The Role Playing Game (RPG) in Information Science

an epic adventure between two worlds

Abstract

The RPG is a collaborative role-playing game where a group of people gets together to tell stories. For a long time, it was seen as another game for teenagers, but this has been changing, as several professionals from different areas of knowledge have begun to see the potential of this type of game. To encourage research on the topic of RPG in Information Science, this research aims to answer the following problem: "How has Information Science approached the topic of RPG in its studies?". The main objective is to elaborate an overview of the national and international scientific production in IS on the RPG theme. For that, the Scoping Review method was used, which consists of five stages, namely: identifying the research question; identifying relevant studies; selecting studies; mapping the data; gathering, summarizing and reporting results. The research question was composed through the Population-Concept-Context (PCC) structure. A total of 111 articles were retrieved, of which 21 were selected after applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Quantitative and qualitative data were processed. The main results show that the retrieved articles were published between the years 2000 and 2019, the United States (USA) being the country with the largest number of publications, the predominant language being English. The theoretical perspectives of Information Science that stood out are related to education, services provided in libraries and games. The most used method in the manuscripts was the narrative review. In conclusion, RPG at Information Science emphasizes the themes of education and library services, and that despite the strategy used to cover the three fields of Library Science, Museology and Archival Science, texts that addressed themes related to the last two fields were not recovered.