Group items tagged

The Fun Theory! This is cool~

An application-oriented paper that explores designing effective learning games through the use of Flow, Motivation and Fun.

An interesting article on "fun failure" and how failure can be powerful motivator for learning.

Using lotteries and other devices to motivate people to do things they might otherwise find unattractive.

This Kickstarter project aims to fund a standards-aligned history board game that engages students. The free companion web application will track students' progress, allowing for differentiated instruction while making the game "fun to play again and again: as players answer question cards, they earn badges and can unlock new careers and powers. The game becomes a story, a competition, and a World History simulation with limitless possibilities."

Here's a fun infographic that overviews gamified learning and provides a timeline that features some games we've studied for this course.

Here's a little introduction to motivation in psychology that you might find interesting--the other videos on the site are worth a peek, as well (though FYI, they are by no means as fun to watch as TED Talks).

This is a really interesting article about the story of one of the most popular web-based games of last year. The interesting part is that the creator of the game designed it as a joke, trying to poke fun at other wildly popular games like Farmville. He made the game as simple as possible, compelled users to log in regularly to "Click a Cow," and had them earn points when other people clicked their cows. The message was supposed to be, "these types of games are manipulative in their tactics to keep people playing, and they are mindless and painfully stupid." However, his design stumbled on something that people really enjoy, and as a result, people didn't get that the game was meant to be a joke, and it became a huge hit. I think this shows that flow-inducing actitivities, or ones that keep the user engaged and provide quick feedback, are highly desirable for users.

A fun article that highlights Dweck's research on praise, effort, and self-esteem.

Some interesting opinions on the future of games from game designers.

Very fun illustration of social media's impact on journalism

Maybe it is a guy thing, but I think I would enjoy building a crack team of mercenaries to battle other 'gangs'. The VOIP functionality and real-time skirmishes sound like a lot of fun. I just had a great idea for a MUVE game... Rookie, a MUVE that requores the formation of a constant cohort of users that must work together to graduate a Police Academy (politics, alliance building, skills, civic quandries, etc). They rise through the ranks together culminating in SWAT team training and/or criminal justice track (courts).

A new online game uses crowdsourcing to find out how to save humans from extinction.

An example of how video games are being used in higher education

By now, we're used to letting Facebook and Twitter capture our social lives on the web -- building a "social layer" on top of the real world. In his talk, Seth Priebatsch looks at the next layer in progress: the "game layer," a pervasive net of behavior-steering game dynamics that will reshape education and commerce.

Yes, indeed. The ideal is to intrinsically integrate. That's a good idea. Why not? In fact, maybe the alternate reality games qualify as "real world" layer over games because in such games, whatever happens in games impact the reality in certain ways. We could also design games to work the other way around, e.g. a diet game, where only when you do exercise in a gym in the real world, can you advance levels in the game.

Haha yes!! I recall a rowing machine which actually had a game in front of users so that they could compete with 'other rowers'. It was great and definitely made the workout more fun. I stopped though after a friend slipped his disc on the machine...

It's had a great run, but two things players complain about. 1) Expensive compared to other free games 2) It's just not fun anymore

Engagement is a buzz word but who descriptive is it?

Article on college students using "serious" video games as part of their instruction.

This is a fairly old paper (1980), but is a comprehensive look at a lot of ideas we covered in class.

This article is fairly old, but I thought its topic resonated with our discussion in class last Monday--particularly the pink box of pink Legos.

Those "friendship adventure" games for girls don't sound like much fun - and I wonder if there's any replay value? I read through the game flow and it seems like something the kid finishes in an hour and doesn't touch again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockett's_New_School However, it looks like the game (and sequels) were actually quite popular. http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,63511,00.html