Games with a Purpose

Games with a Purpose

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  • Author: Martin Saunders
  • Publisher: Monarch Books
  • ISBN: 0857215604
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 257

Games with Purpose mixes energizing, entertaining games with learning points to create an invaluable resource that will provide a fun introduction to hundreds of staple topics. There is something to suit every situation, from games needing little or no preparation or equipment, to big, memorable games that will stay with the group for a long time. The collection consists of mainly original game ideas, meeting the regular requirement for stimulating new games and icebreakers. Unlike other resources that simply seek to provide entertainment, Games with Purpose is categorised around popular topics providing youth workers with inspiration and ideas to help them to include games as a core component of their sessions, rather than just an add-on to dissipate surplus energy. Using themes from discussion starter resources The Ideas Factory and The Think Tank, this collection provides youth leaders with a complete solution - the book stands alone but by pairing these games with the discussion starters, youth leaders will have all they need to build a complete session.


Games: Purpose and Potential in Education

Games: Purpose and Potential in Education

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  • Author: Christopher Thomas Miller
  • Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
  • ISBN: 0387097759
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 270

The field of Games is rapidly expanding, prompting institutions throughout the world to create game development programs and courses focusing on educational games. As a result, games have also become a hot topic in the area of educational technology research. This increased interest is due to the technological advancement of digital games and the fact that a new, digital generation is emerging with a strong gaming background. Games: Purpose and Potential in Education focuses on the issues of incorporating games into education and instructional design. Ideas of identity development, gender diversity, motivation, and integrating instructional design within game development are addressed since each of these areas is important in the field of instructional design and can have a significant impact on learning. This volume brings together leading experts, researchers, and instructors in the field of gaming and explores current topics in gaming and simulations, available resources, and the future of the field.


Making Deep Games

Making Deep Games

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  • Author: Doris C. Rusch
  • Publisher: CRC Press
  • ISBN: 1317607708
  • Category : Computers
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 206

Like movies, television, and other preceding forms of media, video games are undergoing a dynamic shift in its content and perception. While the medium can still be considered in its infancy, the mark of true artistry and conceptual depth is detectable in the evolving styles, various genres and game themes. Doris C. Rusch’s, Making Deep Games, combines this insight along with the discussion of the expressive nature of games, various case studies, and hands-on design exercises. This book offers a perspective into how to make games that tackle the whole bandwidth of the human experience; games that teach us something about ourselves, enable thought-provoking, emotionally rich experiences and promote personal and social change. Grounded in cognitive linguistics, game studies and the reflective practice of game design, Making Deep Games explores systematic approaches for how to approach complex abstract concepts, inner processes, and emotions through the specific means of the medium. It aims to shed light on how to make the multifaceted aspects of the human condition tangible through gameplay experiences.


Games with a Purpose (GWAPS)

Games with a Purpose (GWAPS)

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  • Author: Mathieu Lafourcade
  • Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
  • ISBN: 1119136326
  • Category : Psychology
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 158

Human brains can be seen as knowledge processors in a distributed system. Each of them can achieve, conscious or not, a small part of a treatment too important to be done by one. These are also "hunter / gatherers" of knowledge. Provided that the number of contributors is large enough, the results are usually better quality than if they were the result of the activity of a single person, even if it is a domain expert. This type of activity is done via online games.


Games

Games

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  • Author: C. Thi Nguyen
  • Publisher:
  • ISBN: 0190052082
  • Category : Games & Activities
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 253

Games are a unique art form. They do not just tell stories, nor are they simply conceptual art. They are the art form that works in the medium of agency. Game designers tell us who to be in games and what to care about; they designate the player's in-game abilities and motivations. In other words, designers create alternate agencies, and players submerge themselves in those agencies. Games let us explore alternate forms of agency. The fact that we play games demonstrates something remarkable about the nature of our own agency: we are capable of incredible fluidity with our own motivations and rationality. This volume presents a new theory of games which insists on games' unique value in human life. C. Thi Nguyen argues that games are an integral part of how we become mature, free people. Bridging aesthetics and practical reasoning, he gives an account of the special motivational structure involved in playing games. We can pursue goals, not for their own value, but for the sake of the struggle. Playing games involves a motivational inversion from normal life, and the fact that we can engage in this motivational inversion lets us use games to experience forms of agency we might never have developed on our own. Games, then, are a special medium for communication. They are the technology that allows us to write down and transmit forms of agency. Thus, the body of games forms a "library of agency" which we can use to help develop our freedom and autonomy. Nguyen also presents a new theory of the aesthetics of games. Games sculpt our practical activities, allowing us to experience the beauty of our own actions and reasoning. They are unlike traditional artworks in that they are designed to sculpt activities - and to promote their players' aesthetic appreciation of their own activity.


