Resonant Games

Principles for designing educational games that integrate content and play and create learning experiences connecting to many areas of learners' lives. Too often educational videogames are narrowly focused on specific learning outcomes dictated by school curricula and fail to engage young learners. This book suggests another approach, offering a guide to designing games that integrates content and play and creates learning experiences that connect to many areas of learners' lives. These games are not gamified workbooks but are embedded in a long-form experience of exploration, discovery, and collaboration that takes into consideration the learning environment. Resonant Games describes twenty essential principles for designing games that offer this kind of deeper learning experience, presenting them in connection with five games or collections of games developed at MIT's educational game research lab, the Education Arcade. Each of the games—which range from Vanished, an alternate reality game for middle schoolers promoting STEM careers, to Ubiquitous Bio, a series of casual mobile games for high school biology students—has a different story, but all spring from these fundamental assumptions: honor the whole learner, as a full human being, not an empty vessel awaiting a fill-up; honor the sociality of learning and play; honor a deep connection between the content and the game; and honor the learning context—most often the public school classroom, but also beyond the classroom.

Principles for designing educational games that integrate content and play and create learning experiences connecting to many areas of learners' lives. Too often educational videogames are narrowly focused on specific learning outcomes dictated by school curricula and fail to engage young learners. This book suggests another approach, offering a guide to designing games that integrates content and play and creates learning experiences that connect to many areas of learners' lives. These games are not gamified workbooks but are embedded in a long-form experience of exploration, discovery, and collaboration that takes into consideration the learning environment. Resonant Games describes twenty essential principles for designing games that offer this kind of deeper learning experience, presenting them in connection with five games or collections of games developed at MIT's educational game research lab, the Education Arcade. Each of the games—which range from Vanished, an alternate reality game for middle schoolers promoting STEM careers, to Ubiquitous Bio, a series of casual mobile games for high school biology students—has a different story, but all spring from these fundamental assumptions: honor the whole learner, as a full human being, not an empty vessel awaiting a fill-up; honor the sociality of learning and play; honor a deep connection between the content and the game; and honor the learning context—most often the public school classroom, but also beyond the classroom.

This book provides the first in-depth exploration of video games as history. Chapman puts forth five basic categories of analysis for understanding historical video games: simulation and epistemology, time, space, narrative, and affordance. Through these methods of analysis he explores what these games uniquely offer as a new form of history and how they produce representations of the past. By taking an inter-disciplinary and accessible approach the book provides a specific and firm first foundation upon which to build further examination of the potential of video games as a historical form.

UNLOCK YOUR GAME'S NARRATIVE POTENTIAL! With increasingly sophisticated video games being consumed by an enthusiastic and expanding audience, the pressure is on game developers like never before to deliver exciting stories and engaging characters. With Video Game Storytelling, game writer and producer Evan Skolnick provides a comprehensive yet easy-to-follow guide to storytelling basics and how they can be applied at every stage of the development process—by all members of the team. This clear, concise reference pairs relevant examples from top games and other media with a breakdown of the key roles in game development, showing how a team’s shared understanding and application of core storytelling principles can deepen the player experience. Understanding story and why it matters is no longer just for writers or narrative designers. From team leadership to game design and beyond, Skolnick reveals how each member of the development team can do his or her part to help produce gripping, truly memorable narratives that will enhance gameplay and bring today’s savvy gamers back time and time again.

While gaming has become an increasingly popular leisure activity in society, the success of the videogame market has also contributed to the application of serious games in many different contexts and most importantly for learning purposes. This technological novelty is the basis for an innovative change in myriad environments such as education, commerce, marketing, healthcare, and many more. It is of great import to understand these applications in order to improve organizational development. The Handbook of Research on Promoting Economic and Social Development Through Serious Games provides reflection on the multidisciplinary applications of serious games. This book contextualizes the importance of serious games in organizational and societal improvement. Covering topics such as cultural heritage, mental health, and tourism, this book is a dynamic resource for policymakers, academicians, interdisciplinary researchers, graduate and post-graduate students, technology developers, faculty of K-12 and higher education, and government officials.

This book is a theoretical and practical deep dive into the craft of worldbuilding for video games, with an explicit focus on how different job disciplines contribute to worldbuilding. In addition to providing lenses for recognizing the various components in creating fictional and digital worlds, the author positions worldbuilding as a reciprocal and dynamic process, a process which acknowledges that worldbuilding is both created by and instrumental in the design of narrative, gameplay, art, audio, and more. Collaborative Worldbuilding for Video Games encourages mutual respect and collaboration among teams and provides game writers and narrative designers tools for effectively incorporating other job roles into their own worldbuilding practice and vice versa. Features: Provides in-depth exploration of worldbuilding via respective job disciplines Deep dives and case studies into a variety of games, both AAA and indie Includes boxed articles for deeper interrogation and exploration of key ideas Contains templates and checklists for practical tips on worldbuilding

In thousands and maybe even millions of homes, basements, and antics all around the world are boxes and boxes of old technology. Old phones that will never make another call, an old high school calculator with someone’s initials etched on it. While these old bits of tech are interesting, they are not what this book is about. This book is about that box containing the stuff your mum didn’t want to throw away when you moved out. The stuff you had spent hours, days, and months with. The once brand-new Nintendo Game Boy Advance and the twenty or so games you saved up and purchased. “It’s in the attic if you want it” your mum says, “I saw online those Game Boys and games are worth a bit now”. As you open the box you remember that you kept each game box and it’s all still there. Everything is in great condition. Mario Cart, Rayman Advance and even your favourite Pokémon Leaf Green Version. As you get home and set yourself up on the lounge with a coffee and your newly reclaimed box of goodies, you start to remember just how much fun this was. Thinking back to when you would lie on your bed for hours levelling up your newly evolved Pokémon and visiting Brock’s Gym. What a great time, even if your homework was left undone. In this book, I discuss Retro Gaming. What it is. Why it’s a thing and my journey and all the learning and fun I’ve had along the way.