Tag Archives: games

Rewarding learning

My little girl was ‘Star of the Week’ at her school last week for ‘great number work.’  She was ecstatic to receive the recognition.  And it’s a big encouragement to her to keep on trying.  I’m very proud of her. Coincidentally but far more trivially, I went up a level in Modern Warfare 2.   […]

Reflecting on gameplay

I lose a lot of games. In fact, on balance I almost certainly lose more times than I win.  But I’m not going to let it get me down.  Repeated failure in games demonstrates a number of important aspects of in-game learning.  The fact that getting it wrong, often terminally, is an intrinsic part of […]

Where games meet learning

In earlier posts, I’ve looked at the research evidence for and against the learning potential for games and how play in general relates to learning.  This post looks at the overlap between games and learning.  Although many people become quite aerated about definitions, for the sake of today’s note, I’m simply using ‘games’ to mean […]

Where play meets learning

Play’ and ‘games’ are dirty words to many traditional educationalists because of their connotations of trivial, wasteful and indulgent activity.  It might hark back to our WASP-ish philosophy that only hardship and suffering are good for the soul.   Even the seminal play theorist, Johan Huizinga, argued that play is “an activity connected with no […]

Games teach us nothing

There is an unending stream to commentators praising or damning the educational potential of games in equal measure but hard, empirical evidence is still hard to find.  I thought I’d write a quick summary of papers for either camp.  Those in favour claim that games are “ideal learning environments” and  players demonstrate an “innate ability […]

Games, Narrative & Storytelling

Following my series on narrative formats, I thought it worth thinking a little about the relationship between narrative, storytelling and games more generally. Storytelling and narrative are central components in many forms of entertainment.  In traditional dramatic media, the authored story engages the viewer emotionally through a set sequence of predetermined pieces of information, like […]

Violent Play – Rubbing salt into the wound

I came across an interesting research paper today in the Social Psychological and Personality Science journal.   Brad Bushman (Ohio State University) and Bryan Gibson (Central Michigan University) suggest that the aggression associated with violent video games can persist long after the game play has finished. Many people, notably Craig Anderson of the Department of Psychology at […]

This Week’s Review

Some of the articles that have caught my eye this week: General Issues Did you know there have been more than 2000 nuclear explosions on the planet since 1945? I didn’t. Displayed in an animation from Pink Tentacle Guillermo del Toro to make games – but what other film directors would you like to see […]

Clever Fools

Now, here’s a clever science game.  A game that actually generates valuable scientific outputs. Foldit is a game from Seth Cooper and his colleagues at the University of Washington where players score points by squeezing as many  proteins as possible into a chemically stable configuration.  Understanding how proteins can fold together is essential to establishing […]