Jul 082023
 

A Springer tem uma série de livros “International Series on Computer, Entertainment and Media Technology” que este ano vai publicar o livro “The Structure of Game Design” com as secções de:
Part I
Front Matter
Creating a Game Idea
Defining a Game Idea
The Appeal of Games
Game Design Elements
Understanding Game Loops
Randomness in Games
Psychology in Games
Game Balance
Part II
Front Matter
Understanding Fun
Fun in Movement
Fun in Puzzles
Fun in Combat
Fun in Strategy
Fun in Economics
Fun in Storytelling
Part III
Front Matter
Turning a Game Idea into a Real Game

O resumo:
“The Structure of Game Design is designed to help aspiring and existing game designers turn their ideas into working games. Creating a game involves understanding the core foundational elements of all types of games from paper-based games to the latest video games. By understanding how these core principles work in all types of games, you can apply these same principles to design your own game.

Games are about goals, structure, play and fun. While everyone will always have their own idea of what might be “fun”, any game designer can maximize player enjoyment through meaningful choices that offer various risks and rewards. Such challenges, combined with rules and limitations, force players to overcome obstacles and problems using a variety of skills including dexterity, puzzle solving, intelligence, and strategy. Essentially games allow players to venture forth into new worlds and overcome problems in a safe but exciting environment that allows them to triumph in the end.
Just as playing games have proven popular around the world to all ages, genders, and cultures, so has game designing proven equally popular. Games can challenge players to make the best move, solve puzzles, engage in combat, manage resources, and tell stories. By understanding how randomness, psychology, and balance can change the way games play, readers can decide what game elements are best for their own game creation.

Whether your goal is to make money, learn something new, make a social statement, improve on an existing game idea, or challenge your artistic, programming, or design skills, game design can be just as much fun as game playing. By knowing the parts of a game, how they work, how they interact, and why they’re fun, you can use your knowledge to turn any idea into a game that others can play and enjoy.”

+infos(oficial): https://www.springer.com/series/13820/

Jul 082023
 

Uma malta de Harvard USA tem um repositório com algumas coisas interessantes e relacionadas com o “Pedagogy of Play“.  Alguns dos destaques vão para:
“WHY play is a core resource for learning
WHAT play looks and feels like in different cultural contexts
HOW educators can promote play and playful learning in schools, including practices and strategies for teaching and assessing learning through play
To understand and address social justice and equity issues associated with learning through play with teacher research and equity-centered teaching
To advocate for play as critical to children’s development and learning in schools
To use Playful Participatory Research to reflect on and deepen learning through play”

Deste projeto também surge o livro “A Pedagogy of Play: Supporting playful learning in classrooms and schools” com o resumo de:
“Play is at the heart of childhood. Through play, children learn how to collaborate, how to negotiate rules and relationships, and how to imagine and create. They learn to find and solve problems, think flexibly and critically, and communicate effectively. This book, written by researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, draws on cross-cultural, empirical research to explore what it means to embrace play as a core part of learning in school. The authors address three questions: Why do educators need a pedagogy of play? What does playful learning in schools look and feel like? and How can educators promote playful learning? The book includes practices and strategies from the classroom to the staffroom, eight pictures of classroom practice from four countries, and 18 tools for teachers, school leaders, and professional development providers to support playful learning across content areas and age groups.”

+infos(oficial): https://pz.harvard.edu/projects/pedagogy-of-play

Sep 242022
 

Um Journal que publica online as contribuições de vários âmbitos!

“IxD&A aims to offer an interdisciplinary arena where everybody can present top level researches and discuss ideas on the future of technology mediated experiences in the field of communication, learning, working, entertainment, healthcare, etc…) a future that can be made possible by a joint effort in research and education.
IxD&A, indeed, offers the ideal forum for meeting among frontier research, education, cutting edge technology development and application.
Indeed, there will be no future if research and education will not be able to meet the world of production, or, in other words if we will not be able to transfer the ‘lab’ into real life.”
“IxD&A is an open access journal that implements the Gold Open Access (OA) road to its contents (full, short, position papers, interviews and reviews) with no charge to the authors.”