Finite and Infinite Games

Finite and Infinite Games

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  • Author: James Carse
  • Publisher: Simon and Schuster
  • ISBN: 1451657293
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 155

“There are at least two kinds of games,” states James P. Carse as he begins this extraordinary book. “One could be called finite; the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.” Finite games are the familiar contests of everyday life; they are played in order to be won, which is when they end. But infinite games are more mysterious. Their object is not winning, but ensuring the continuation of play. The rules may change, the boundaries may change, even the participants may change—as long as the game is never allowed to come to an end. What are infinite games? How do they affect the ways we play our finite games? What are we doing when we play—finitely or infinitely? And how can infinite games affect the ways in which we live our lives? Carse explores these questions with stunning elegance, teasing out of his distinctions a universe of observation and insight, noting where and why and how we play, finitely and infinitely. He surveys our world—from the finite games of the playing field and playing board to the infinite games found in culture and religion—leaving all we think we know illuminated and transformed. Along the way, Carse finds new ways of understanding everything, from how an actress portrays a role to how we engage in sex, from the nature of evil to the nature of science. Finite games, he shows, may offer wealth and status, power and glory, but infinite games offer something far more subtle and far grander. Carse has written a book rich in insight and aphorism. Already an international literary event, Finite and Infinite Games is certain to be argued about and celebrated for years to come. Reading it is the first step in learning to play the infinite game.


Seven Games: A Human History

Seven Games: A Human History

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  • Author: Oliver Roeder
  • Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
  • ISBN: 1324003782
  • Category : History
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 326

A group biography of seven enduring and beloved games, and the story of why—and how—we play them. Checkers, backgammon, chess, and Go. Poker, Scrabble, and bridge. These seven games, ancient and modern, fascinate millions of people worldwide. In Seven Games, Oliver Roeder charts their origins and historical importance, the delightful arcana of their rules, and the ways their design makes them pleasurable. Roeder introduces thrilling competitors, such as evangelical minister Marion Tinsley, who across forty years lost only three games of checkers; Shusai, the Master, the last Go champion of imperial Japan, defending tradition against “modern rationalism”; and an IBM engineer who created a backgammon program so capable at self-learning that NASA used it on the space shuttle. He delves into the history and lore of each game: backgammon boards in ancient Egypt, the Indian origins of chess, how certain shells from a particular beach in Japan make the finest white Go stones. Beyond the cultural and personal stories, Roeder explores why games, seemingly trivial pastimes, speak so deeply to the human soul. He introduces an early philosopher of games, the aptly named Bernard Suits, and visits an Oxford cosmologist who has perfected a computer that can effectively play bridge, a game as complicated as human language itself. Throughout, Roeder tells the compelling story of how humans, pursuing scientific glory and competitive advantage, have invented AI programs better than any human player, and what that means for the games—and for us. Funny, fascinating, and profound, Seven Games is a story of obsession, psychology, history, and how play makes us human.


Critical Play

Critical Play

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  • Author: Mary Flanagan
  • Publisher: MIT Press
  • ISBN: 0262518651
  • Category : Computers
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 363

An examination of subversive games like The Sims—games designed for political, aesthetic, and social critique. For many players, games are entertainment, diversion, relaxation, fantasy. But what if certain games were something more than this, providing not only outlets for entertainment but a means for creative expression, instruments for conceptual thinking, or tools for social change? In Critical Play, artist and game designer Mary Flanagan examines alternative games—games that challenge the accepted norms embedded within the gaming industry—and argues that games designed by artists and activists are reshaping everyday game culture. Flanagan provides a lively historical context for critical play through twentieth-century art movements, connecting subversive game design to subversive art: her examples of “playing house” include Dadaist puppet shows and The Sims. She looks at artists’ alternative computer-based games and explores games for change, considering the way activist concerns—including worldwide poverty and AIDS—can be incorporated into game design. Arguing that this kind of conscious practice—which now constitutes the avant-garde of the computer game medium—can inspire new working methods for designers, Flanagan offers a model for designing that will encourage the subversion of popular gaming tropes through new styles of game making, and proposes a theory of alternate game design that focuses on the reworking of contemporary popular game practices.


The Infinite Game

The Infinite Game

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  • Author: Simon Sinek
  • Publisher: Penguin
  • ISBN: 0735213526
  • Category : Business & Economics
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 272

From the New York Times bestselling author of Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last, a bold framework for leadership in today’s ever-changing world. How do we win a game that has no end? Finite games, like football or chess, have known players, fixed rules and a clear endpoint. The winners and losers are easily identified. Infinite games, games with no finish line, like business or politics, or life itself, have players who come and go. The rules of an infinite game are changeable while infinite games have no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers—only ahead and behind. The question is, how do we play to succeed in the game we’re in? In this revelatory new book, Simon Sinek offers a framework for leading with an infinite mindset. On one hand, none of us can resist the fleeting thrills of a promotion earned or a tournament won, yet these rewards fade quickly. In pursuit of a Just Cause, we will commit to a vision of a future world so appealing that we will build it week after week, month after month, year after year. Although we do not know the exact form this world will take, working toward it gives our work and our life meaning. Leaders who embrace an infinite mindset build stronger, more innovative, more inspiring organizations. Ultimately, they are the ones who lead us into the future.


What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Second Edition

What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Second Edition

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  • Author: James Paul Gee
  • Publisher: Macmillan
  • ISBN: 1466886420
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 233

Cognitive Development in a Digital Age James Paul Gee begins his classic book with "I want to talk about video games–yes, even violent video games–and say some positive things about them." With this simple but explosive statement, one of America's most well-respected educators looks seriously at the good that can come from playing video games. This revised edition expands beyond mere gaming, introducing readers to fresh perspectives based on games like World of Warcraft and Half-Life 2. It delves deeper into cognitive development, discussing how video games can shape our understanding of the world. An undisputed must-read for those interested in the intersection of education, technology, and pop culture, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy challenges traditional norms, examines the educational potential of video games, and opens up a discussion on the far-reaching impacts of this ubiquitous aspect of modern life.