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Electronic Games
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
The aims of this research were to describe Finnish adolescents' different motives for digital game playing, and to examine relations between digital game playing and parent-child communication, school performance, sleeping habits, and perceived health. A questionnaire was used to assess a nationwide postal sample of 12-18-year-old Finns (6761 respondents, response rate 69%) in winter 2003. Among respondents, 4085 adolescents played digital games and answered questions on digital game motives. Two main motives emerged: instrumental (learn new things and procedures, have a common topic for conversation, use and develop game playing skills, experience different roles/worlds) and ritualized (pastime, entertainment; recover, relax; escape everyday life, forget worries). The importance of all motives increased for participants with longer playing times. Instrumental motives were more important to boys and younger respondents. They were associated with earlier bedtime, worse perceived health, better mother communication, and better school grades, but only among boys. The importance of ritualized motives increased with age and was related to better school performance, worse sleeping habits, and worse perceived health in both sexes. Digital games seem to have the same basic functions as media in serving adolescents' mood management and stimulation seeking. Among boys, gaming is part of the male socio-cultural communication context. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
A special issue on learning and teaching with electronic games is presented. Articles discuss many of the critical questions about electronic educational games.
Although notions of gaming and play have been around seemingly
forever, there is a recent surge of interest in the possibilities of using electronic
gaming for teaching and learning. There are gaming conferences
(e.g., Games + Learning + Society - http:Nglsconference.org/2OO7/), gaming
journals (e.g., Game Studies - http://gamestudies.org/), educational game
summits (e.g., Federation of American scientists - http://www.fas.org/gamesummit/),
and gaming initiatives (e.g., Serious Games - http://www.seriousgames.
org/). Foundations and granting agencies are also showing an increased
interest in the use of electronic games (e.g., MacArthur Foundation
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Educators and education advocates have recently acknowledged that the ability to think systemically is one of the necessary skills for success in the 21st century. Game-making is especially well-suited to encouraging meta-level reflection on the skills and processes that designer-players use in building such systems. Membership in a community of game producers means sharing thoughts and experiences with fellow players. This ability to gain fluency in specialist language and to translate thinking and talking about games into making and critiquing them (and vice versa) suggests that games not only teach literacy skills but support their ongoing use. Rather than imagining that education can be transformed by bringing games into the classroom, researchers should consider not only the effects of the thinking engendered by those who play, but also by those who design the play. This article offers an overview of the pedagogy and development process of Gamestar Mechanic, an RPG (Role Playing Game) style online game designed to teach players the fundamentals of game design. It will discuss some of the early results of the project, with an emphasis on the conceptual framework guiding the work, as well as the kinds of literacies and knowledge structures it is intended to support.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Computer video games are an emerging instructional medium offering strong degrees of cognitive efficiencies for experiential learning, team building, and greater understanding of abstract concepts. As with other new media adopted for use by instructional technologists for pedagogical purposes, barriers to classroom implementation have manifested in tandem with rising interest in the medium. This article draws upon a broad analysis of current research dealing with the educative impact of computer video games in the classroom, with a focus on these barriers to implementation. This study was a qualitative review of several scholarly papers exploring the use of computer video games in the classroom. Papers were chosen for inclusion in the review based on their focus on educational video game research. Review of the papers led to six major barriers, which are identified and summarized in this article. Barriers included negative perceptions toward video games as educational components; the difficulty of providing state of the art graphics in educational video games; a lack of adequate computing hardware in the classrooms to run advanced video games; a school day divided by short class periods which hindered long term engagement in complex games; a lack of real world affordances; and a lack of alignment to state standards. Implications for each barrier and suggestions for future research round out the findings.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Electronic game technologies can prepare novice learners for future learning of complex concepts. This article describes the underlying instructional design, learning science, cognitive science, and game theory. A structural, or syntactic mapping (structure mapping), approach to game design can produce a game world relationally isomorphic to a targeted complex concept. Such a game world should provide experiential and reflective gameplay to help learners form a preconceptual mental model of the targeted concept. A preparation for future learning (PFL) approach would follow gameplay with direct instruction.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
This article outlines the characteristics and problems related to edutainment and of the associated research studies demonstrating that learning outcomes look promising. The article suggests that we are moving towards a new generation of educational use of games that is more inclusive. This new generation relies on constructivist learning theories and a deeper understanding of the potential and limitations of computer games in educational praxis. In this approach computer games are just another tool for the teacher which can be dispensed with great success for the right tasks, but have clear limitations and require qualified teachers that can serve as facilitators of learning.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Games and gaming have always been an influential part of society and culture. Within the last 35 years, due to numerous technology innovations, electronic games in many formats have become ubiquitous in everyday life. This ubiquity has meant that games and gaming have permeated into many fields and disciplines for multiple purposes including teaching and learning. Past research has examined the use of both electronic and non-electronic games, but the field of education still lacks a comprehensive framework for exploring the role of the games for teaching and learning, the relationship of educational games to other fields, and a synthesis of best practice for current and future design, implementation, and research. The purpose of this article is to set a framework for understanding past, current, and future research in educational gaming. In doing so, we also hope to continue a conversation within education as well as with other fields that advance research, development and practice within a common framework.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
This article addresses the notion of teaching about games as a cultural medium in their own right. This includes critical analyses of existing texts but also involves enabling students to create their own. Implications of this approach are discussed and concrete, research-based examples are provided. A more theoretical discussion of the notion of game literacy and the principles on which this approach is based is also included. The article concludes with implications for policy and practice. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
It is believed that repeated exposure to real-life and to entertainment violence may alter cognitive, affective, and behavioral processes, possibly leading to desensitization. The goal of the present study was to determine if there are relationships between real-life and media violence exposure and desensitization as reflected in related characteristics. One hundred fifty fourth and fifth graders completed measures of real-life violence exposure, media violence exposure, empathy, and attitudes towards violence. Regression analyses indicated that only exposure to video game violence was associated with (lower) empathy. Both video game and movie violence exposure were associated with stronger proviolence attitudes. The active nature of playing video games, intense engagement, and the tendency to be translated into fantasy play may explain negative impact, though causality was not investigated in the present design. The samples' relatively low exposure to real-life violence may,have limited the identification of relationships. Although difficult to quantify, desensitization to violence should be further studied using related characteristics as in the present study. Individual differences and causal relationships should also be examined.
New entry in Digiplay games research bibliography:
Three experiments examined the effects of rewarding and punishing violent actions in video games on later aggression-related variables. Participants played one of three versions of the same race-car video game: (a) a version in which all violence was rewarded, (b) a version in which all violence was punished, and (c) a nonviolent version. Participants were then measured for aggressive affect (Experiment 1), aggressive cognition (Experiment 2), and aggressive behavior (Experiment 3). Rewarding violent game actions increased hostile emotion, aggressive thinking, and aggressive behavior. Punishing violent actions increased hostile emotion, but did not increase aggressive thinking or aggressive behavior. Results suggest that games that reward violent actions can increase aggressive behavior by increasing aggressive thinking.
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