Skip to main content

Home/ HGSET545/ Group items tagged Game

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Anna Ho

What are the most treasured aspects of '90s adventure game design and how might these b... - 1 views

  •  
    I came across this great question posted in Quora. One of the responders, Anne Halsall listed structured narratives, diverse hand- drawn animation, more difficult puzzles (less hints), and a single-player experience as hallmarks of 90s adventures games. The highlights of these adventure games are a stark contrast to the conditions, at least according to Gee, that make video games useful learning tools (e.g.,open-ended, immediate feedback, opportunities for socialization). This lead me to wonder, are the trends in contemporary game design driving engagement theory, or is the research driving game design?
Hongge Ren

Seth Priebatsch: The game layer on top of the world - 4 views

  •  
    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.
  • ...1 more comment...
  •  
    Thanks for sharing Hongge, I think many aspects of our lives are actually 'gamified'. The key seems to be making it as relevant and 'intrinsically integrated' so that it's seamless. Just a question: why is it 'game layer' over the real world and not 'real world' layer over the game?
  •  
    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...
Jackie Iger

Game-Based Learning - Without Video Games | MindShift - 2 views

  •  
    An interesting article on game play in the classroom...students take on the role of a video game character and act the part during game performances!
  •  
    If you look at it as 'play' instead of 'game' I think it opens a whole range of possibilities. Which is not surprising. As young children, we learned through play, often elaborate role-play.
  •  
    Hi Jackie - this just reminded me to post a link below re: the CUNY (City University of New York) group that reflects on and develops all types of games in teaching. http://games.commons.gc.cuny.edu/
shendanxi

The Multiple Dimensions of Video Game Effects - 0 views

  •  
    The paper suggests a multi-dimensional approach to analysing digital games. The good or bad criticism should be replaced by thinking about the games' effects in terms of (1) the amount of play, (2) the content of play, (3) the game context, (4) the game structure, and (5) the mechanics of game play. Considerations should be put into each of these 5 dimensions when a game is being designed.
Brandon Pousley

SimCity EDU for the Classroom - 0 views

  •  
    This is a webinar chat that I sat in on today (A few questions I posed are featured in the Q&A at the end.) With the new SimCity release, they have also partnered with a company called GlassLab that has designed a teacher resource hub and also modified game that enables teachers to easily use the game in classrooms. There will be specific inquiry based challenges that allow students to interact in the game environment to investigate community issues (ranging from water shortages, power outages, labor disputes, earthquakes, budget concerns, etc.) and work with citizens and government to solve the issues. There is also an exciting multiplayer format where neighboring cities are controlled by other students and they must work together to solve problems. Glass Lab is partnering with EA Games, Gates Foundation, and ETS to build the teacher hub where educators can design and share best practices, lesson plans, etc. In addition, they will be doing a long term study to measure educational outcomes. It appears as though they are using this game as a pilot opportunity to build the framework for larger commercial game integration into the classroom.
Stephanie Fitzgerald

Designing engagement: The secret of Game Dev Story - 0 views

  •  
    Here's another perspective on engagement: how to make games more addictive (or compulsive?) by creating "smarter game loops" with fewer exit points. The example discussed is "Game Dev Story," a management simulation for a game development studio.
Stephen Bresnick

Storyboard Podcast: The Curse of Cow Clicker | Magazine - 1 views

  •  
    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.
Jennifer Jocz

Why Everything Is Becoming a Game - 1 views

  • Over the last year, he started grading two of his classes (both involved with game design) using a system based on “experience points,” or XP, similar to the way gamers in World of Warcraft and other massively multiplayer games award points for various tasks. Students started the year at level one, with zero XP, and then gained points — and higher grades — by completing “quests” and “crafting,” which corresponded to giving presentations and doing exams and quizzes. Students also formed “guilds” similar to the gaming groups that rule WoW and other multiplayer games. Sheldon says that his students seemed far more engaged than they had been before.
  • The bottom line is that good games take advantage of people’s innate desire to compete with each other, but balance that with their need to receive rewards, including the approval of their peers — rewards that in some cases can be used to modify their behavior in certain ways. T
  •  
    Interesting article about how certain features of video games (gaining experience points, forming guilds, etc.) are being incorporated in unexpected ways in our lives.
Brandon Pousley

