Game Design as Authentic Science: Creating Low-Tech Games that Do Science

Many students love everything about video games, so teaching them to use technology to design their own games around content is an assignment that can offer built-in engagement. The problem, however, is that teachers often don’t have the time or expertise to teach computer programming, let alone content and process skills. On top of that, installing game design software can create friction between the teaching staff and technology department. That’s where Microsoft PowerPoint comes in. Did you know you can help your students create—from scratch or from a template—a video game using PowerPoint

iBall: Augmenting Basketball Videos with Gaze-moderated Embedded Visualizations

We present iBall, a basketball video-watching system that leverages gaze-moderated embedded visualizations to facilitate game understanding and engagement of casual fans. Video broadcasting and online video platforms make watching basketball games increasingly accessible. Yet, for new or casual fans, watching basketball videos is often confusing due to their limited basketball knowledge and the lack of accessible, on-demand information to resolve their confusion. To assist casual fans in watching basketball videos, we compared the game-watching behaviors of casual and die-hard fans in a formative study and developed iBall based on the fndings. iBall embeds visualizations into basketball videos using a computer vision pipeline, and automatically adapts the visualizations based on the game context and users' gaze, helping casual fans appreciate basketball games without being overwhelmed. We confrmed the usefulness, usability, and engagement of iBall in a study with 16 casual fans, and further collected feedback from 8 die-hard fans.Comment: ACM CHI2

A Serious Game for Romanic Bathhouse::the Combination of Learning and fun for Cultural Heritage

Current cultural heritages often make use of images, sounds and video together, aiming to complement existing presentations and to create a memora-ble exhibition. In addition to this, modern culture heritages’ identities have shift-ed from simple holders of cultural objects to an educational institution. The ad-vance of computer games has shown their potentials for the development of edu-tainment content and services for their visitors. A visit to heritage is structured around motion and can be supported and mediated by a computer game that can activate the visitors’ motivation by stimulating their imagination and engagement. Computer games can support visitors during and just after or before the visit. It can also provide opportunities to reorganize and conceptualize historical, cultural and technological facts about the exhibits in a constructive and meaningful way.To demonstrate the advantages of computer games in terms of facilitating the learning activities of culture heritages, we design a serious game with UNITY3D game engine. The game allows players to navigate the virtual Romanic Bathhouse based on the remains from Heerlen

