how the style in which users are visually depicted can promote or hinder empathic under-standing.

direct contact with users is much emphasised by practitioners (McDonagh-Philp andBruseberg 2000, Mattelmäki and Battarbee 2002, Fulton Suri 2003b). Most authors recommendhaving designers conduct observation studies, e.g. to follow the user in his context

the situation determines to a largedegree the level of empathy which can be achieved.

The empathichorizon of designers can change over time and be extended by training and experience.

McDonagh (2006) defines empathy as ‘the intuitive ability to iden-tify with other people’s thoughts and feelings – their motivations, emotional and mental models,values, priorities, preferences, and inner conflicts’.

the needfor qualitative research to inform and inspire designers to create ‘more useful and enjoyable thingsfor people [they] may never meet’

empathy is described as anabilitypeople have,and differs for individuals.

Others describe empathic design as ‘an imaginative projection intoanother person’s situation’ (Koskinen and Battarbee 2003), or a ‘particular kind of imagination’(Fulton Suri 2003b). These terms ‘projection’ and ‘imagination’ imply that being empathic isa range of activities where designers should imagine what it would be like for themselves tobe (in the position of) the user.

companies started to realise that only listening to customers’ responseson questionnaires was not enough to develop successful products

We have reviewed the interaction designand design research literature, which has a strong focus on user involvement and user experience.

a number of tools and techniques have beenpresented (Fulton Suri 2003a) aiming to support designers to ‘step into the user’s shoes’ and ‘walkthe user’s walk’ in order to design products that fit the user’s life.

The problem of understanding the user and his or her experience has a central place in user-centred design

the importance of designers to gainempathy with the users for whom they are designing.

It was this marginality that I was naming as a central location for the production of a counter-hegemonic discourse that is not just found in words but in habits of being and the way one lives. As such, I was not speaking of a marginality one wishes to lose – to give up or surrender as part of moving into the center – but rather of a site one stays in, clings to even, because it nourishes one’s capacity to resist

toprovide a procedural framework for developing instructionalmaterials and creating an environment for successful learningoutcomes

Although they promptly begin an assigned writing task and complete it, they are reluctant to make any type of revision. Creating a movie gives them a reason for writing and makes them more conscious of their audience, one that reaches beyond themselves and their teacher, and motivates them to write more clearly and with more detail. They employ their artistic ability by drawing pictures to illustrate their stories, scan and save the illustrations, and then import them into a video-editing program.

Digital storytelling has the capacity to not only motivate struggling writers as they experience the enjoyment of creating stories enhanced by multimedia, but also to reposition themselves from struggling writers to competent writers.

Struggling writers are seldom strategic writers; however, the components of creating digital storytelling may help them compose more strategically. Students' narrations of their stories reduce overt weaknesses in conventions such as spelling, capitalization, and handwriting. The process of storyboarding facilitates the introduction of events in a logical and orderly sequence thereby illuminating gaps or omissions overlooked in a traditionally composed draft. When these breaks in the flow of the story are realized, the writer can make necessary revisions in the draft before recording the narration.

rather than encourage students to write about things that are important to them or interdisciplinary writing — are, to a degree, silencing their students as writers.

In a classroom setting, a student's identity may be further defined by a myriad of factors such as athleticism, intellect, personality, and perceived writing ability (Bloome, Carter, Christian, Otto, & Shuart-Faris, 2005).

Their compositions are generally brief and lack detail and elaborations (Graham et al., 1991). They are likely to produce poorly organized text at the sentence and the paragraph levels.

In a study of elementary age children, Bright (1995) noted that struggling writers view capable writers as students who work hard, have good penmanship, and write long compositions. Moreover, they believe that good writers write single draft compositions without having to revise or edit them

Most writing in the classroom has a physical audience of two: the writer and the teacher; yet when students write for a larger audience, they are much more motivated to write and tend to do their best work (Cohen & Riel, 1989).

Because she was so expressive, she added another dimension to her story that was not apparent in her writing

When reading aloud her writings, Colleen was on par with her classmates.

