Category Archives: games

Pink on Incentive and Algorithmic Cognition

This semes­ter, espe­cially as we’re look­ing at mate­r­ial by James Paul Gee, we’ll talk about incen­tives to mas­tery, reward, and cog­ni­tion. This (fun! ani­mated!) excerpt from a recent RSA pre­sen­ta­tion by Daniel Pink is an excel­lent intro­duc­tion to an inter­est­ing behav­ioral prob­lem that the best games address in sur­pris­ing ways. The dilemma is this: Econ­o­mists [...]
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GMU “Overwhelmed” by Interest in Game Design BFA

Via Game­Pol­i­tics, news that the new-ish Game Design BFA offered at GMU has met with“over­whelm­ing” stu­dent response. A story in the Fair­fax Times reports that the school has already enrolled around 200 stu­dents into the pro­gram, best­ing an inter­nal goal of hav­ing 110 stu­dents in the pro­gram by 2012. As Scott M. Mar­tin, Assis­tant Dean [...]
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For Your Consideration

For your con­sid­er­a­tion, I com­mend to you — with­out com­ment– the fol­low­ing arti­cle, from the closely-followed Opin­ions page of the Wichita Eagle. “Are Video Games Caus­ing Achieve­ment Gap?” by John Richard Schrock, “trainer of biol­ogy teachers.” Advanced read­ers will want to be sure and iden­tify by name each log­i­cal fal­lacy that appears in the op-ed.
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Boing Boing: Games To Get

I’ve just dis­cov­ered Boing Boing’s ongo­ing “Games to Get” series, a great col­lec­tion of (mostly) indie stu­dio games for var­i­ous plat­forms. Many of my lat­est obses­sions are there: Plants vs. Zom­bies, Chime, Clash of Heroes, Drop 7. Def­i­nitely worth reviewing.
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CFP: Digital Game Play as Sociotechnical Practice | HASTAC

HASTAC (The Human­i­ties, Arts, Sci­ence, and Tech­nol­ogy Advanced Col­lab­o­ra­tory) is def­i­nitely worth get­ting to know: I’ve been to two of their con­fer­ences, and they are ter­rific. Today, their blog calls atten­tion to a new Call For Papers (Trento, Italy, Sept 2010) that is inter­est­ing chiefly for its desire to blend game stud­ies with STS: CFP: Dig­i­tal [...]
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NY School To Pursue Ludic Curriculum

Intrigu­ing news from from Pop­sci (The weblog of Pop­u­lar Sci­ence mag­a­zine): A school in New York City has announced that its emerg­ing cur­ricu­lum will be based entirely around games and play. The Manhattan-based NY City pub­lic school, called Quest to Learn (Q2L), boasts finan­cial sup­port from Par­sons School of Design, MacArthur, Gates, and Intel, among others. [...]
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PopCap funds study on games, mental health

Unable to sleep, Gail Nichols spent a lot of time in front of PopCap’s Bejew­eled, a game notable for its non-competitive, flow–induc­ing modes. Accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post, Nichols liked the game so much that she got in touch with the man­u­fac­turer, Pop­Cap Games. The inven­tors of the game were sur­prised to hear about its [...]
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Puzzling it out

I know that it falls squarely into the “casual gam­ing” cat­e­gory, but Puz­zle­Quest has got to be one of my favorite games of all time. Lately, I’ve been play­ing it nearly as often as my wife plays Peg­gle (and my wife, like so many, is obsessed with PopCap’s Peg­gle).
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