What’s old is new again, and I’m not talking about Cracker Jacks. They never went away, and neither did the “prize” inside. The old and new that I’m talking about is gamification – the application of game mechanics and techniques to make <insert your site, mobile app or product here> more fun, engaging, popular and […]
Using Social Media and Game Mechanics Improve Learning
Do you hear what I hear? After reading Social Networking in Schools on the Huffington Post today, I recognized that nearly every project I’ve worked on over the past year has pointed towards a new round of convergence — a mash-up of social media, mobile media, game mechanics, assessment, and various forms of blended or self-directed study in […]
Virtual Play Patterns
My colleague Scott Traylor of 360 Kid regularly writes thoughtful and timely pieces about kids, toys and digital media, and his latest article for the May 2009 issue of Playthings Magazine is no exception. What Works For Virtual Play? – Questions to Ask About Web-enabled Toys takes a deep dive into play patterns of toys […]
Serious Games Showcase
Serious games and simulations embrace subjects as diverse as health care, emergency preparedness, world history, algebra, ethics, emotional intelligence, team building. Thanks to Eliane Alhadeff for showcasing some of this diversity in these slides.
Making Virtual Worlds Accessible
After developing educational technology products for Pearson and Scholastic, I’ve come to appreciate the value of creating products that are accessible to users with vision-, hearing- and learning-related disabilities. Whether because they are English language learners (ELL), have auditory or visual deficits, input/output disorders or other issues, it’s not only good karma and good business […]
Being There: the Game as Narrative
Narrative story telling has been part of the the human experience since we told tales of the days hunt around the fire, about what it was like to “be there” when this or that event happened. From that oral tradition, we learned to write them in pictures, then glyphs, and a succession of written languages and media […]
Spy vs. Spy
As a cold-war baby one of my favorite cartoon strips was Mad magazine’s Spy vs. Spy. That all flashed back to me a few years ago at the second Serious Games Summit in Crystal City, VA, just across the highway from the Pentagon. There, it didn’t take long to realize — with equal measures of […]
Making Games That Don’t Suck
How could you go wrong choosing William Shakespeare’s plays and characters to be the centerpiece of a massively multiplayer online game? Just ask Ted Castronova who received a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation to create Arden: The World of William Shakespeare, then discovered genius alone isn’t enough. As Chris Baker reports in WIRED this […]