+infos(oficial): LINK

Sep 172022
 

Gostava de ter acesso a “Teaching the Middle Ages through Modern Games Using, Modding and Creating Games for Education and Impact” editado por Robert Houghton

Da apresentação do livro faz parte: “Games can act as invaluable tools for the teaching of the Middle Ages. The learning potential of physical and digital games is increasingly undeniable at every level of historical study. These games can provide a foundation of information through their stories and worlds. They can foster understanding of complex systems through their mechanics and rules. Their very nature requires the player to learn to progress.

The educational power of games is particularly potent within the study of the Middle Ages. These games act as the first or most substantial introduction to the period for many students and can strongly influence their understanding of the era. Within the classroom, they can be deployed to introduce new and alien themes to students typically unfamiliar with the subject matter swiftly and effectively. They can foster an interest in and understanding of the medieval world through various innovative means and hence act as a key educational tool.

This volume presents a series of essays addressing the practical use of games of all varieties as teaching tools within Medieval Studies and related fields. In doing so it provides examples of the use of games at pre-university, undergraduate, and postgraduate levels of study, and considers the application of commercial games, development of bespoke historical games, use of game design as a learning process, and use of games outside the classroom. As such, the book is a flexible and diverse pedagogical resource and its methods may be readily adapted to the teaching of different medieval themes or other periods of history.”

+infos(oficial): LINK

May 012022
 

Encontrei o Professor Carlos Martinho a fazer uma apresentação acerca de uma investigação realizada pelo seu orientando Miguel Antunes:

da tese surge: “O mundo analógico e digital dos jogos de tabuleiro está em constante evolução, o que torna importante a recolha de informações sobre os jogadores. É fundamental compreender as diferenças que existem entre os jogadores, pois permite-nos compreender as suas motivações para jogar um jogo de tabuleiro. Caracterizámos os nossos jogadores desde traços demográficos mais gerais a aspectos relacionados com o contexto humano e o ambiente em torno do jogo. Conseguimos reunir um vasto espetro de participantes. Uma das questões para as quais procurávamos uma resposta era: Jogadores diferentes podem jogar o mesmo jogo de formas diferentes ou por razões diferentes? Para verificar se esta relação existe, utilizámos um questionário de personalidade e criámos um questionário de motivação de jogos de tabuleiro. Definimos um modelo CISSI que agrupa em componentes as dimensões das motivações para jogar jogos de tabuleiro: Desafio Intelectual; Experiência Imaginativa; Experiência Sensorial; Interação Competitiva; Desafio Social. Na nossa amostra de 229 participantes encontrámos uma pequena correlação entre a personalidade e as motivações para jogar jogos de tabuleiro. Observámos que a Extroversão e o Neuroticismo são as mais relacionadas com as dimensões das Motivações. Globalmente, é possível definir um modelo que permite caracterizar um jogador de jogo de tabuleiro com base nas suas motivações para jogar. No entanto, a sua correlação com Personalidade é um processo que necessita de cuidado, devido à fraca correlação.”

+infos(fonte): https://fenix.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/cursos/meic-t/dissertacao/846778572213469

Feb 132022
 

Um texto interessante, e fica aqui uma cópia porque tem acesso restrito.. enfim:

“Why have students—many of whom are video-game players—so disliked the virtual learning environments of their colleges and universities? JT Torres asks and suggests some answers.
By JT Torres
December 8, 2021

