Recent ics_gls items

Suburban Adults Playing Pokémon: 20 Years Later

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Pokémon franchise is one of the largest in history and subsequently the focus of multiple fields of academic study. In digital gaming, Pokémon game titles have also been the subject of much scrutiny. In this research, the mainline Pokémon titles (not including spin-offs such as Pokémon Go!) provide as case study for understanding the flexibility and changing understandings and engagement of play in contemporary digital game play. This study focuses on a small region outside of a major Canadian city anonymously entitled “The District”, featuring a historical automotive and industrial sector, characterized by primarily suburban, but also rural and urban geographical characteristics. The research investigates historical perceptions of playing Pokémon and exposes some forms of inequality within the District in terms of lingering digital divides, corporate control, and attitudes towards play. This paper investigates how these persistence issues impact adult Pokémon play and...

Walden, a game EDU

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Walden, a game, EDU adapts the widely acclaimed experimental game based on Thoreau’s Transcendentalist masterpiece as a set of games-based learning modules with integrated standards-based curriculum in ELA, Social Studies, Social and Emotional Learning, History, Civics, and Environmental Science. Created in collaboration with teachers, students, content advisors, games-based learning experts, and evaluators, Walden, a game EDU is a model for online and hybrid games-based learning experience in the humanities. This showcase of Walden, a game EDU will contain completely new content, gameplay, and integrated curriculum that will be fully playable at the showcase and will be the first in-person demonstration of this new educational version of the game.

LoFi Hip Hop Worlds to Study In

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

LoFi Hip Hop Worlds to Study In is a collection of three-dimensional worlds full of study spots with instrumental music and ambient sounds. Students can explore these worlds to relax while they take breaks from studying. The software allows them to set a timer to remind them to come back to their studies. When they do, they can set a new timer; the game-world remains inactive in the background, but the application continues to provide relaxing sounds and beats with no ads. The game was released on Itch.io in 2021 to support students with remote learning during the COVID19 pandemic (https://lofiworlds.itch.io/study). At GLS 2022 it was set up in the arcade to offer attendees some meditative downtime as they took a break from the intensity of the conference.

The Woods: A Mixed-Reality Cooperative Game

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

While loneliness in our real lives is increasingly recognized as having dire physical, mental, and emotional consequences, cooperative games have been shown to build empathy and provide positive social impact. In this paper, the authors present “The Woods,” a local cooperative, mixed-reality game using augmented reality and 4-channel audio spatialization panning that provides players with face-to-face interactions in pursuit of a shared goal. This paper discusses the narrative, mechanical, and sonic components of the game, as well as the game’s development process and the players’ experiences. The goal of our team is to develop a narrative-driven AR game that promotes collaborative problem-solving and engages players in an emergent physical and digital experience.

Supporting Quantitative Habits of Mind with Role-Play

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

To support business, health professions, and social work students develop certain habits of mind, including incorporating data in their arguments, identifying agendas that may be behind seemingly objective arguments, and considering ethical quantitative communication, we developed a role-playing game built around a budget crisis at a rural health clinic. In the game, students take on roles described in character sheets, each with their own victory conditions. Characters are grouped in teams, or “factions,” with faction-level victory conditions. As a class, the students must solve the budget crisis by finding appropriate cuts to make. In their factions, students develop arguments to make cuts that support their victory conditions. They present their arguments to the class, and students vote on budget proposals. The game is used to introduce a quantitative reasoning course that was designed by an interdisciplinary team for students in service-oriented majors.

Learning Deliberately: Walden, a Game-Based Curriculum

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This hands-on workshop will present strategies and examples of how to design game-based learning that treats games as multi-model texts in a broader ecology of learning. As part of the Walden, a game EDU project, an interdisciplinary team of educators, researchers, curriculum designers, evaluators outreach experts, and game designers have re-designed the core experience of the award-winning independent game, Walden, a game (https://www.waldengame.com/educators), to develop inclusive, classroom-friendly, and standards-aligned games-based learning modules. This workshop includes a hands-on demonstration of these new educational game modules and integrated curriculum. These lessons use the game as a text to prompt critical discussion and learning. The session reflects on what we learned when we applied a playcentric design method to the challenges of teaching during COVID-19 and beyond. Participants will engage collaboratively with the lessons and will take away best practices...

