Serious Games
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Raph Koster is a renowned game designer known for his work on Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies. He argues that games are puzzles that teach players to solve problems and learn patterns by practicing permutations in a low-stakes environment. Fun comes from the cognitive challenge of mastering a problem and the release of endorphins from learning. Boredom occurs when a game provides no challenges. Serious games discussed at a Canada symposium included virtual training simulations, educational games, and social issue games addressing topics like homelessness, pandemics, and geopolitics.
Serious Games
- 1. 1 Fun and Serious Games www.cartoonstock.com
- 2. 2 Raph Koster http://www.raphkoster.com/ Raphael "Raph" Koster author of A Theory of Fun for Game Design is widely recognized for his work as the lead designer of Ultima Online and the creative director behind Star Wars Galaxies.
- 4. 4 What Games Are Games are puzzles to solve. We learn the underlying patterns, grok them fully, and file them away to re-run as needed. Difference between games and reality is that the stakes are lower with games. • • •
- 5. 5 What Games Are Games serve as very fundamental and powerful learning tools. “Play” and “Games” both belong in the same category of “iconified representations of human experience that we can practice with and learn patterns from. Books vs Games. (According to Koster) Games can accelerate the grokking process ... where you can practice a pattern and run permutations. • • •
- 6. 6 Fun is all about our brains feeling good -- the release of endorphins into our system. One of the subtlest releases of endorphins is at the moment of triumph when we learn something or master a task. Our bodies reward us with pleasure. In other words, fun is the act of mastering a problem mentally. • • • • What is Fun?
- 7. 7 Boredom is the opposite When you feel a game/book/class/parental meal experience is repetitive or derivative, it grows boring because it presents no cognitive challenge.
- 8. 8 Ian Bogost “Playing video games is a kind of literacy. Not the literacy that helps us read books or write term papers, but the kind of literacy that helps us make or critique the systems we live in . . . . When we learn to play games with an eye toward uncovering their procedural rhetorics, we learn to ask questions about the models such games present” (Bogost). !
- 9. 9 James Gee Multimodal Principle. “Meanings and knowledge are built up through various modalities (images, words, interactions, abstract design, sound, etc.)” !
- 10. 10 Lori Shyba Social issue games, like other activist art, can tune us in to the world around us. Games can help define the things we believe in and can amplify our ethical consciousness by provoking us to take action. !
- 11. Serious Games Canada/ Jeux Serieux Canada
- 12. Serious Games Canada Symposium, Games for Training Distil Interactive – Ottawa, Ontario Response Ready is a virtual training solution based on the Canadian Standards Association's (CSA) Z731-03 standard. It tests and develops users' ability to identify hazards and assess risk. http://www.distilinteractive.com/
- 13. Serious Games Canada Symposium, Games for Training Coole Immersive -- Edmonton, Alberta Focusing on front line work roles for the service rig sector of the oil & gas industry, SimuLynx Rig Skills uses a first person perspective 3D environment to give the user an immersive "hands-on, off-site" learning experience. http://www.cooleimmersive.com
- 14. Serious Games Canada Symposium, Games for Education Knight Elimar’s Last Joust Richard Levy, Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary A virtual environment game for promoting literacy across the curriculum. http://www.ucalgary.ca/evds/levy
- 15. Serious Games Canada Symposium, Social Issue Games Contagion York University and Simon Fraser University "Contagion” is a web-based educational game in which players can learn self- care practices and play through ethical considerations in a virtual world on the brink of pandemic. http://contagion.edu.yorku.ca/
- 16. Serious Games Canada Symposium, Social Issue Games Terry Lavendar — Homeless, It’s No Game Simon Fraser University “Welcome to Life on the Street. Can you survive for 24 hours with your esteem and your person intact?” Selected for the game showcase at the annual Games for Change conference in New York City. It's one of only 17 games to be featured. http://www.homelessgame.net/
- 17. Serious Games Canada Symposium, Social Issue Games Tibet and Oceanquest Digital Media Lab, University of Calgary Tibet – Status of Tibet as occupied territory Oceanquest – Ocean Floor Ecology http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~parker/new/Tibet/tibethome.html