Recent theorizing around games and notions of play has drawn from a pool of mid-20th century scholars including such notables as Johann Huizinga, Gregory Bateson, Roger Caillois and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Through his articulation of the concept of language as a type of game, Wittgenstein has been both adopted and critiqued for purposes of circumscribing what are now commonly held as the necessary constituents of games including their systemic nature and the acquiescence of their participants to an agreed-upon rule structure: a set of rules which Wittgenstein likens to the ‘grammar’ of language (Salen and Zimmerman, 2001;Suits, 1978; Juul, 2005; Wittgenstein, 1953; Finch, 2001; Brenner, 1999). Although thus far Wittgenstein has served as a pillar of 20th and 21st century game theory canon, this paper adopts Wittgenstein’s notion of language-games not for purposes of examining games, but for purposes of examining the design of games. The pursuit of this paper is to utilize Wittgenstein’s lens of the language-game to investigate what it is that informs and consequently shapes and reinforces game design epistemologies in an attempt to encourage a reflexivity about the design practices behind the games we create. Read more...

This paper details the results of an exploratory informant design workshop in which nine 10-12 year olds were asked to design their own card games with the aim of having them incorporate information about West Nile Virus into their design. This paper details the workshop process in its entirety and considers the rule systems, allowable choices, artificial conflicts and conditions of victory incorporated by the children into their games. This paper concludes by evaluating the participants’ game design choices, the manners in which content was incorporated and their potential usefulness to future educational game design pursuits Read more...

We seek to bring together researchers, academics, and designers from several disciplines, including game design, development, communication, psychology, computer science, graphics, visual art, etc. who are deeply interested in understanding more about social learning effects from playing games in technology -mediated settings such as computer or video games, augmented reality games, virtual reality, mobile devices, live action role plays, massively multi-player online role playing games (MMORPG), and so on. Read more...

While multi-player online games are very successful, their fast deployment suffers from their server-based architecture. Indeed, servers both limit the scalability of the games and increase deployment costs. However, they make it easier to control the game (e.g. by preventing cheating and providing support for billing). Peer-to-peer, i.e. transfer of the game functions on each each player's machine, is an attractive communication model for online gaming. We investigate here the challenges of peer-to-peer gaming, hoping that this discussion will generate a broader interest in the research community. Read more...

The research design for this study focuses on examining the core issues and challenges when video games are used in the classroom. For this purpose three naturalistic contexts in Turkey were examined in which educational video games were used as the basis for teaching units on world continents and countries, first aid, and basic computer hardware and peripherals, in primary, secondary and higher education contexts respectively. Methods employed in the data collection include observing lessons, taking field notes, interviewing students and teachers, saving online discourse data, and collecting student artifacts and reflections. Findings identified issues related to (1) the design of the video game environment, (2) school infrastructure, (3) the nature of learning, the role of the teacher and classroom culture, and (4) engagement. Read more...

This paper signals the aesthetic and socio-economic implications of a new generation of commercial media culture in an age of computer network-facilitated participation. It explores the cultural status of the online game America s Army: Operations (US Army, 2002) that has commerce at the core of its brand identity. The game exemplifies the linkage of commercial goals with cultural texts through creating engaging experiences, initiated by commercial corporations for reasons of promotion and profit, enabled by computer networks, and to a lesser extent - given form by various members of the public. Read more...

Current human-computer interaction (HCI) research into video games rarely considers how they are different from other forms of software. This leads to research that, while useful concerning standard issues of interface design, does not address the nature of video games as games specifically. Unlike most software, video games are not made to support external, user-defined tasks, but instead define their own activities for players to engage in. We argue that video games contain systems of values which players perceive and adopt, and which shape the play of the game. A focus on video game values promotes a holistic view of video games as software, media, and as games specifically, which leads to a genuine video game HCI. Read more...

A framework is a high-level solution for the reuse of software pieces, a step forward in simple library-based reuse, that allows the sharing of not only common functions but also the generic logic of a domain application. It also ensures a better level of quality for the final product, given the fact that an important fraction of the application is already found within the framework and has therefore already been tested. This case study takes the systematic generation of hot-spot subsystems approach as a reference point to describe the underlying concepts in the design of a framework for the development of 2D action videogames for low-performance machines. The main goal of this paper is to show the applicability of framework-based reuse to videogames. Both standard and framework-based game implementations are compared and the results are analysed. Special attention is paid to the (potential) benefits that the use of frameworks brings to the fulfillment of maintenance tasks along the game's life cycle, a stage that normally consumes most resources in software projects. At the end of the paper, based on the implementation results, this study shows the predicted conditions under which building a framework is cost effective for the development of videogames similar to the ones from the studied domain. Read more...

Emotion is a key component for sound design in movies and videogames. We believe that it is also a key component in virtual environments and simulation. The following paper summarizes work at the MOVES Institute's Immersive Audio Laboratory which demonstrates the emotional impact of sound in interactive media and also shows that emotionality evoked in a simulation has a positive impact on learning for events that occur in the simulation. Our research methods employ objective measures such as physiological recordings and memory recall testing rather than the more commonly used subjective questionnaires and surveys. It is our belief that these objective measures are more easily replicated and generalized to a wide variety of simulations and situations. We discuss our research in terms of the parallel development in the MOVES Institute of the videogame "America's Army: Operations," which we use as an experimental test bed and tool. Applications of this research are discussed in terms of high-end simulation projects like the Virtual Technologies and Environments (VIRTE) program sponsored by the Office of Naval Research. Read more...

This paper details a research methodology that emerged during an inquiry into game design aimed at promoting conceptual learning in physics. The methodology, Research as Design-Design as Research (RADDAR), is outlined and a case study example is provided as means to illustrate its application. Read more...