game design
Can "Gaming 2.0" Help Design "Serious Games"? - A Comparative Study
Tue, 03/08/2010 - 17:07 | 
ludoscience
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
The "Serious Games" field raises a specific need. People without professional game design skills, such as teachers, corporate trainers, therapists and advertising professionals, request tools that could allow them to create or modify such games. This article will analyze "Gaming 2.0" examples in order to identify tools that could help fulfill this need. Indeed, "Gaming 2.0" is a way for players to create videogame content without skills from the entertainment videogame industry. Can these tools be also used to create "Serious Games"? To answer this question, we will first define a simple theoretical model of videogames. This model outlines four "game parts" that players can create through "Gaming 2.0"-related tools, and it will be used to provide a comparative analysis of fifteen "Gaming 2.0" examples. From this analysis, insights on the relevance of "Gaming 2.0" for the "Serious Games" field will be drawn.
Designing Game Affordances to Promote Learning and Engagement
Mon, 07/06/2010 - 20:17 | sharritt
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Applied research will be presented from a qualitative study that highlights high school students' learning and use of several game interfaces, describing how particular affordances and game interface designs can encourage learning. Inductive generalizations from several 'commercial' games for good, including Civilization IV, Making History: The Calm & the Storm, and RollerCoaster Tycoon describe patterns of learning among game players, showing how the design of in-game visualizations either led to success or failure to learn to use basic game controls. This analysis, inspired by ethnomethodology and grounded theory, sought patterns from gathered video data of student gameplay to highlight learning episodes and patterns of interface use. Patterns in affordance use (uptake of a perceived action potential) during collaborative gameplay reveal relationships among the video game interface and player behavior, giving focus to how an interface design can guide game player interaction. In line with Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow, a proper balance of difficulty (between feelings of boredom, and too much difficulty) encouraged player engagement and learning. As evidenced in transcripts of collaborative gameplay, feelings of frustration with a game interface often led students to abandon in-game tasks, as did boredom with a given task. However, frustrated goal achievement often led to the re-negotiation of in-game strategies: an indication of engagement. Additionally, games that presented information using multiple channels encouraged learning, as did the use of specific visualizations such as the animation of in-game objects. Finally, a discussion of the affordances created by different game designs will offer educators and game designers guidelines to encourage motivated gameplay.
150 reads | 
Tags: Affordance, Affordances, Cognition, Cognition, cognitive, cognitive technology journal, collaboration, collaborative learning, DESIGN, E-Learning, Education, Education, Educational psychology, engagement, game design, Gameplay, Games, games for good, learning, Learning games, Matthew J
Source, player, Psychology, Situated cognition, situated cognition, situated learning, Technology, Technology, Technology, Video Games
Software Studies in Computer Gameplay
Fri, 04/06/2010 - 10:59 | LGrace
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
The computer game software with which we interact on a daily basis not only entertains us, it trains us into specific patterns. Critical Gameplay is a design practice which endeavors to expose and redesign the patterns to which standard gameplay subscribes. The ongoing project seeks to identify the dominant values, philosophies and problem solving models reinforced by computer games and provides prototypical alternates to those standards.
122 reads | Tags: Academia, Atlanta, critical design, game design, Game design, gameplay, Lindsay Grace
Source, Science, software, Software Design, software studies, Software studies, Technology, United States
Close Reading Oblivion: Character Believability and Intelligent Personalization in Games
Thu, 03/06/2010 - 15:44 | JoshTanenbaum
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
This paper investigates issues of character believability and intelligent personalization through a reading of the Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Oblivion’s opening sequence simultaneously trains players in the function of the game, and allows them to customize their character class through the choices and actions they take. Oblivion makes an ambitious attempt at intelligent personalization in the character creation process. Its strategy is to track early gameplay decisions and “stereotype” players into one of 21 possible classes. This approach has two advantages over a less adaptive system. First, it supports the illusion of the game world as a real world by embedding the process of character creation within a narrativised game-play context. Second, the intelligent recommendation system responds to the player’s desire to believe that the game “knows” something about her personality. This leads the players to conceptualize the system as an entity with autonomous, humanlike knowledge. Through the analysis of multiple replayings of the opening sequence, this paper considers ways in which Oblivion both succeeds and fails at mapping player behaviour to appropriate class assignments. The paper documents places where the dialogue between player and game breaks down, and argues for alternative techniques to customize the play experience within the desires of the player.