The pandemic forced many of us to move into hybrid, technology-mediated teaching, and as we continue our voyage into such spaces, one thing that we in higher ed should remember is that many students have long been quite good at navigating hybrid environments. Really, it’s about time formal education finally catches up.
In his landmark 2003 book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy James Paul Gee detailed the ways video games do a better job of facilitating literacy learning than education institutions. Almost 20 years later, his analysis has become incredibly relevant. It would seem that the move toward more hybrid learning environments should have captivated a student demographic primed by video games. But instead, students—many of whom are video-game players—have often hated the virtual learning environments of their universities. Somewhat ironically, the video-game industry is experiencing a resurgence. Prophetically, Gee wrote, “The theories of learning one would infer from looking at schools today comport very poorly with the theory of learning in good video games.”
Now is the perfect time to revisit the principles of why video games are so good at teaching and learning in ways most virtual classes don’t seem to be. Below is a summary of some of those principles.
Storying content. Gee discussed meaning as being situated in specific contexts. Knowledge, in other words, only becomes meaningful in certain situations. For instance, I might know the nutritional content of eggs, but that doesn’t mean I know how to scramble them or even prepare a nutritious breakfast. In video games, the concepts and skills a player learns have specific uses in particular moments. Those situated meanings require players to recognize the patterns that indicate how to best apply their newly acquired knowledge. Typically, situated meanings are created via stories. Within those stories, players assume an identity that motivates them to make use of whatever the video game is teaching them.
Applying newly learned skills and knowledge. Video games make frequent use of interest-based interaction with knowledge, promoting self-directed mastery. Very rarely do video games ask players to passively listen to and absorb information—instead, they deliver information in usable chunks. At each stage, players practice applying their new learning, first to familiar situations and progressively to novel situations, facilitating transfer.
Providing just-in-time feedback. Players typically receive information at the time they need it. Say a player in a particular game is threatened by an oncoming storm. Right at that moment, the game teaches the player how to construct shelter. Other video games might rely on social interactions, often facilitated through popular apps like Discord or GameFAQs. This approach encourages collaboration, allowing players to actively seek information from others when they require it most.
Encouraging risk. Of course, the consequences of failing in a video game are much lower than failing an expensive college class that could perhaps even influence one’s career. The low-stakes challenges of video games empower players to try new strategies and discover novel approaches to problem solving.
Rewarding failure. When players take risks and fail, they still learn. On a metacognitive level, players realize a gap in ability or knowledge that might motivate them to persist. On a pragmatic level, they learn not only what doesn’t work but also what might work with modification, the foundation of self-regulation.
These principles remind educators that the virtual wheel does not need to be reinvented. We don’t have to be tech savants to understand what grabs students’ attention and inspires them. We don’t even have to use video games or gamify classrooms. Below are some practical translations of the above principles that can work in our classrooms right now, even without Zoom wizardry.
Frame content with culturally relevant themes. If meaning is situated in specific contexts, then one way we can engage students is to consider the stories that matter to them. We can do this by activating prior knowledge, such as personal experience, or asking students to share stories of their potential relationships with the course content. For example, an economics professor introducing the topic of monopolies might ask students to consider how they would shop for items if they wanted to boycott Amazon. Good video games invite the players to also shape the story. Zoom can encourage collaborative story shaping (i.e., learning) through hybrid or online groups. The economics professor could set the narrative stage: let’s boycott Amazon. In groups, students could design a plan for only consuming from markets not influenced by Amazon. As they realize the difficulty of effectively doing so, the professor can explicitly illustrate the principles of monopolies.
Create moments for students to use newly learned skills and knowledge. Active learning has long been a trend, but it isn’t always understood. To be clear, active learning should not replace direct instruction, which, of course, is effective. Certainly, video games have moments when the action pauses and information is directly communicated to the player. But it’s combining the two types of learning together—explicit instruction alongside opportunities for application—that create the strongest learning environments. Experience does not need to be taken literally. Fiction, a simulation of reality, can also be an experience. By broadening the concept of “experience,” virtual environments can expand notions of active learning. For instance, students might role-play imagined experiences. Simulating or role-playing experiences immerse students in the task by motivating them to learn the means to succeed at the task.
Provide brief checkpoints. Students usually have to complete an entire assignment before receiving any kind of formal feedback. If assignments are broken down into tasks, the way they are in video games’ War and Peace–length epic quests, then instructors can make quick observations of what students are doing, such as through polls. Based on what the instructor sees, they can adapt subsequent class activities. This not only helps educate the students, but it also saves time for the instructor, who then doesn’t have to provide detailed feedback on each student’s final major assignment. Assessment checkpoints can also be social, potentially enhancing student agency. Just as players flock to Discord for help, students could engage each other in some social space. These spaces can be structured—a Padlet with guidelines and examples for students—or open-ended hangouts. Peer review can both save time and be more dynamic in virtual environments.
Require reflection. When students begin to take social control over assessment, they become more reflective about their own learning. Reflection doesn’t always happen on its own, however. It must be structured as part of the experience. The low-stakes and learn-from-failure approach to video games is one way to encourage such reflection by offering multiple attempts accompanied by instructor or peer feedback. One suggestion for translating that approach to classrooms comes from the Stanford Life Design Lab. In it, students generate hypotheses about newly encountered knowledge, and then they test their hypotheses in the attempt to rethink problems and solutions.
Stay active. There are many ways to incorporate active discovery, but these strategies must again be guided by explicit instruction about how to reflect on and learn from the risks and failures. The flipped classroom is a good model for pairing explicit instruction with virtual experience. Instructors can deliver much of the direct instruction via video or the college’s LMS. Then students can spend the freed-up time in hybrid breakout groups trying to solve a relevant problem.
Technology itself cannot improve or damage learning. It’s our use of it that matters. There are indeed bad video games, and by bad, I mean games that people did not play. There are also many good ones, and what we need are good course designs so that people want to play and learn from them, too.