Ray does his best work, or at least completes a composition, when he has a small window of time for completion rather than several days

Ray has difficulty starting writing

the children perceived themselves as struggling writers based on their scores from the Writers Self-Perception Scale (Bottomley, Henk, & Melnk, 1997), a public domain instrument that measures individuals' attitudes toward their writing.

the World Wide Web dramatically changed the availability, method, depth, quantity, and sometimes quality of accessible information; consequently, the Internet has initiated critical reading skills not typically required in traditional texts

technical difficulties!

digital technology must never change the iron-clad traditions of the institution

strategic hope

something like the video above takes the same planning — and even more coordination — and even more critical reflection once it’s done — to pull off.

educated into

once the player tried the position of bomb handler, they expressed much more enjoyment of the game

local

We describe gameful learning in terms of three elements: attitude, identity, and ignorance

In this case games and the culture surrounding them provide an academic homefor play

unifying influence forming partnerships across and beyond campus

they wereunderstandably unclear about how to realize the vision

this article aims to broaden the discussion and provide a startingpoint or platform for others to consider based on their context

context matters

higher education classrooms wherecultural norms and organizational structures, at times, act antithetically to learn throughgames

studentsas the biggest challenge to shifting pedagogicalapproaches

student expectations

it also includes the application oflearning principles and social interactions facilitated by games and used by the community(Squire, 2011)

students had often heard about the course itself and thereputation of the course built early enthusiasm and engagement with the materials – a sortof meta-academia benefit to the course design

My preference is to allow for short vaguedescriptions, give students some creative license, and praise and reward innovative andrigorous thinking

the use of “quests” as a central design element

colonization of studentinformal gaming

Gaming expertise, or literacy, inone good game also can create an increased capacity to pick up and learn the next

So gamers are learners

hobby

What recommendations do you have for platforms like Genius and Hypothesis to manage (the potential for) abuse

How would you respond

“Feminists are ruining everyone’s fun and gamers’ rights to be immature, obnoxious and harmful.”

questions

how do we ensure that in our examinations of marginalized practices, we do not simply reaffirm their marginality or, alternately, attempt to reconcile them with dominant, mainstream activities? Is the question “what can we do?” actually paternalism exemplified?

What do we as researchers with access to all the privileges of the academic sphere do after identifying these practices, spaces and challenges

the emancipatory possibilities of queer game-making do not provide an adequate answer when the sustainability of this life for many of these game-makers is a constant source of fear.

Game designer is a politicized position to take just as gamer is, and henceforth too little scholarly attention has been paid to those making games outside of the dominant, professional, and industrial context.

we should be careful not to equate emancipatory promise with poorly paid, insecure work and life below, on, or near the poverty line, dependent on the vicissitudes of crowdfunding.

Queerness acts as a destabilizing force, challenging norms of who gets to be a producer and what should be made, but it is wrought with the dangers and precarity of this position.

the precarity of these practices, particularly the modes of funding, is striking. They tend to be contingent on goodwill, just enough, temporary measures, a reality that begs the question of sustainability and the livelihoods of these game designers

what fills the gaps in between these events and slightly more formal channels for dialogue is the use of social media to construct a queer game design community. In an interview with Keogh (2013), Twine designer merritt kopas cites the centrality of social networking, including Twitter, tumblr, and personal websites, for the growth of the queer game design community, many of whose members are prolific users of these tools

Zines, non-industry conferences, and the growing breed of “unconferences” (such as Lost Levels14) are a counter-hegemonic response to the often hyper-professionalized nature of mainstream digital games events.

Twine game designers operate within an alternative economy of their own making, one characterized by non-normative means of financial support, distribution, and dissemination. Requesting money to play Twine games is rare, and in the case where compensation is sought, it tends to take the form of donations and pay-what-you-can, often with a portion of funds going to relevant charities (see for example Depression Quest11)

many Twine designers see the industry as the problem motivating their work rather than a place to aspire to. Instead Twine games are created for a multiplicity of “unprofitable” reasons and purposes abstracted from either accumulation of capital or reproduction. They resist commodification.

they are “a straight, white-guy world” characterized by a fear of intimacy.

in order to take apart “the logics of success and failure with which we currently live” (Halberstam, 2011, p.2)

Twine games, on the other hand, stand outside these traditional ways of understanding success and undermine its logic, becoming a part of the “assemblage of resistant technologies” that constitute queerness (Halberstam, 2011, p.29).