“I don’t fit in anywhere”: Undergraduates’ experiences with avatars and games in an Education course

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This article presents findings from an investigation into undergraduate students’ experiences with the video game Forge of Empires in an Education course. I share details from one student’s personal life experiences and I illustrate how those experiences relate to her reflections on her gaming assignments. I also contrast her reactions to Forge of Empires’ avatar choices with the reactions of the other participants in this study. I conclude by recommending that preservice teachers be simultaneously trained in critical pedagogies and the use of video games for instruction. The inclusion of critical pedagogies such as Critical Media Literacy, Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, and Critical Race Theory in courses about educational uses of video games can help prepare teachers for difficult conversations that will arise when students come across the issues of biases, inequities, and the underrepresentation of marginalized groups.

Using Fortnite Creative to Imagine Solutions to World Problems

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We've seen how games can change classrooms and communities for the better, but can they really help all of humanity survive — and even thrive? The United Nations has 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These are must-reach targets for the year 2030, and have been crafted with the purpose of supporting continued comfortable human life on Earth. Epic Games has taken these goals to heart and are providing lesson plans that can be used with Fortnite Creative to educate a new generation on the importance of sustainability across many aspects of life.

Dwell™: A Tabletop Simulation to Experientially Learn Poverty-Related Struggles

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Poverty impacts the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals. It is certain that health care providers will encounter patients navigating an impoverished reality; however, few have the necessary skills to fully assist these individuals. Dwell™, a tabletop poverty simulation experience, was created with the goal of fostering players’ development of empathic service and care skills. In the game, players take on a character and household and have to stay afloat for a simulated 4-week in-game period. By engaging in perspective-taking as part of a facilitated experiential learning tool with compulsory debrief, health care students learn important lessons that can drastically improve their interactions with economically disadvantaged patients and thus enhancing patient care and professional success. The game has been evaluated with positive outcomes including when compared against other simulation-based tools addressing poverty.

Mistoria: A Narrative Tool for Language Learning

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Learning a new language is an asset for which the benefits have been well documented. However, our educational institutions struggle to provide the opportunities that enable our students to achieve meaningful levels of fluency and proficiency. Mistoria is an initial proposed design solution that leverages the affordances of Second Language Acquisition Theory, Games for Learning, and Learning Analytics to realize a compelling and effective means of learning another language.

Exploring players’ experience of humor and snark in a grade 3-6 history practices game

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this paper we use an existing history learning game with an active audience as a research platform for exploring how humor and “snarkiness” in the dialog script affect students' progression and attitudes about the game. We conducted a 2x2 randomized experiment with 11,804 anonymous 3rd-6th grade students. Using one-way ANOVA and Kruskall-Wallis tests, we find that changes to the script produced measurable results in the self-reported perceived humor of the game and the likeability of the player character. Different scripts did not produce significant differences in player completion of the game, or how much of the game was played. Perceived humor and enjoyment of the game and its main character contributed significantly to progress in the game, as did self-perceived reading skill.

Increasing Equity in Entertainment Through Education

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This panel discusses how to challenge the status quo and create alternative career opportunities, especially for diverse talent. Through career technical education programs and the development of a registered youth apprenticeship for Animation, VFX, and Game Design, young people will have access to industry training as a part of their free and public education.

Academically Meaningful Play in the Mathematics Classroom: Learning Symmetry and Transformations through Transformations Quest Educational Video Game

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This paper aims to analyze how Transformations Quest, an educational block-based videogame designed using the academically meaningful play framework supports middle grade students’ learning of geometric transformations. Data sources include video footage of 18 students’ dialogue with researchers while playing the game on Zoom. We present one illustrative example as evidence of the students’ geometric transformations learning using our game. Findings determined that the game helped students to productively hybridize everyday and mathematical formal experiences in favor of mathematical understandings beyond the curriculum, leading us to conclude that when games are designed with an academically meaningful play lens, they can support the building of conceptual understanding.

Scaffolding Zoombinis: Adding Executive Function Scaffolds to the Popular, Classic Game

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The popular, award-winning game Zoombinis has been around since the 90s, with an updated version launched in 2015 for new devices. Since that relaunch, research has been conducted on the effectiveness of the game and related bridging activities for the teaching and learning of computational thinking (Asbell-Clarke et al, 2021; Rowe et al, 2021b; Almeda et al, 2019). Recently, efforts have been made to design and test executive function (EF) scaffolds that surround puzzles from the game, permitting learners who may have EF challenges, such as issues with working memory, attention, and metacognition, to demonstrate their skills with computational thinking (CT), a logical approach to problem solving which can be applied to any problem, task, or system. On this poster, we present the Zoombinis scaffolds, the intent of their design, and the results of their use with teachers and students, grades 3-8, as part of a larger CT-education project.