+infos(fonte): LINK

Jan 072022
 

Encontrei este livro: “Why Video Games are Good for Your Soul” de James Paul Gee que parece ser interessante de se ler. Tentei obter informações acerca do índice do livro mas sem sucesso, contudo o o google books disponibiliza esta parte e que é a introdução:
“Good video games are good for your soul. Now there’s a statement that begs for some qualifications!

First, what’s a video game? What I mean are the sorts of commercial games people play on computers and game platforms like the Playstation 2, the GameCube, the Xbox, and the handheld Game Boy. I mean action, adventure, shooter, strategy, sports, and role-playing games. I mean games like Castlevania, Half-Life, Deus Ex, Metal Gear Solid, Max Payne, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Tony Hawk Underground, Rise of Nations, Civilization, Age of Mythology, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Allied Assault, Call of Duty, Tales of Symphonia, 1C0, Pikmin, Zelda: The Wind Waker, and Ninja Gaiden to name some random good games off the top of my head. There are many others.

Second, what does “good for you” mean? Next to nothing is good or bad for you in and of itself and all by itself. It all depends on how it is used and the context in which it is used. Is television good or bad for children? Neither and both. It’s good if people around them are getting them to think and talk about what they are watching, bad when they sit there alone watching passively being baby-sat by the tube (Greenfield 1984). The same is true of books. Reading reflectively, asking yourself questions, and engaging in a dialogue with others, is good for your head. Believing everything you read uncritically is bad for you and for the rest of us, as well, since you may well become a danger to the world.

So good video games are good for your soul when you play them with thought, reflection, and engagement with the world around you. They are good if, as a player, you begin to think and act like a game designer While you play the game, something good games encourage. After all, players co-author games by playing them, since if the player doesn’t interact with the game and make choices about what will happen, nothing will happen. Each page of a book and each scene in a move is predetermined before you see it and is the same for every reader. Many acts and their order in a video game, however, are open to player choice and different for different players.

So, then, what’s a good, as opposed to a bad, Video game? It would take a book longer than this one to explicate what makes good games good and gamers don’t know how to put it all into words. You have to play the games. So, then, what’s a good, as opposed to a bad, video game? It would take a book longer than this one to explicate what makes good games good and gamers don’t know how to put it all into words. You have to play the games.
Good games are the ones gamers come to see as “gaming goodness”, “fair”, and sometimes even “deep”—all terms of gaming art. Good games are the games that lots of gamers come to agree are good, though they rarely think any one game is perfect.

