Becker Video Game Design

Copenhagen Business School

University of Advancing Technology

"This thesis is an exploration of gender construction within the digital gaming subculture of the United States in the early 21st century."

"developers analyze their finished game and everything they did during its creation. Postmortems can be very helpful because they provide insights and tips that you can use in order to not make the same mistakes… or get ideas on how to do certain things when developing a game."

A forthcoming online class led by Maria Droujkova, creator of NaturalMath, exploring the role of online communities facilitating math game creation and development by students and teachers. (2/3/12, 1PM EST)

"how to design games that will optimize learning"

study of games used to increase mobility for elderly as well as "seven guidelines for the design of full-body interaction in games. The guidelines are designed to foster safe physical activity among older adults, thereby increasing their quality of life."

Thesis from the Universitet van Amsterdam

"we implemented eight tutorial designs in three video games of varying complexity and evaluated their effects on player engagement and retention. The results of our multivariate study of over 45,000 players show that the usefulness of tutorials depends greatly on game complexity. Although tutorials increased play time by as much as 29% in the most complex game, they did not significantly improve player engagement in the two simpler games. Our results suggest that investment in tutorials may not be justified for games with mechanics that can be discovered through experimentation."

12th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards to Honor Missile Command/Tempest Creator Dave Theurer With Pioneer Award, First Amendment Lawyers Ken Doroshow and Paul M. Smith With the Ambassador Award. Theurer to be Recognized for Creating Classic Arcade Titles that Paved the Way for Shooters; Doroshow and

Electronic Arts Inc. and NCAA Football announced that Richard Mancuso and Clint Oldenburg will join the EA Sports NCAA Football development team as a part of the inaugural EA Sports NCAA Football fellowship, a sixteen-week full-time, paid opportunity for former football student-athletes to apply their skills and knowledge of the sport to the development of the NCAA Football videogame.

3rd annual Indie Game Challenge

via FoldIt and video-game interface, players engage in protein engineering

"(Science and Technology Enrichment for Appalachian Middle-schoolers", student game developers' experiences

best practices in child protection and game design principles combined for a product to teach 6 to 8 year olds

"three aspects of game design are investigated to see how they relate to the design of successful games. Firstly, how players learn or come to understand something while playing a game. Secondly, how designers can ensure players remain motivated to play the game. Lastly, how both education and motivation should be considered from the perspective of gameplay."

Updated: Mon Jan. 23 2012 15:43:40 The Canadian Press TORONTO — Canadian makers of "Indie Game," a documentary about independent video game designers, say they're thrilled to have sold the concept to HBO and Scott Rudin, the producer behind mega films like "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," "Moneyball," "The Social Network" and "There Will Be Blood."

This year, the video game turns 40. Let's call it an occasion to spend a few more hours in front of our TVs, the place where it all started. In 1951, some 12 million television sets were in existence and Ralph Baer, a television engineer at Loral Electronics, wondered what extracurricular tricks...

Q. So you designed the game and programmed it yourself? A. I did all of the art and background, I programmed the levels, I did the music, the timing. I outsourced the programming to a company in New York. I pretty much did everything I could possibly do except the raw coding itself.

"In cross-functional teams, team performance depends on how skillfully function managers carry out the cross-function coordination of team members' complementary expertise and activities. In this paper, we argue (i) that function managers' coordination skills develop in part through the coordination experience gained from interacting with managers from other function, (ii) that coordination experience has general and firm-specific dimensions, and (iii) that coordination experience leads to better team performance. Using data on development teams in the electronic games industry, we show that coordination experience and its general and firm-specific components have a positive impact on the commercial success of electronic games, and that this effect is robust to tests for omitted variables and reverse causality. Our results have implications for the theory of learning and coordination in teams and for the practice of team design in project-based organizations."