Santiago’s rhetorical maneuver works to soften what are deeply political contributions -- the participation of marginalized people in digital games production. Addressing these game-makers with industry buzzwords (and political panacea) such as diversity and innovation rather than as women, queer, trans*, of color or feminist, results in the depoliticization of the still-radical nature of their participation.

this was a powerful statement about the legitimacy of Twine games

The difference stemmed from the fact that gender, sexuality and race were discussed outside of special interest sessions dedicated to identity politics, and that one of the most enduring tropes of digital games design-- ultraviolent content-- was challenged.

negative responses to the claim that everyone can make games (see for example Adamkiewicz, 2012) tend to be met with a valorization of digital games that are “hard to make”, leading to the devaluation of accessibility and ease of use (Houlden, 2012).

The use of the word “game” to describe the products of Twine development is contentious. Bernardi (2013) notes that even before Anthropy’s evangelization of Twine many “serious” indie developers regarded it with “disdain”

response to this Twine revolution and its queering of digital games has been mixed, and provides insights into the power of the contributions of these games and game-makers

Twine queers game design through its inclusion of those typically excluded from the traditional training and education of game-makers; as Anthropy says “twine has become fertile territory for marginalized voices to grow” (2012c).

Twine games offer queer alternatives

Twine games challenge mainstream standards by subverting the celebration of difficulty, in both production and play, as they are often quick to both make and play. This is significant as the valuation of difficulty has been demonstrated to be highly gendered (Shaw, 2013) and often exclusionary when tied to the valuation of ‘hardcore’ play (Fron, Fullerton, Morie & Pearce, 2007; Harvey, 2011)

Through this personal perspective, Twine games often challenge many of the dominant norms and values of mainstream game design, from process to mechanics to content.

The character of these games is so novel that many of have taken to using the phrase “personal games” to describe them (Alexander, 2013a; Bernardi, 2013), a label that many game designers seem to have cautiously embraced7

hese designers provide a subversive lens through which to engage with game design and the identity of “digital game designer”

the character of the community of those making and sharing Twine games. The message that accompanies these and other repositories of games, techniques, and sources of help and advice is that everyone can make games. Finances, programming skills, or any other material conditions need not act as a barrier.

its WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface offers a fairly intuitive entry point into creating linked passages. A bevy of resources made available by prolific Twine designers including Anthropy3 and Porpentine4 provide details on more technically complex ways to engage with the affordances of the tool, including CSS and HTML modifications

Twine is a program that has been adopted by rather than targeted at digital game-makers, its affordances identified rather than prescribed as useful for the creation of games that often do not resemble those made in suites of programs expressly intended for digital game design

In the three video tutorials created by Klimas to help get users started2, he consistently refers to the outputs of Twine as “stories” akin to non-linear Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) texts, and to those who engage with them as “readers”. In many circles Twine is referred to as a system for authoring, a tool for the creation of interactive stories, and a “choose your own adventure-maker”

The output of Twine is a file so small that it can be emailed or copied to small capacity storage devices, including a CD-ROM or even a floppy disc

does this queering offer the promise of providing resistant alternatives to mainstream games and game production

an assemblage of resistant technologies

Queerness as a concept here is informed by Halberstam’s (2011) work on the counter-hegemonic constructions of success and failure in animation and other “low theory” texts,

the Twine community, the response to its recent radicalization, and the issues related to democratization and politicization that it provokes make an important challenge to the normative framing of indie and mainstream as totalizing categories

“hegemony of play”, a set of conventions that value particular configurations of the production context, technological developments, and play practices at the exclusion of others, resulting in a narrowly constituted power elite of by-and-large white male game-makers and game-players

the basic premises of mainstream games culture,

Interestingly, this emphasis on inclusivity is often linked directly or implicitly to independent games production as a bastion for alternative or experimental modes of operation in games culture

the move of discussions of oppression, difference, and marginalization from the silo of “women in games” to a broader audience, with many voices tackling “toxic game culture” (Consalvo, 2012)