Some games, like [CO or American McGee’s Alice, get discovered late and become underground classics, while others, like Half-Life or Zelda: The Wind Waker, nearly everyone agrees from the outset are good. Then there are
games like Anachronox, which didn’t sell well and received some rather tepid reviews, but is, I’m telling you, a darn good game—you see I have my own opinions about these matters. In fact, different gamers like and dislike different games and different types of games.

OK, then, what for heaven’s sake is your soul? And what could playing Video games have to do with it? Once, years ago, I had the special experience of going back into time and living for several years in the Middle Ages. The
details need not detain us—you’ll just have to trust me on this—but, believe me, that experience taught me what souls meant in one context. That is not what I mean here.

Too often in the world today people from all sorts of religions believe that those who don’t share their beliefs will go to some sort of hell and, worse, they are sometimes willing to make life hell for others here and now to help them, whether they like it or not, avoid going to hell. Or, perhaps, they just make life hell for others to ensure that they themselves will go to heaven, having displayed their merit by removing a suitable number of infidels. While I do retain a certain nostalgia for the Middle Ages, that nostalgia plays no role in this book.

So what could I mean by “soul?” I mean What the poet Emily Dickinson meant (Dickinson 1924):
My life closed twice before its close —
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

What Emily Dickinson is talking about here is not the immortality, heaven, and hell of traditional religion (Dickinson was skeptical of traditional religion at a time and place where that was socially dangerous, especially for women). She is talking about a fact that every human being knows and feels, a fact that defines what it means to be human. This fact is that we each have two parts. One of these parts is our body. If you truly traumatize the body, it will die and it can die but once, which is, indeed, a mercy.

But there is another part of us, a part to which different religions and cultures through the ages have given different names. This part—let’s just say it is our “soul”—can be traumatized over and over again and not die, just as in the case of the two emotionally damaging events to which Emily Dickinson alludes. No mercy here, as we all very well know, unless you have been very fortunate, indeed, in your life. The rest of us have, if old enough, already died more than once. This part—this soul—is immortal in the sense that, until the body goes, it can go on suffering grievously over and over again, suffering many deaths, unlike the body which can die but once.

But it is because we have this soul part that events and other people can take on such a charge for human beings. It is because we have this soul part that events and other people can give us what we know of heaven here on earth. It is only because losing a loved one, either by death or parting, as Dickinson is alluding to, can give rise to such pain that loving others can rise to such joy. You can’t really have the one without the other. Having the charge, the spark, is heaven and losing it is hell. But you can’t have it if there is no chance of losing it, that’s the way of life for us humans. That’s why we “need” hell. There is no heaven without hell, no positive charges without risk of negative ones.

Emily Dickinson very well knew, then, that it matters hugely whether life here and now for people is heaven or hell. It matters hugely whether we help make life heaven or hell for others, whether we murder or rejoice their other parts, their souls, that part of them that cannot die as long as they have their bodies. It matters. We can be complicit with murder without having killed anyone. The world can murder us several times over long before it takes our bodies.

The Middle Ages saw to it that peasants and the poor died many times before they died. The rich got off more easily, though, by the nature of life itself, they, too, paid their soul dues. Modern life offers more opportunities, but more complexity, as well. For many people—perhaps, all of us at times—modern life offers too much risk and too much complexity (Kelly 1994). We don’t really understand what’s going on around us, lots of it just doesn’t make any good sense, at least as far as we can tell. We can understand why some people turn to fundamentalism to garner secure “truths” without thought and reflection. It is, indeed, an attempt to save their souls, to protect themselves from the traumas of modern life, a life Where often the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and everyone suffers risks created by other people, even people clear across the globe.

If people are to nurture their souls, they need to feel a sense of control, meaningfulness, even expertise in the face of risk and complexity. They want and need to feel like heroes in their own life stories and to feel that their stories make sense. They need to feel that they matter and that they have mattered in other people’s stories. If the body feeds on food, the soul feeds on agency and meaningfulness. I will argue that good video games are, in this sense, food for the soul, particularly appropriate food in modern times. Of course, the hope is that this food will empower the soul to find agency and meaning in other aspects of life.