Commitment to Meaning: A Reframing of Agency in Games
Thu, 03/06/2010 - 15:40 | JoshTanenbaum
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
This paper examines the concept of agency within games and proposes a shift from the notion of agency as representing choice or freedom to one of agency as representing commitment to meaning. This conception of agency is aimed at understanding the pleasures of engaging with narratively rich games, and helps to address the tension between player choice and authorial intent. We draw on what speech act theory says about how trust, meaning and communication are achieved in human conversation, applying these notions to interactive storytelling. This new perspective on agency provides us with a better analytical tool for understanding the relationship between interaction and narrative pleasure, and provides a useful metric for designers of story-rich games.
Games-Based Learning in Teacher Education: A Strategy to Integrate Digital Games into Secondary Schools
Thu, 11/02/2010 - 19:04 | Jason Rutter
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
The importance of information and communication technology (ICT) in our daily lives is growing. To prepare future employees to this evolving environment, technology should play a role in education. Furthermore, computer technology serves as a valuable and supportive tool to improve teaching and learning and allows new types of teaching and learning experiences to evolve. For instance, the concept of digital games-based learning (DGBL) has been growing for many years now. In order to prepare the next generation of teachers according to the image of society, teachers must be adequately trained.In this article, the authors describe the design, implementation and evaluation of two courses on digital games-based learning (DGBL) developed for the pre-service teacher training programme in health education in Flanders (the Dutch speaking part of Belgium). Both courses were set up as an introduction to digital games and gaming for learning and instruction. The objective was to provide an opportunity for students to explore (i) the possibilities, considerations and constraints related to the design of digital instructional games, and (ii) the practical design and try-out of a game in classroom settings using standard or free software (such as Excel, Hot Potatoes, JClic). Results show that the games' inclusion in the formal curriculum encouraged them in using GBL in their future teaching activities and enables them to engage their supervising teachers into using games in their classrooms.
Add new comment | 163 reads | Tags: active engagement, Business, Business, game design, games-based learning, Labor, Law, preservice, teacher, teacher training, Technology
Constructing the 2D Adventure Game-Based Assessment System
Wed, 27/01/2010 - 11:14 | Jason Rutter
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Due to the advanced computer and network technologies, it could be helpful to conduct an advanced distance learning system for learners to process their learning activities in anytime and anywhere. However, according to many research issues which found that the learning motivation is the most important element to encourage people into their learning and assessment activities. In this paper, we proposed the 2D Adventure Game-Based Assessment System which not only could draw people into their learning activities, but could help instructors easily to design and manage the related learning and assessment content.
Add new comment | 84 reads | Tags: assessment system, game design, GBL, learning motivation, Technology, Technology
Little Big Difference: Gender Aspects and Gender-Based Adaptation in Educational Games
Tue, 26/01/2010 - 11:32 | Jason Rutter
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Computer games are tremendously successful and this is why the potential of using this medium for educational purposes is increasingly recognized and researched. However, as new learning technologies need to be appropriate for all students and ensure equal learning opportunities, it is important to take into account evidences on gender differences in the context of computer games. This paper reviews relevant research results on gender aspects. Aiming for the realization of gender-based adaptation in digital educational games, a model incorporating research evidences on gender aspects is elaborated and implications for adaptation are derived. Adaptation principles and game design are illustrated by means of the 80Days project.
Add new comment | 108 reads | Tags: adaptation, Educational game, game design, game-based learning, gender difference, Performance, Play, SENSATION SEEKING, Sex, Video
The banality of simulated evil: designing ethical gameplay
Sun, 24/01/2010 - 08:26 | Jason Rutter
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
This paper offers an analytical description of the ethics of game design and its influence in the ethical challenges computer games present. The paper proposes a set of game design suggestions based on the Information Ethics concept of Levels of Abstraction which can be applied to formalise ethical challenges into gameplay mechanics; thus allowing game designers to incorporate ethics as part of the experience of their games. The goal of this paper is twofold: to address some of the reasons why computer games present ethical challenges, and to exploit the informational nature of games to suggest how to develop games with ethics at the core of their gameplay.
AgentCubes: Incremental 3D end-user development
Mon, 18/01/2010 - 10:50 | Jason Rutter
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
3D game development can be an enticing way to attract K-12 students to computer science, but designing and programming 3D games is far from trivial. Students need to achieve a certain level of 3D fluency in modeling, animation, and programming to be able to create compelling 3D content. The combination of innovative end-user development tools and standards-based curriculum that promotes IT fluency by shifting the pedagogical focus from programming to design, can address motivational aspects without sacrificing principled educational goals. The AgentCubes 3D game-authoring environment raises the ceiling of end-user development without raising the threshold. Our formal user study shows that with Incremental 3D, the gradual approach to transition from 2D to 3D authoring, middle school students can build sophisticated 3D games including 3D models, animations, and programming. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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