Toward a Systematic Approach to Evaluating Emotional Design in Learning Games

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Emotional design has emerged as a critical area of research in game-based learning (GBL). Initial studies have yielded promising results indicating that learning games can be designed to purposefully induce specific emotions that support learning processes and outcomes. Yet, existing studies have not always yielded consistent results with regard to the expected effects of emotional design in learning games (Plass & Hovey, 2021). In order to make sustained and significant progress in this area, researchers have called for a systematic approach to evaluating the impact of emotional design on players’ emotions, learning processes, and learning outcomes (Loderer et al., 2019; Plass et al., 2019; Plass & Hovey, 2021). This paper draws upon research approaches from existing emotional design studies to propose an initial outline for such a systematic approach.

Gamer-parent identity: Positioning parenthood between fun screentime and ideals of responsibility

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This paper is part of a project on Norwegian gamer-parents and how they domesticate digital games for their families (GAME). Here we explore how gamer-parents, that is, those who were gamers before becoming parents negotiate and position themselves. In this paper we explore the hybrid identity of two seemingly opposing identity categories, namely, gamer and parent. Gamer-parents can be said to have a double role, as they are doing parenting, however they also both position themselves- and are positioned by non-gaming parents as gamers. How do gamer-parents negotiate and position themselves in the tension between fun screentime and ideals of responsibility?

Co-Designing a STEM-based VR Game For and With Neurodiverse Learners

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

As part of developing and researching a virtual reality (VR) game intended to increase access to and broaden participation in STEM learning, designers and researchers from EdGE at TERC and interns from Landmark College, a post-secondary institute for learners with ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and other learning differences, have been immersed in an intensive co-design process. Co-design embraces the ‘nothing about us without us’ movement by ensuring stakeholder voices, in this case neurodiverse learners, have a prominent role throughout the design process. We present our co-design process, key lessons learned, important game-design decisions, and the experiences and perspectives of individual co-design participants. And recommendations are provided to help guide others who are interested in implementing a co-design process of their own.

A Failed Context: Reflections on a Mathematics Role-Playing Game about the Flint Water Crisis

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We designed a role-playing game based on the Flint Water Crisis for a quantitative reasoning course. While the context seemed perfect both in terms of local engagement and in terms of highlighting the power of the mathematics learned in the course to fight for justice, it turned out to be fundamentally flawed.

Well Played Session: Monumental Consequence

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Monumental Consequence is a single-session, live action game for classrooms, team building, and social gatherings that asks players if art is ever worth dying for. Players take on the role of villagers in the fictional town of La Ville where an army has just taken possession of their centuries old church. The villagers must come together to decide whether they risk the lives of their friends and family by attacking the church to save the precious art inside or whether they simply bomb the church and sacrifice the art to save lives. The game blends card mechanics with live action roleplaying to create a vibrant conversation about the cultural value of art and antiquities along with a seamless introduction to classroom roleplaying. This Well Played session will take participants through the entire game with an opportunity for dialogue afterward about the game’s themes, mechanics, and supporting materials.

Interactive Lessons on PBS LearningMedia – Developer, Researcher, and Educator Perspectives on Building and Teaching For Diverse Learners

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Over the past two years, educators have turned to digital technologies and media more than ever to meet the needs of students amidst a global pandemic. While many edtech tools enable educators to create interactive materials with digital media (e.g., Nearpod, Kahoot!, Quizizz), educators more often seek existing digital resources to supplement their curriculum rather than create them from scratch (National Center for Education Statistics, 2021). Interactive Lessons (ILs) on PBS LearningMedia, produced by GBH Education and fellow PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) member stations, provide teachers with free, standards-aligned, classroom-ready resources. This panel will discuss how GBH Education develops ILs and the IL authoring platform, including findings from research studies on IL usage. Two educators will also discuss how they participate in IL development and integrate ILs into their classrooms to support diverse learners.

Kai UnEarthed: a Game About Unpoliced Futures

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

KaiUnEarthed.com is an interactive fiction video game that invites players to imagine liberated, unpoliced futures. Teenagers in the future encounter artifacts from our time as they go through a coming-of-age ceremony. This involves connecting with us, their ancestors, through interactive analog journals. The project was released in 2021 as a narrative prototype created in Twine, and a near-alpha prototype of the full video game was debuted at GLS 2022. While one of the designers played the game, the audience participated by shouting out suggestions for narrative choices; they also received their own journals, allowing them to interact with the analog game mechanics, taking home a personalized record of their journey. In this sense, the session was a cross between a Well-Played game analysis and a creative writing workshop. This demonstrates one possible use case for Kai UnEarthed in future critical game literacy learning spaces.