Disney 'Connected Learning' Aims To Infuse Games with Learning - 0 views

  •  
    Disney's Connected Learning program has been developing games for 6 years now, the most popular title being Club Penguin. They are currently planning to roll out several pre-school titles and are also capturing data on the games effects on learning outcomes. Interesting to see Disney attracting top talent from the gaming industry to help develop games and also not shying away from doing the research to investigate educational outcomes.
Stephanie Fitzgerald

GAMBIT: Do It Yourself Game Design - 1 views

  •  
    Hear MIT GAMBIT Lab experts talk about engagement in practical terms--and get some hands-on experience designing a board or video game. The three-hour workshops are part of the Cambridge Science Festival; this event takes place on April 28 and requires a $5 preregistration. Though I'm sure EMF will be touched on one way or another in all of the workshops, I thought the Serious Games for Social Change workshop might be of particular interest to you all: "In this workshop, best practice examples of serious games for social change will be played, discussed and analyzed. Furthermore ideas and sketches for proto-types will be developed and ways of realizing them will be discussed! The workshop gives the participants hands-on experiences and insights into the potential and limits of video games designed for social change. No pre-experiences are needed!"
Jennifer Jocz

Seeking Philanthropy in MMOs and Online Gaming :: ZAM - 1 views

  • This Wednesday, McGonigal is launching Urgent Evoke, a new MMO-ARG (Alternate Reality Game) hybrid that she hopes will "help empower young people all over the world, and especially young people in Africa, to come up with creative solutions to our most urgent social problems," according to the official blog. The upcoming game offers players the chance to earn tangible rewards—scholarships and venture capital, for example—by performing real-world "quests" like volunteer work and career-building tasks. The concept might not seem that enticing to conventional gamers, but it's an early, real-world application of what McGonigal believes social gaming can help achieve.
  •  
    Can video games help change the world?
Parisa Rouhani

Virtually addicted: Weaning Koreans off their wired world - CNN.com - 1 views

  • Cheong is down to playing two or three hours on "Starcraft" and "World of Warcraft" three times a week,
  • The South Korean government estimates that the country has 2 million citizens addicted to the Internet
  • Earlier this month a three-month-old baby girl succumbed to malnutrition while her parents spent 12-hour stretches in an Internet café playing the role-playing game Prius Online
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • 22-year-old man returned to an Internet cafe to continue playing immediately after he murdered his mother, who had complained about his gaming habits. Physical exhaustion after long computer sessions has also caused deaths.
  • Internet addicts will also be offered free software with a timer that shuts down their computers or a "fatigue system" that bores players by making games slower and more difficult
  • Some of the suggested new measures to curb Internet addiction could collide with a gaming market that is expected to be worth $5.5 billion this year with a 17 percent growth rate
  • The companies make their money selling add-ons such as weapons, outfits and special abilities for the online characters.
  • Another novel idea to curb addiction is to punish excessive playing by confiscating gamers' virtual wealth.
  • We are examining various technological directions to prevent excessively continuous game play even for adults, and we are also discussing a special system that will allow children and teenagers to learn a healthy gaming habit,
  •  
    This is an interesting article that speaks to the result of over-engagement. I wonder if this problem is specific to Korea and less so in other countries (if so, what is it about that environment that makes video games so addictive) or if it's only been studied in Korea but could be a similar problem in other parts of the world.
Uly Lalunio

Well-drawn, believable characters are now crucial to modern video games. - 0 views

  •  
    "Heroes have always been the driving force behind video games, of course, with the industry producing such cultural icons as Mario and Lara Croft. However, as video game technology and storytelling have become more sophisticated, developers are embellishing their games with deeper characterisation than ever before. "
Lisa Schnoll

