Sorry if you've answered this before, newish follower: How much, if any, of what you do at work brings in academia? Like game theory, The Hegemony of Play, or the Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics breakdown of types of fun, etc? A tabletop designer came to a class I was attending once, they made it seem like it's more often less formal, just a bunch of writers working together until stuff just "feels right".
I’m familiar with a lot of it, but to be honest I find it has limited practical value. The science of ludology remains in its infancy, and has yet to arrive at any robust notion of why people play games or what makes them fun - and on top of it, its sphere of study tends to be strongly focused on video games, and to a lesser extent on traditional board and card games, while tabletop RPGs are relatively little studied. I tend to approach it as something to steal liberally from, but not to take too seriously.
(The MDA framework, for example, explodes hilariously when you try to apply it to tabletop RPGs. I’m not saying it couldn’t be adapted to address them, but you’ll have your work cut out for you!)
