IT Education, Girls, and Game Modding

Researchers have argued that video games have great utility for learning. Games promote experiential learning and can be used to facilitate active learning. This paper examines the potential of video games in education. In particular, it examines the benefits of game modding compared to playing and/or creating games. However, video game classes have been primarily attended by male students. This paper looks further into the gender issue regarding the use of video game modding in education. This is demonstrated through a course developed by the authors on game design. The main goal of the course was to introduce middle school and high school female students to IT and assist them in acquiring five basic IT skills. During the course, survey data was collected from participating students. Results from the surveys as well as analysis of student projects and anecdotal evidence suggest that using video game modding is successful in increasing self-efficacy and motivation as well as teaching female students basic IT skills

Middle-to-High School Girls as Game Designers – What are the Implications?

The percentage of young women choosing educational paths leading to science and technology-based employment has been dropping for several years. In our view, the core cause for this phenomenon is not a lack of ability, but rather a combination of low self efficacy, misconception of the IT field, and lack of interest and social support from families and peers. The specific aim of this paper is to discuss a case study – a class named Gaming for Girls. This class was offered to middle and high school girls three times from Fall 05 to Summer 06. In these classes, female students assumed the role of designers and developers engaged in developing their own games using commercial game engines. Based on this experience, we assert that through the activity of designing games using game engines, girls can (a) gain an understanding of the game development process, (b) acquire computer science skills, and (c) increase their confidence level with regards to computing

Videogame Music: chiptunes byte back?

This chapter explores the sonic subcultures of videogame art and videogame-related fan art. It looks at the work of videogame musicians - not those producing the music for commercial games - but artists and hobbyists who produce musci by hacking and reprogramming videogame hardware, or by sampling in-game sound effects and music for use in their own compositions. It discusses the motivations and methodologies behind some of this work. It explore

Playing the Game, or Not: Reframing Understandings of Children’s Digital Play

Everybody seems to have an opinion about the value, risks and opportunities of children playing digital games. Popular media conveys messages to parents and the public alike of addicted, violent, desensitised, and anti-social children and of the privacy risk of back end data collection. Educationalists waver between seeing digital games as hindering more positive educational, social and physical activity, or as being a new way to engage students and improve learning outcomes. Parents are in fear of the ‘dangers’ of gaming and screen time yet enticed by the educational promise and the entertainment value of keeping their children occupied. Game developers see opportunities for data collection, surveillance and for nudging children’s behaviour and purchases. Many of these fears, hopes, and hype are replaying older tropes that circulate around any new technology, media forms and associated changes in practices, but are amplified further by having children as their central focus. Indeed, all of these stakeholders in children’s futures have particular understandings of what is good for children and what an ideal child should be. Yet children are not docile bodies who simply have things happen to them: they subvert, appropriate and innovate. This paper is a call for an exploration of what and how children’s digital gaming looks like from a child’s perspective and for a reframing of understanding children’s digital play as a result

Education vs. Entertainment: A Cultural History of Children's Software

Part of the Volume on the Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning This chapter draws on ethnographic material to consider the cultural politics and recent history of children's software and reflects on how this past can inform our current efforts to mobilize games for learning. The analysis uses a concept of genre as a way of making linkages across the distributed but interconnected circuit of everyday play, software content, and industry context. Organized through three genres in children's software -- academic, entertainment, and construction -- the body of the chapter describes how these genres play out within a production and advertising context, in the design of particular software titles, and at sites of play in after-school computer centers where the fieldwork was conducted

The Sims: A Retrospective - A Participatory Culture 14 Years On

A review of the original Sims game and how fans are attempting to preserve the game and its assets through digital archives and other participatory practices. Written for the Intensive: Cult Media Review section of Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media

Risks of the Metaverse: A VRChat Study Case

This paper examines the potential social risks of the metaverse. Previous research has found that video games, including Virtual Reality (VR) ones, can be associated with violence normalization and objectification of women. Moreover, some studies have suggested that gaming platforms even serve as tools for extremist groups to recruit and radicalize vulnerable people. Nonetheless, these risks have not been further studied in the context of the metaverse. This research analyzed relevant cases from different gaming platforms including Meta Horizon Worlds. Moreover, the game VRChat was studied due to the similarities it has with the metaverse in terms of design and features. An evaluation of VRChat's user experience was carried out through an analysis of its most popular reviews. Though no signs of radicalization were found, an important number of these reviews expressed sentiments such as loneliness and depression, which make people more vulnerable to be radicalized. Additionally, a tendency for online harassment and sexual deviance was found in the game since 2018 and remained persistent to date. For further insight into the sexual misconduct findings, an interview was conducted with psychiatrist and sexuality expert, Dr. Zenteno. This research found that the game developers of VRChat have not done enough to address sexual misconduct effectively and protect its most vulnerable users. This research concluded that due to the lack of incentives that game developers have to regulate their platforms themselves for social good, further intervention of all the stakeholders involved is needed. This includes policymakers, parents, legal guardians, and educators

Using gaming paratexts in the literacy classroom

This paper illustrates how digital game paratexts may effectively be used in the high school English to meet a variety of traditional and multimodal literacy outcomes. Paratexts are texts that refer to digital gaming and game cultures, and using them in the classroom enables practitioners to focus on and valorise the considerable literacies and skills that young people develop and deploy in their engagement with digital gaming and game cultures. The effectiveness of valorizing paratexts in this manner is demonstrated through two examples of assessment by students in classes where teachers had designed curriculum and assessment activities using paratexts

Players Unleashed! Modding The Sims and the Culture of Gaming

Siirretty Doriast