2012, a year that will go down in game history as the one where harassment, sexism, and misogyny came under the greatest scrutiny across the spectrum of academic, games, and mainstream media venues

they face a number of significant challenges, including the delegitimization and depoliticization of their work, the co-optation of their labour, and the risks entailed living within alternative

Twine game-makers provide queer alternatives to traditional digital game culture

consequences and challenges of the democratization of game design for those often marginalized from the mainstream digital games industry

the Tw i n e application

Democratization, depoliticization, and the queering of game design

it's best described as a long-simmering pot of male privilege, misogyny, and slut-shaming in the gamer community boiling over

Its proponents and supporters claim #GamerGate is all about journalistic integrity, but a nuanced reading of the situation suggests otherwise.

what's taken place lately toward a number of prominent women working in game development and criticism is extremely important, and it demands your attention.

Video games, like all art and entertainment, are inherently political; they are created worlds that can’t help but express the values of their creators.

the removal of a relatively obscure piece of interactive fiction about depression

At their best, video games promote empathy and understanding by allowing us to experience virtual life from another’s perspective.

Strong criticism is neither an act of betrayal toward a work nor the first step toward censorship; it leads to illumination and improvement.

That argument (which has also been aimed at theatre and film) has largely passed.

When I wrote about Zoe Quinn’s game Depression Quest for this site last month

“The gaming industry has been male-dominated ever since its inception, but over the last several years there has been an increase in women’s voices challenging the sexist status quo. We are witnessing a very slow and painful cultural shift. Some male gamers with a deep sense of entitlement are terrified of change.”

Sarkeesian cancelled her talk after the campus police, citing Utah’s gun laws, refused to prohibit attendees from carrying concealed weapons to the event.

Sarkeesian, a Canadian-American feminist and media critic, won the award for creating a series of videos titled Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, which discuss and challenge sexism and misogyny in gaming. “My … project was born out of a desire to … take gaming seriously,” she said in her acceptance speech, adding that game developers can “portray women as capable, complex, and inspirational.”

a reactionary community of hardcore gamers who've gathered under the "#GamerGate" hashtag. Under the guise of pushing for journalistic reform and anti-censorship in gaming

this little boy came up to me and said, "Hi, I'm a feminist gamer." How do you stop doing this work after that?

these conspiracy theories contribute to a larger culture of harassing and undermining women's work.

We have video games every year that are the same brooding antiheroes over and over again. Creating new stories with new perspectives is going to make games more interesting. It's going to make storytelling more expansive and exciting and engaging

That's what the GamerGate temper tantrum is reacting to. It's trying to hold on to this status quo, this illusion that gaming is for men, that it can never change, that it can never be more inclusive than that

the industry is changing. This consciousness-raising is happening. People are starting to acknowledge that the industry has a problem with women, that sexism and misogyny are quite prevalent both in the larger culture and within the games

reactionary backlash against women who have anything to say, especially those who have critiques or who are feminists. There's this huge drive to silence us, and if they can't silence us, they try to discredit us in an effort to push us out.

Providing the language for these overarching patterns — identifying the trope, giving them a name and description, and explaining them — really helped improve people's literacy, their ability to unpack and to be more critical of the media they're watching

They're going after and targeting women who are trying to make changes in the industry. They're attacking anyone who supports women.

GamerGate is really a sexist temper tantrum

The Big Bang Theory

He needed to grow up.

grok

It’s because other people’s bodies and other people’s love are not something that can be taken nor even something that can be earned—they can be given freely, by choice, or not.

we live in an entitlement culture where guys think they need to be having sex with girls in order to be happy and fulfilled.

When this story broke, the initial mainstream coverage only talked about “mental illness,” not misogyny

No, I’m not saying most frustrated nerdy guys are rapists or potential rapists.

But the overall problem is one of a culture where instead of seeing women as, you know, people, protagonists of their own stories just like we are of ours, men are taught that women are things to “earn,” to “win.”