Her Own Boss: Gender and the Pursuit of Incompetent Play

This paper examines gender and computer game playing, in particular questions of identity, access and playful engagement with these technologies. Because computer-based media are not only central tools for learning and work, and because games are increasingly being recruited as educational and instructional genres, it is likewise exceedingly important, from an educational equity standpoint to examine the ways in which rapidly evolving computer game-based learning initiatives threaten to compound and intensify girls’ computer disadvantage, a cumulative dis-entitlement from computer-based educational and occupational opportunities. The video game industry, as so many have noted, is one of the largest entertainment industries in the world, last year (2003) making more money than the Hollywood film industry, $7 billion USD (http://theesa.com/pressroom.html). In the field of education, that video games have the capacity to capture and hold the attention of players of many different ages, and to "teach" new players the functions and controls of a new game with far greater alacrity, and to greater functional effect than schools teach comparably, and even far less complex, skills and knowledge, has not gone un-noticed. Working as we both do in faculties of education, our own studies of gender and computer game playing, examine questions of identity, access, and playful engagement with these technologies from the following premises: (1) As Henry Jenkins and others have argued for some time, far more boys than girls play computer/video games, and boys’ early and sustained exposure to and experience with gaming places them at an advantage with respect to computer competence and confidence when they enter and as they continue their schooling. (2) There is a tendency in the literature on girls/women and computer game playing to construct their gaming choices and play styles as distinctly, and essentially "female," characterizing those who choose to play as "liking collaboration," "non-violent" and "easy" computer games. Its worth noticing that the stranglehold these kinds of stereotypical and essentializing identifications and characterizations have had and continue to have on received wisdom, both popular and academic about gender and play interests, styles and preferences by no means originates with video game playing, but is indigenous to the culture of computing more generally, and that this gendered computer culture always already mediates girls’ interactions with those technologies, among which game playing is only the most recent subject of attention. Because computer-based media are now central tools for learning and work, and because games and simulations are increasingly being recruited as educational and instructional genres, it is likewise exceedingly important, from an educational equity standpoint to examine the ways in which rapidly evolving computer game-based learning initiatives threaten to compound and intensify girls’ computer disadvantage, a cumulative disentitlement from computer-based educational and occupational opportunities. In educational settings, the tendency has been to presume that technologies are "neutral" tools deployed by educators for ameliorative ends. Video and computer games, however, are far from neutral and we have seen little evidence of new educational gaming work being informed by attention to girls’ perspectives on gaming, their participation in and exclusion from game cultures, and an absence of theoretically adequate and empirically grounded studies of the kinds of games, characters, and overall approaches to ‘play’ that might better engage and involve girls. A case in point is Jim Gee’s recent book on learning in video games, in which he summarily dismisses "gender" from his own consideration of video games and learning. This dismissal is typically justified by reference to the recent proliferation of data from large-scale quantative research "studies" reporting that women are playing and buying at least as many computer and video games as men are, and in some cases, reporting that they play more often, not less. A recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, for instance reported that 57 percent of female U.S. teenagers play on line, while another study on college gaming finds that "Surprising, slightly more women than men reported playing computer and online games (approximately 60% women compared to 40% men), with about the same number of men and women playing video games". This study goes on to explain that, "Part of the reason more women than men play computer games may be that video games are generally focused on action and adventure (often violent in nature), while computer games are typically traditional games (e.g. solitaire, board games)." In both of these studies, and indeed in all of the studies we’ve examined thus far, statistics like these are used to dismiss the question of gender and computer game playing from the outset (it is no longer a "problem" since so many more women are indicating that they are playing). Once gender has been excised as statistically in-significant, there is typically no further gender-based dis-aggregation of data, even when it might seem that statistically relevant distinctions should be made with respect to game preferences and time on the game (c.f. http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources/research_documents/studi...), silencing in turn any follow-up research questions about whether and what women/girls are actually playing, and whether or how their engagement with game play is actually playful at all. In the initial empirical work that we will discuss in this paper, a study of girls and boys after-school video game playing clubs, we find no reason to believe, and in fact, many reasons to disbelieve the ways in which these large studies are reporting on game play, and good reasons for concern about what of significance is being actively obscured by them

A serious game for developing computational thinking and learning introductory computer programming

Owing to their ease of engagement and motivational nature, especially for younger age groups, games have been omnipresent in education since earliest times. More recently, computer video games have become widely used, particularly in secondary and tertiary education, to impart core knowledge in some subject areas and as an aid to attracting and retaining students. Academics have proposed a number of approaches, using games-based learning (GBL), to impart theoretical and applied knowledge,especially in the computer science discipline. Our research is concerned with the design of an innovative educational game framework focused on the development of Computational Thinking (CT) skills, and herein we introduce a serious game, based on our framework, which encourages the development of CT skills to facilitate learning introductory computer programming. We describe how a limited number of key introductory computer programming concepts have been mapped onto the game-play, and how an equivalent set of skills characterising CT can be acquired through playing the game. A survey response group of 25 students, following computer science and related degree programmes but with very diverse backgrounds and experience, provided initial usability feedback on the game. Their feedback confirmed that they found the game enjoyable, and also universally believed that this approach would be beneficial in helping students learn problem-solving skills for introductory computer programming. Feedback from this group will be incorporated in a revised version of the game, which will now be subject to rigorous experimental evaluation and analysis, to provide structured empirical evidence in support of our approach

Teens, Video Games, and Civics

Analyzes survey findings on trends in teenagers' video gaming, the social context, the role of parents and monitoring, and the link between specific gaming experiences and civic activities. Explores gaming's potential as civic learning opportunities