It Comes In Waves

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

It Comes In Waves is a narrative-based Twine game prototype about being an essential worker during the ongoing pandemic. It takes as its focus the role social class plays in relation to COVID-19 protocols surrounding workplaces and the subsequent effects these have on everyday life. You play as Beattie, a low-paid caregiver at two different long-term care facilities during the first few months of the pandemic, navigating the challenges of trying to stay safe while doing her two jobs and maintaining social contact with her friends and family. There were two central design goals for the game: first to show how social class inflects our daily experiences, including our employment prospects, opportunities in life, living experiences, and hopes for the future; and second to avoid the trap of becoming either an “empathy machine” or a misery simulator.

Poor Not Guilty: An Experiential Street Law Education on the Criminalization of Poverty through Perspective-Taking

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Cities and states throughout the United States impose fines for minor offenses at every stage of the criminal justice system, trapping individuals in cycles of poverty and punishment. At the same time, almost every city has laws that punish and fine people experiencing homelessness for engaging in necessary activities, such as sleeping in public. These laws are not only cruel and a violation of basic rights but also counterproductive. Two major roadblocks to ending the criminalization of poverty are a lack of awareness and empathy. A team of designers and legal experts engaged in tandem transformational game design to create Poor Not Guilty: Fines and Fees Challenges, in which players perspective-take as someone impacted by the criminalization of such petty offenses. The challenges employ storytelling and seek to generate awareness and empathy of the systemic nature of this criminalization, as part of Street Law curriculum and advocacy supporting policy change.

Leveraging Cluster Analysis to Understand Educational Game Player Experiences and Support Design

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The ability for an educational game designer to understand their audience’s play styles and resulting experience is an essential tool for improving their game’s design. As a game is subjected to large-scale player testing, the designers require inexpensive, automated methods for categorizing patterns of player-game interactions. In this paper we present a simple, reusable process using best practices for data clustering, feasible for use within a small educational game studio. We utilize the method to analyze a real-time strategy game, processing game telemetry data to determine categories of players based on their in-game actions, the feedback they received, and their progress through the game. An interpretive analysis of these clusters results in actionable insights for the game’s designers.

When Feedback Leads to False Confidence: A Curious Outcome of a Game-Based Health Intervention

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Whack-a-Mole is a melanoma identification training game developed at the University of Miami to evaluate the effectiveness of different identification training techniques using immediate personalized feedback. Two widely implemented training systems are used to identify malignant melanoma through a skin exam: ABCDE, a mnemonic for the five factors that increase likely diagnoses, and the ugly duckling sign (UDS). The game system randomized the training types the player received, in addition to a hybrid approach and a control condition. The game delivered standard and motivational feedback to a subset of players in each of these conditions as they identified moles. Both the standard feedback and motivational feedback led to higher perceived self-efficacy as compared to conditions with no feedback, regardless of whether or not the player was successful at identifying malignant moles.

When more is less: Designing and Testing the Usability of a Gamified Survey to Capture Relationship Data

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Relevate Sign Up is a gamified patient intake survey designed to collect demographic and relationship data from players to customize relationship research dissemination. In this paper, we report the details of the design choices and usability testing of the game. We also discuss lessons learned.

The Woods: A Mixed-Reality Cooperative Game

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“The Woods” is a mixed-reality, two-player cooperative game that addresses the perils of social isolation by promoting connections between people and actively engaging them through play. Using augmented reality (AR) and 4-channel audio spatialization panning, players choreograph their movement in real-world space while interacting with birds, clouds, and other objects in virtual space. In pursuit of a shared goal, players experience an immersive sonic narrative of rumbling storm clouds and disconnected voices that culminate in stories of hope and reconciliation. The design intent behind “The Woods” is to illuminate human connections to others and to celebrate this through collaborative play.

Spiritfarer: A Relaxing Exploration Around Themes of Death and Loss

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Spiritfarer is a cozy resource and relationship management game focused on caring for passengers and helping them to address their unfinished business before ultimately guiding them to the afterlife. The game features repeated learning opportunities for practicing the grieving process in a safer game-based environment as well as requiring players to learn the unique needs of each other character that make them human. This Well Played session will demonstrate critical game design elements that align with the embedded opportunities for learning.

“Find Ways to Cope:” Games and Gamification Supporting College Student Mental Health During the Pandemic

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The COVID- 19 pandemic has created challenges for student mental health in higher education. Emerging literature documents the various challenges that today’s college students encounter, but students’ coping strategies are understudied. Our work examines how college students utilize gaming as a tool to transition into a new campus environment and address mental health. Using a grounded theory approach, our analysis of interviews with freshmen on UC Davis campus during Fall 2021 revealed that college students use mental health apps and games in response to pandemic-related stress and anxiety. Students also articulated connecting to their peers as well as to themselves. We argue that gaming plays a critical role in this historic time by supporting students in their pandemic-lives on a college campus under stressful circumstances.