Fixating on a woman from afar and then refusing to give up when she acts like she’s not interested is, generally, something that ends badly for everyone involved. But it’s a narrative that nerds and nerd media kept repeating.

because life is not, in fact, a sitcom, it’s not the kind of thing that elicits a bemused eye roll followed by raucous laughter from the studio audience. It’s the kind of thing that induces pain, and fear.

We (male) nerds grow up force-fed this script.

work ethic is shaped by more than just the presence of dopamine.

Repairing your relationship with your best friend is trickier, so you frame it as a quest. Every day for the next week, you will find a different photo of you and your friend, write a little essay on the moment it depicts, and send these to her through the mail.

By involving the user in the creation or customization of the gamification system, the user can select or create meaningful game elements and goals that fall in line with their own interests.

The purpose of this is to take advantage of the potential that games have in terms of encouraging players to “try on” virtual identi

Those interested in gaming literacies view game design asa way to engage youth in reflective and critical reading of the gaming culture

In  this  section  we  will  look  at  ways  that  a  video  game  (Swords  of  Islam)  can  help  us  better  understand  period  history,  mapping  and  the  importance  of  factional  interests  in  the  creation  ofcross-­‐culturalhistorical  narratives.  

This  sectionof  classes  will  examine  the  role  of  video  games  in  furthering  Orientalist  stereotypes  of  Muslims  and  other  Middle  Eastern

nt.  They  will  play  the  games  to  gain  a  sense  as  to  how  the  games  represent  history  and  toconsider  how  games  re-­‐shape  the  waywe  think  about  history.

The  first  section  will  examine  the  ways  in  which  digitization  is  changing  how  we  present,  think  about,and  analyze  history.

In  lieu  of  these  issues,  certain  types  of  inquiry  can  seek  to  evaluate  video  games  as  sources  of  historical  representation  and  historical  disco

ccessible.  Yet  important  challenges  exist  in  overcoming  some  of  the  game’s  pedagogical  limitations.  Games  tend  to  be  Euro-­‐centered,  focus  principally  on  elites,  serve  to  reinforce  hard  fast  stereotypes,  and  in  certain  cases  promote  reductionist  thinkin

While  academic  texts  have  been  considered  the  gold  standard  for  historical  analysis,  less  attention  has  been  focused  on  the  ways  in  which  popular  sources,  such  as  thelanding  on  the  beach  scene  in  Saving  Private  Ryan(Steven  Spielberg,  1998),leave  indelible  impressions  of  past  

Any  introductionof  games  thoughmust  includecompatible  readings  and  assignm

games  give  the  player  the  opportunity  to  explore  historical  possibilities  and  to  consider  the  issue  of  historical  contingency

n  conclusion,  while  the  digitization  of  the  humanities  continues  to  grow,  video  gameuse  in  the  historyclassroompresents  a  challengeto  a  discipline  that  depends  onevidence-­‐basedrepresentation.  Video  games  challenge  this  narrative  by  allowing  aplayer,within  certain  parameters,to  construct  her  or  his  ownversion  of  events  and  of  different  historical

Readingsfrom  soldiers  were  brought  in  to  help  the  students  compare  primary  source  material  with  game  playing.  Did  the  soldiers’memoirs  correspond  to  the  experiences  of  the  shooters?  Howdid  the  games  fail  to  address  the  trauma  of  war

But  as  opposed  to  other  media,  players  are  asked  to  participate  in  the  conflict,

A  reading  from  Philip  Reichmuthand  Stefan  Werningraisedthe  ideathat  video  games  are  a  “neglected  media”in  considering  Orientalist  stereotyp

What  does  it  mean  to  act  in  a  military  role  without  having  an  understanding  of  the  long-­‐term  politics  in  the  place  that  they  patrol  the  streets?How  is  the  enemy  depicted?  And  is  this  depiction  inherently  Orien

Students  wereasked  to  read  Edward  Said’s  book  on  how  Muslims  are  depicted  in  the  media,  the  Höglund  article  and  another  short  piece  by  Vit  Sisler  on  the  ways  Arabs  are  represented  by  video  gam

he  idea  of  a  virtual  space  thatseeks  to  recreate  the  physical  world  while  including  a  narrative  on  military  interventioncreates  the  illusion  of  a  tangible,  actionable  realty  that  fails  to  consider  historical  and  long-­‐term  political  factors.