The Effects of a Serious Game on Learning

This study tested the hypothesis that video game attributes (e.g., points, competition, pedagogical agents) affect learning and engagement in a computerized learning environment. Thirty-two undergraduate psychology students were randomly assigned to two computerized learning environments meant to teach aspects of scientific inquiry (e.g., the need for control groups). Both groups read, critiqued and identified flaws in short descriptions of research. One group used a program that simulates a video game environment while the other used a traditional computer-assisted instructional format. Both conditions were given a pre-test and post-test. An interaction between time of test and the game was found, indicating that more learning occurred in the game condition than in the no-game condition. This suggests that games do increase learning, however there is no indication based on other results that they increase motivation and engagement.B.S. (Bachelor of Science

Which game narratives do adolescents of different gameplay and sociodemographic backgrounds prefer? a mixed-methods analysis

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to investigate which narrative elements of digital game narratives are preferred by the general adolescent population, and to examine associations with gender, socioeconomic status (SES), and gameplay frequency. Further, the study aims to discuss how results can be translated to serious digital games. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Adolescents were recruited through school to complete a survey on narrative preferences in digital games. The survey included questions on sociodemographic information, frequency of gameplay, and an open-ended question on what could be an appealing narrative for them. Data were analyzed in a mixed-methods approach, using thematic analysis and chi-square analyses to determine narrative preferences and the associations between game narrative elements and player characteristics (gender, SES, and frequency of gameplay). RESULTS: The sample consisted of 446 adolescents (12-15 years old) who described 30 narrative subthemes. Preferences included human characters as protagonists; nonhuman characters only as antagonists; realistic settings, such as public places or cities; and a strong conflict surrounding crime, catastrophe, or war. Girls more often than boys defined characters by their age, included avatars, located the narrative in private places, developed profession-related skills, and included a positive atmosphere. Adolescents of nonacademic education more often than adolescents of academic education defined characters by criminal actions. Infrequent players more often included human characters defined by their age than frequent players. After performing a Bonferroni correction, narrative preferences for several gender differences remained. CONCLUSION: Different narrative elements related to subgroups of adolescents by gender, SES, and frequency of gameplay. Customization of narratives in serious digital health games should be warranted for boys and girls; yet, further research is needed to specify how to address girls in particular

Autonomy in Video Games and Gamification

In the past decade, gamification (using game elements in non-gaming tasks to enhance motivation and engagement) has become a popular concept in many industries, but few studies have explored the principles under which it works. Self-determination theory suggests three psychological needs that gamification fulfills: competence, relatedness, and autonomy. Autonomy, a person\u27s perception that they have the ability to act however they choose, has emerged as an important, yet less-studied aspect in gamification. Inclusion of autonomy in gamification should foster engagement, enjoyment, and better performance. An experiment inspired by the above was carried out in which a sample of college students (N = 57) played a video game called Super Mario Bros. Crossover with either the choice to customize the aesthetics of their character and background (autonomy-supportive) or no choice of aesthetics (non-supportive). It was hypothesized that conditions involving more choice would lead to higher perceived autonomy and performance, and that perceived autonomy would be positively correlated with engagement, enjoyment, and performance. The manipulation resulted in no significant difference in perceived autonomy or performance, and perceived autonomy was only significantly positively correlated with enjoyment. Prior Super Mario Bros. experience was also found to positively correlate with perceived autonomy in the autonomy-supportive condition. The choice of aesthetics does not appear to have been sufficiently strong enough to increase perceived autonomy in this context

Gen X and Digital Games: Looking back to look forward

Despite there being increased attention in recent years to older adults who actively play digital games, it seems that there has been comparatively minimal scholarly focus on the next generation of older adult gamers – Generation X gamers. Although there have been few, current audience studies that examine this population within a gaming context, a temporal perspective reveals another story. Older members of this generation were the first age cohort to be exposed to and engage in video gameplay at an early age (i.e., childhood). With the emerging popularity of video games in the 1980s, this did not escape the attention of scholars. This study provides an overview of those early studies that assessed video game use and its potential (for better or worse) among the older members Gen X. The study themes identified include: health, education, and behavior. In addition, the first studies that identified gaming characteristics of this generation in their formative years emerged in the latter half of that decade. By identifying themes in these early studies, scholars have the potential to track an entire generation’s gaming history and characteristics from childhood to present day. Ultimately, this may glean richer insight into those qualities when they become the next older generation of digital game players