Baba is Hint - Designing a Scaffolding Guidebook for Game-Based Learning

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Providing guidance to learners navigating a game-based learning environment requires walking a fine line between encouraging progression toward learning goals without disrupting playful engagement in the game. In this paper, we present a scaffolding guidebook developed for tutors to provide guidance in game-based learning environments that encourages exploration of the problem space and solving puzzles without disrupting engagement. Scaffolding strategies were coded and categorized from Baba is You gameplay recordings of 13 middle school and 12 undergraduate students and then situated based on guiding principles from relevant literature into a scaffolding guide. Here, we describe this guidebook and its development, which could provide educators with important tools that can help their students progress through game-based learning environments without interfering with engagement.

Poor Not Guilty: Fines and Fees Challenges - Advocating Against the Criminalization of Poverty through Perspective-Taking

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Cities and states throughout the United States impose fines for minor offenses at every stage of the criminal justice system. Without any means of escape from a system designed to punish poverty, millions of Americans lose their jobs, homes, and even their children. Two of the major roadblocks to change on addressing the criminalization of poverty are a lack of awareness and a lack of empathy. In order to educate audiences who are less likely to be exposed to or directly impacted by such unfair practices, a team of game designers and legal experts collaborated on Poor Not Guilty: Fines and Fees Challenges, in which players perspective-take with the goal to increase their awareness of unjust monetary penalties and reduce bias towards those who are living in poverty by experiencing the detrimental impact of criminalizing petty offenses.

Developing the Learning Games Lab Toolkit: Engaging Learners from Diverse Backgrounds in Game Design

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Members within and outside game design and game studies communities have critiqued the lack of diversity in the fields. Encouraging school-age children and youth from diverse backgrounds is one approach to addressing this concern. New Mexico State University’s (NMSU) Learning Games Lab has developed a Toolkit that enhances children and youth’s interests in being game developers, knowledge and skill in reviewing games and digital media, and engagement in the game design process. By using teaching and learning principles based in Universal Design for Learning, culturally responsive education, and media literacy, the Learning Games Lab creates learning experiences that cultivate a sense of belonging in game communities and foster critical thinking and creativity for children and youth of diverse backgrounds.

The Thrill of Psychomachia: Deciding When Not to Stop Can’t Stop

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This piece will explore the ethics of my use of the digitization of the board game Can’t Stop, first to maintain engagement at work and then later to produce a state of psychomachia (“conflict of the soul”) in order to work. These two uses combine to showcase examples of playing when one is only supposed to be working, and working when one is only supposed to be playing. It is designed to answer the following question: When the two are combined - the ludological and the non-ludological - in a manner not transparent to others, is this behavior unethical?

Teaching game accessibility to designers and design students

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Accessible games are valued, doable and ultimately, accessible design is teachable. While the game community has been increasing its accessibility efforts, it can still feel challenging for design teams to prioritize and design for accessibility, particularly on games for learning. Some guidelines can be overwhelming and intimidating and may present contradictions when addressing different players’ needs. Learners need an opportunity to think through accessibility needs on a spectrum, consider categories (such as visual, hearing, motor and cognitive), and review designs in ways that are meaningful and doable. Designers and design students can learn accessibility design through a collaborative and participatory process. This established accessibility framework has been designed to help a facilitator guide participants through best practices on accessibility and apply it to the design process of transformational games. This collaborative learning leads to shared reflection on...

ports athletes’ group sensemaking of team gameplay data analytics

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this exploratory case study, we investigate how a collegiate esports team makes sense of gameplay data visualizations. Through our intervention we introduced the team to new data collection practices, provided data analysis and visualization support, and organized sensemaking sessions with the team to discuss implications of the analytics. Through an exploratory analysis of video footage, we identified three different sensemaking activities.

Towards a Public Pathway for Careers in Gaming: NYC Youth and Agency

Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In early 2022, the City College of New York (CCNY) and the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment announced a new public pathway to careers in the gaming industries and related fields. This presentation explores some highlights from the 2021 study undertaken for Science and Arts Engagement New York (SAENY), a not for profit, and CCNY to learn from high school-aged youth the role games play in their lives, families and communities. It highlights key lessons learned about youth and games while sharing techniques developed to surface examples of youth agency within gaming ecosystems.