Proceedings of the 2022 United Kingdom and Ireland Computing Education Research Conference, September 1-2, 2022, Dublin, Ireland

    • McDonald, Brian

      Brown, Douglas, (2022), The Kerdroya Postmortem: Navigating the Labyrinth of Co-creative Design and Collective Vision, Athens, Greece

    • Mitchell, Alexander

      Scott, Michael, (2021), Student Perspectives on the Purpose of Peer Evaluation During Group Game Development Projects, In: United Kingdom and Ireland Computing Education Research Conference, September 2 - 3, 2021, Glasgow, United Kingdom

    • Scott, Michael James

      Krzywinska, Tanya, (2018), Towards an Interaction Blueprint for Mixed Reality Experiences in GLAM Spaces: The Augmented Telegrapher at Porthcurno Museum, In: Proceedings of the 32nd BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference, 2-6 July, 2018, Belfast, NI, pp. 1-5

    • Mitchell, Alexander

      Brown, Douglas, (2022), Peer Evaluation Questionnaire, (Unpublished)

    • Krzywinska, Tanya

      Howard, Jeff, (2024), Peacegaming: A Blueprint for evidence-based co-design

    • Scott, Michael

      Hickey, Kat, Rothwell, Sandra, Krzywinska, Tanya and Goonhilly Earth Station, (2022), Space on Earth: Assessing the Feasibility of Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality for a Visitor Experience, Audiences of the Future: Design Foundations, (Unpublished)

    • Brown, Douglas

      (2020), Rerolling Boardgames, Mcfarland and Company, Jefferson, North Carolina, ISBN: 978-1-4766-7079-9, Item availability may be restricted.

    • Wilbraham, Che

      Brown, Douglas, (2026), World Building Pre-production & Production, In: Teaching the Game (2nd Edition) Volume II, Play Story Press, Pittsburgh, PA, pp. 575-595, ISBN: 978-0-557-91719-8

    • Brown, Douglas

      (2019), To Disney Infinity and Beyond - Star Wars Videogames Before and After the Lucasarts Acquisition, In: Disney’s Star wars: Forces of Production and Promotion, University of Iowa Press, Iowa, USA, pp. 123-135, ISBN: 9781609386436

    • Krzywinska, Tanya

      Brown, Douglas, (2015), Games, Gamers and Posthumanism, In: The Palgrave Handbook of Posthumanism in Film and Television, Palgrave Macmillan, London, UK, pp. 192-201, ISBN: 9781349577019, Item availability may be restricted.

    • Brown, Douglas

      (2015), Adaptive Harmonics - Star Trek's Universe and Galaxy of Games, In: The Star Trek Universe: Franchising the Final Frontier, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Maryland, USA, pp. 133-145, ISBN: 978-1-4422-4985-1

    • Krzywinska, Tanya

      Brown, Douglas, (2015), Games, Gamers and Posthumanism, In: The Palgrave Handbook of Posthumanism in Film and Television, Palgrave Macmillian UK, London, pp. 192-201, ISBN: 9781137430328 (online) 9781349577019 (print)

    • Krzywinska, Tanya

      Brown, Douglas, (2015), Online Games and Genre, In: International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society, John Wiley & Sons/Blackwell, Oxford, ISBN: 978-1-118-29074-3

    • Brown, Douglas

      (2016), Book Review: Game Play by Paul Booth, In: Intensities, Brunel University, London, UK, 1 (8), ISSN: 1471-5031

    • Brown, Douglas

      (2012), Game-Playing-Role, (Submitted)

    • Krzywinska, Tanya

      Ma, Eunice, Belinskiy, Anton and Bhui, Kamaldeep, (2025), Coziness in Games: Second Homes, Audiences and Esthetics, In: Games and Culture, Sage, Thousand Oaks, California, ISSN: 1555-4120

    Research Students

    Current research students

    Doug has been on the supervision team for 15 students, and has 7 completions.

    • Roman Dlapa – Game Character types and memorability
    • Alex Mitchell – Computing students’ retention challenges
    • Peter Convery – Card Games and designing around metas
    • Chiara Fabbri – VR Journalism
    • Terry Greer – Game World building Algorithms
    • Ingunn Sara – The Ergodic Extreme (With University of Iceland)

    Previous student supervision

    At Falmouth:

    • Carina Assuncao – Womens’ Esports in Portugal
    • Cosima Holmes – Game Narratives and Tiefempfunden
    • Robyn-Ann Potanin - MBTI Profiles and the games industry
    • John Speakman – AI Creatures and Ludic Contexts
    • Rory Summerley - Videogames and Meta elements
    • Dane Watkins - Animation, Internet of Things and Play Theory
    • Che Wilbraham – Automated Game-masters

    Number of research students supervised to completion

    7

    Research degrees examined

    Doug has examined 10 PhD students and one MPhil Student as external examiner at the following Universities : Ulster, Canterbury Christ Church, Wales - Newport, Southampton, Essex, De Montfort, Staffordshire, York, Brighton.

    He has also served as CoR reviewer and internal examiner at Falmouth.

    Number of research degree examinations

    14

    Teaching

    Areas of teaching

    • Games Design
    • Games Theory
    • Game Writing

    Courses taught

    • BA(Hons) Digital Games
    • MA Digital Games