This book is primarily about the pleasures—the charge—that good video games can give people. These pleasures are connected to control, agency, and meaningfulness. But it is also about how good games create deep learning, learning that is better than what we often see today in our schools. Pleasure and learning: For most people these two don’t seem to go together. But that is a mistruth we have picked up at school, where we have been taught that pleasure is fun and learning is work, and, thus, that work is not fun (Gee 2004). But, in fact, good videos games are hard work and deep fun. So is good learning in other contexts.

Pleasure is the basis of learning for humans and learning is, like sex and eating, deeply pleasurable for human beings. Learning is a basic drive for humans. School has taught people to fear and avoid learning as anorexics fear and avoid food, it has turned some people into mental anorexics. Some of these same people learn deeply in and through games, though they say they are playing, not learning. The other people who often say they are playing When they’re working hard at learning are those professionals—scientists, scholars, and craftsmen—who love their work. There is a reason for this kinship between gamers and professionals and that will be one of the things I deal with in this book.

This book is written for anyone interested in video games, whether this be gamers, people interested in learning, or people interested in the pervasive role Video games play in modern society and across the world. After all, games are a massive economic force today and an even more major cultural force, since they are a shared cultui‘e among many young people across the globe (Kent 2001; King 2002; King & Borland 2003; Poole 2002). This book is meant to be a contribution to the emerging field of game studies, though I argue that game studies should interest a wide array of people, gamers and non-gamers alike (Aarseth 1997; Juul 2004; Laurel 1993; Murray 1998; Salin & Zimmerman 2003; Wardrip-Fruin & Harrigan 2004; Wolf 2002, 2003).

I have a confession to make, though. I offer here a partial “theory of games”. I hate to tell you this, because I know lots of you will not like to hear it, since “theory” sounds so boring. But I hasten to add, the book contains precious little jargon (much less than readers had to endure in my earlier book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, 2003). I hasten to add, as well, that I never venture too far from talking about actual games. Things stick pretty close to the ground, I hope. No arcane philosophy, I promise (well, maybe you found the stuff on the soul arcane).

Well, we have to deal with it. We all know the topic is looming over us. What about violence and video games? Does playing video games lead people to be more violent? More ink has been devoted to this topic than any other concerned with video games. But most of that ink has been wasted.

The 19th century was infinitely more violent than the 20th in terms of crime (though not actual warfare) and no one played Video games. The politicians who have heretofore sent people to war have not played video games—they’re too old. The Japanese play video games more than Americans do, as, indeed, they watch more television, but their society is much less violent than America’s. No, as we said above, video games are neither good nor bad all by themselves, they neither lead to Violence or peace. They can be and do one thing in one family, social, or cultural context, quite another in other such contexts.

If you want to lower Violence, then worry about those contexts, which all extend well beyond just playing video games. Politicians who get hot and heavy about violence in video games usually don’t want to worry about such contexts, contexts like poverty, bad parenting, and a culture that celebrates greed, war, and winning. Too expensive, perhaps. In my View, the violence and Video games question is a silly one and you won’t hear more about it here. I do live in fear of people who would kill someone because they have played a Video game, but I know that they would equally kill someone if they had read a book or seen a movie or even overheard another nut and I would like you first to take their weapons away. Then, too, someone should have taught these people how to play video games, read books, and watch movies critically and reflectively.

In a world in which millions of people across the globe are dying in real wars, many of them civil wars, it is surely a luxury that we can worry about little boys getting excited for ten minutes after playing a shooter. There are much better things to worry about and I just pray that a time comes in the world where such a problem really merits serious attention. Let’s stop the killing, for example in Africa, on the part of people who have never played a video game before we ban games, books, and movies to save ourselves from a handful of disturbed teenagers who would have been better served by better families and schools.