EdNET Insight | The Evolution of Games in Educational Publishing - 0 views

  • On a marketing level, barriers to access have largely disappeared. In the old days, games were played on CD-ROMs, and few classrooms had computers. When Internet-delivered games first came out, schools had inadequate bandwidth, they struggled with administrative permissions issues, and there were not enough computers to go around. Now, computers are ubiquitous, broadband is standard, and permissions controls have been mastered.
  • k one rea
  • is that gaming can be a powerful medium for this kind of learnin
  •  
    This is a nice article expressing one opinion on where games in educational publishing is going!
Stephanie Fitzgerald

Glory, A History Board Game - Kickstarter - 0 views

  •  
    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."
Chris Mosier

What's Happening to Kids' Games? - 0 views

  •  
    A look at the commercial kids game space. The article indicates the development of kids games is moving to tablets because of the gesture format, low cost of titles and ability to play short games. Disadvantage with tablets highlighted is the lack co-play features (unlike consoles where it's easy for several people to play simultaneously). Games cited in article: Once Upon a Monster, Where's My Water, Niko, Habbo Hotel.
  •  
    With bluetooth and WiFi features available, I wonder why there is not much thought about incorporating co-play in mobile games? I think using the gyroscopic features in iPhones and iPads can lead to creative multi-player games.
Stephanie Fitzgerald

Study shows how gaming impacts brain function to inspire healthy behavior | Games for H... - 0 views

  •  
    A study out of Stanford looked at how videogames, in particular serious games and games for health, can activate circuits in the brain associated with positive motivation. "The study published today provides new insights into how these effects might have occurred, revealing that active participation in gameplay events is key to activating the brain's positive motivation circuits. Seeing and hearing the same information without active participation in gameplay had no impact on activity in positive motivation circuits."
Kasthuri Gopalaratnam

UAHuntsville - Mind control will shape future of gaming and cell phones - UAHuntsville ... - 0 views

  •  
    "Gaming will probably progress to the point where the player's mind will control and communicate with the gaming station. Perhaps transmitters will communicate back and generate gaming experiences in the player's mind without requiring a screen."
Stephanie Fitzgerald

Why gaming in the classroom may soon be the norm | Firstpost - 5 views

  •  
    An interesting post on games in education that links to many examples for learning to code and mentions some other online educational environments that use gamification.
  •  
    Hi Stephanie - This article also seems to highlight the extrinsic rewards of points and badges -- calling it "gamification." And given our last conversation in class, I wonder if all the points and badges will kill the intrinsic desire to play the games. Interestingly, there was a comment with a link to another article http://www.hideandseek.net/2010/10/06/cant-play-wont-play/ where the writer notes that some games just use "pointification," and that the best games are the ones that have rich cognitive, emotional and social aspects, with choice and skill... but not dependent on points/badges. In light of our "motivation" conversations, it will be interesting to watch how gaming in the classroom plays out if they are largely point/badges driven.
Jennifer Jocz

Destructoid - The convergent futures of music games and higher education - 0 views

  • "So I don’t see games as having the power to completely change music purchasing, rather they will expand economic opportunities for music creators and fans in ways we’re just beginning to understand. Games are already expanding the variety of music people are exposed to and are therefore likely to want to purchase and own, as well as the places and circumstances under which this mutual reinforcement takes place."
  • The games have certainly increased the number of young people interested in pursuing musical activities in many ways; just ask any guitar instructor or owner of a musical instrument store.
  • "While there are now many studies showing links between gaming and learning -- for kids and adults -- to date there have not been many rigorous examinations of their relationship to music education, although there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of their mutual reinforcement. Remember that musical training isn’t solely about scales and correct finger placement; rhythm, song structure, key changes, lyrics, genre styles, etc. are all elements of a musical education, and playing along with songs on Rock Band absolutely aids in the development of the awareness of these elements."
  •  
    Interesting article discussing music games, including how they can influence the types of music people listen to and whether they can affect interest in learning and appreciating music.
1 - 20 of 500 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page