Gaming and the liberal arts

Neat idea!

Anyone played Taiga Park?

Interesting resource management game, for the British-Indian-Chinese opium trade.

That's a useful set of comments, esp. the critical ones.

Game-based collaboration tool.

Via @notjessewaker

Very interesting idea. I wonder about RTS implementations, too.

It uses Zotero

Nice instance.

Interesting - I'm not sure if this applies better to design or after-action narration.

Good example of a newsgame.

this article compares video games and digital texts, not in terms of their supposedly shared narrative content (not in terms of their content at all) but, rather, formally-in terms of how they model complex systems, how both video games and digital-text environments work by creating networked environments for the production, reproduction, transmission, and reception (indeed for the continual reediting) of their respective content-objects. Both texts and video games are systems, with their own special affordances and constraints, that provide both "spores" and "spurs," seeds and provocations, prompts for new performances of meaning.

Uses real historic artifacts but creates fictional dystopian future.

Very interesting discussion of problems with teaching gaming in humanities classes: student resistance, backwards scaffolding.

Nathan Maton and Audrey Watters discuss how to create a serious game for education

"The Arcane Gallery of Gadgetry is a sort of narrative wunderkammer of an alternate reality game, a "cabinet of curiosities" combining a rich and oftentimes mysteriously fragmented historical tapestry with what Rob MacDougall has called "playful historical thinking.""

report on the USIP peacemaking and gaming conference

Shalom, which academic disciplines were most represented during the event? I would guess political science and history.

new book on world of warcraft

Anyone read this yet?

Not yet. Do you have a copy? If not, I'll get one and we can share. Different person than this guy, maybe: http://www.professorbainbridge.com/

These games are supposed to teach players to recognize their biases.

I'm not only amused by the way the author of this post has taken the simulation so clearly as an accurate analog for what could happen in the real world, but am also intrigued at how widely this story is being re-posted and commented on. I've seen it everywhere: blogs in my RSS, Twitter, and Facebook. I wonder if that is a function of how widely Civ has been played, how closely the analogy to RL adheres for readers, or something else?

Good point, Brett. Perhaps it's a function of the game's horrible outlook, which resonates with our current stresses.

Great example of how the process of game design can be powerfully educational. If they've carried out the R&D process well, including beta testing, then the end-product should be educational as well, of course. I hope we'll see more of this kind of project, particularly from liberal arts institutions.