Digital Games and Virtual Worlds

COURSE CONTENT

1. Digital Games and Learning:
   • Basic Concepts: Game-based learning, digital games, virtual worlds
   • Educational digital games vs. Gamification
   • Core elements of virtual worlds – Example: Minecraft (software presentation)
   • DESIGN: Initial brainstorming for designing a game
2. Playing vs. Designing Digital Games:
   • Game design by educators for students to play (learning through play)
     – How to design a "good" educational game
     – Design stages – The importance of mockups/storyboards and rapid prototyping
     – Designing a meaningful gaming experience
     – Approaches to integrating learning into games (intrinsic/extrinsic, closed/open structure, synchronous/asynchronous)
   • Game design by students – Connecting with learning theory through creation. Examples of best practices
   • Game design platforms Scratch and Alice
   • Other game design platforms (e.g., ARIS Games, Gamestar Mechanics, Twine) – key features – comparison
   • DESIGN: Introduction to Scratch and Alice design platforms. Students attempt to transfer their game ideas to one of the two platforms presented – refining and enhancing the original concept
3. Modifying Digital Games:
   • Game modification – definition and player practices
   • Game modification and learning
   • DESIGN – Discussion: each student discusses the evolution of their idea, implementation challenges, and ways to encourage students to alter the game
4. Half-Baked Games: A Pedagogical Approach to Game Modification:
   • What are "half-baked" games
   • Analyzing a half-baked game – pedagogical design – characteristics
   • Modifying a half-baked game – recording the learning process
   • Ideas for creating a half-baked game
   • DESIGN – Discussion: each student discusses their idea’s progress and issues faced. After the discussion, they refine the initial concept and explore how to “half-bake” their game
5. Categories of Digital Games:
   • Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMOs)
   • Adventure and puzzle games (text-based adventures, interactive movies)
   • Ubiquitous computing games (RPGs)
   • Simulation games
   • Strategy games
   • Constructionist games
   • Core concepts: Narrative, Ludology, Procedural Rhetoric, Immersion, and Adjuncts
   • DESIGN – Discussion: each student discusses the progress of their idea, challenges, and the educational value of the game, with time at the end to enhance the game description
6. Analysis of Digital Games:
   • Basic game mechanics – Examples
   • Game rules
   • The concept of game balance
   • What makes a game a game?
   • Digital games and concept representation
   • DESIGN – Discussion: each student discusses their idea’s development and challenges. Emphasis on the educational value of the game, with time at the end to refine the game description