Group items tagged

Hard science on the importance of play for human development. How are games and play different? What are the categories of play? Can video games give us the same result as play? Should we have a category of "video toys" separate from "video games"? If we move toward video game education we need to make sure play is a portion of that education.

Jesse Schell, love this guys presentations, funny and makes you think. Cool analysis of psychology of contemporary video games and toys.

Anita Sarkeesian talks about online misogyny in the video game community, and her experience with harassment because of her work. She is a media critic and the creator of Feminist Frequency, a video webseries that explores the representations of women in pop culture narratives. Most interesting is her actual project which can be found here. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBBDFEC9F5893C4AF

about an exhibit at the Smithsonian on "video games as serious works of art" (March 16 - Sept. 30)

A good primer for the congealing of film and video games.

What do you think will be the WAAAAAY OF THE FUUUUTUUURREEE: educational games or creating lesson plans around mainstream games (the better question may be, how these things will manifest)?

Schooling is already a game. Point systems, frequent feedback, rewards. The first step is to recognize that. Second step is to use technology to implement on smaller scales, by which I mean minute to minute instead of week to week or semester to semester(which we see here). Honestly it is done already in kindergarden with the stars on the board acting as a leaderboard. I am confused as to why that is abandoned after graduating to 3rd or 4th grade(we "grow out" of one of the best forms of motivation?!). Gamifying schools is a matter of refinement not overhaul. The question to me is what should be rewarded.

An in depth look at the guy who penned the entire overarching narrative of the Assassin's Creed series. More importantly, an article pointing at the growing need and want of storytellers for the design of games. Good stuff! 

thanks to Stephen Hewitt for sharing this

scroll down to the "storytron" video to see discussion of spatial navigation as metaphor

This article mentions an example of a "persuasive game"

a good argument for buying an XBOX or Wii?!!!

A funny story about rules introduced in the newest version of Scrabble. He touches on some of the same stuff we've been talking about.

check this out--data visualization as 3-D environments

the work of Emerson prof Eric Gordon

Gaming companies may be enticed to come to MA as a result of tax credits...

a different perspective on the potential tax-break