On a more positive note, we should realize that the possibilities of video games and the technologies by which they are made are immense. Video games hold out immense economic opportunities for business and for careers. They hold out equally immense possibilities for the transformation of learning inside and outside schools. They hold out immense promise for changing how people think, value, and live. We haven’t seen the beginning yet. As I write, all the game platforms are on their last legs, soon to replaced by more powerful devices. What wonderful worlds will we eventually see? What charged virtual lives will we be able to live?

The Wild West and space were seen new frontiers. Video games and the virtual worlds to which they give birth are, too, a new frontier and we don’t know where they will lead. It would be a shame, indeed, not to find out because, like any frontier, they were fraught with risk and the unknown. But, then, I have already admitted that all of us in the complex modern world are frightened of risk and the unknown. But that, I will argue, is a disease of the soul that good games can help alleviate, though, of course, not cure. I talk about specific games in this book. The danger is that any game can come to seem out of date as newer shiner games appear on the market. But this is a mistake. New games will offer new things (so long as the industry doesn’t monopolize), but good older games retain their gaming goodness and we have lots to learn from them. Indeed, we will start with Castlevania:
Symphony of the Night, a game made for the old PSOne and a series with roots in even older game platforms. But Castlevania: Symphony of the Night retains all its greatness. It is still a wondrous gaming experience. Gaming is, by historical standards, brand new, but it already has its classics.

After Castlevania, we will move on to other, more contemporary games, games like Full Spectrum Warrior, Thief: Deadly Shadows, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, Rise of Nations, and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. I have chosen games that I myself like and that I think make my points well. But, there is no shortage of games from which to choose and many others would have done as well. Readers may well like different games than I do, though I would still argue that their pleasures stem from the some of the same sources I discuss here.

Not all my readers will be gamers and that is fine. I am an “old” gamer, an inveterate gamer who came to gaming late. Gamers may find I revel in what they take for granted, like a farmer in the big city for the first time. But then the farmer may see things big city folk have already forgotten. Non-gamers may not share my love for games, but I hope they will share my belief that this is an area of culture than must be taken seriously, especially if am right that we gamers are servicing our souls and recovering our atrophied learning muscles at the same time.

Some people may say, well, he’s really arguing it’s all about escape from the perils and pitfalls of real life. But, then, I will say there are escapes that lead no where, like hard drugs, and escapes like scholarly reflection and gaming that can lead to the imagination of new worlds, new possibilities to deal with those perils and pitfalls, new possibilities for better lives for everyone. Our emotions and imagination—our souls—need food for the journeys ahead.”

+infos(loja): LINK

Jan 042022
 

Encontrei este livro Black Games Studies, por Lindsay Grace

o resumo indica que:
“Black Game Studies introduces the work of game makers from the African diaspora through academic scholarship, personal narratives and a catalog of works. It aims to provide a foundation from which researchers, designers, developers, game historians and others can draw an understanding of patterns, present practice, and a potential afro-future. Its works to make more visible, through aggregation and showcase, the creative contributions of Black game makers. It is an effort to meet the need to diversify the game-making community by not only highlighting the work of Black people, but in creating an enduring archive of such work.”

Tem como secções:
An Introduction to Black Games, Blackness in Games, and Otherness
An overview of Games Made by Black Game Makers
Games about Location
Black Analog Game Designers
An Autobiography of Ehdrigohr
On Procedural Rhetoric and Designing Black Like Me
The Black Game Maker’s Experience
Overview on Personal Narratives

..mais informo que o livro (pdf) é gratuito!

+infos(oficial): LINK

Dec 182021
 

Journal of Enabling Technologies. Emerald Publishing
Journal of Multimedia Tools and Applications
International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education
Revista Latinoamericana de Comunicación
Behaviour & Information Technology
Communications in Computer and Information Science book series (CCIS)
Computers Supported Education. CSEDU 2017. Communications in Computer and Information Science
International Journal of Entertainment Technology and Management (IJENTTM)