Other  students  thought  the  game  was  engaging  but  lacked  historical  credibility.  They  feltthat  the  false  chronology  created  situations  in  whichgroups  had  access  to  technologyand  weapons  that  did  notexist  during  the  historical  periodsin  which  they

assessing  the  value  of  the  game  as  a  historical  source,  students  were  asked  to  write  a  paper  on  how  the  game  could  be  used  to  understand  expansion  and  to  comprehend  the  creation  of  an  empire.

This  historical  patternstands  in  opposition  to  the  Khaldun’s  idea  that  nomadic  and  settled  societiesbothcompete  and  engagein  constant  exchange

Civilization  Vrefers  to  nomadic  peoples  as  “barbarians.”  Clearly,this  term  demonizes  people  who  live  outside  of  settled  society.It  also  endorsesa  particular  system  of  social  organization  over  anotherwithout  any  inquiry.

Khaldun’swriting  wasa  valuable  companion  to  the  game  CivilizationVbecause  itquestioned  the  notion  of  unrestrained  growth  and  expansi

The  readings  helped  student  consider  whether  the  games  accurately  reflected  the  complex  relationship  between  acquiringresources,developing  trading  relationships,  creating  an  ideology,and  using  force  in  building  an  emp

 Students  learned  that  certain  decisions  had  consequences  that  could  affect  their  civilizations  economically,  politically  and  socially.

nts.  Students  commented  that  the  game  helped  them  understand  how  these  different  components  of  empire  building  were  connected  to  one  another.

games  reflect  certain  cultural  attitudes  andreveal  patterns  of  historical  thinking

 by  allowing  the  participant  to  influence  events  and  take  an  active  rolein  the  shaping  of  history,  historical  video  games  fall  outside  the  parameters  of  accepted  historical  repr

digital  games  are  creating  new  narratives  that  transform  conceptual  and  visual  representations

 video  games  are  not  history  andthusshouldbe  dismissed  as  sources  of  historical  information.

 consumption  of  history.

Readings  were  introduced  that  helped  students  think  about  the  significance  of  moving  from  a  textual  to  visualhistory.

we think ‘new literacies’ are best understood in terms of an historical period of social, cultural, institutional, economic, and intellectual change that is likely to span many decades – some of which are already behind us.

Many institutions have already adopted game-based learning strategies.However, a single game or several games applied to a course does not address broader learning needs or opportunities for scaled adoption.

Contemporary students are sophisticated consumers of digital content.

Multiuse game-based learning platforms can be scaled and used by multiple disciplines and faculty and can be more easily supported and maintained

it is more useful to compare a learner’s ability to solve a problem independently against their ability to solve problems with assistance from an individual (or group of individuals) who have mastered the concepts being learned.

It is easy to lose sight of the learner amidthe various technical complexities of digital game-based learning.

These outcomes would then be used to help determine the next set of relevant experiences. These performance data could also inform the metagame universe as predictors of real-world success. If in turn we were to consider the real world as a series of outcome-generating experiences we could translate across the game-based and real world in a dynamic and synergistic manner that would blur the distinctions between game and reality.

Faculty understand the pedagogy of their disciplines but need to know how to incorporate game-based learning resources into their syllabi and into their teaching. This is not unlike where we were a decade ago with supporting faculty to begin putting some of their teaching materials online.

The inclusion of badges as a means of student assessment in game-based learning faces questions of quality and legitimacy and will be a fertile topic for campus discussion.

Without a driving pedagogical rationale, the value of games will be trivialized in the eyes of faculty.

The strategy has moved to a more holistic approach that encourages faculty to articulate their pedagogical challenges (not necessarily in a game context), which are then synthesized to create a game engine that can work more broadly—such as a game engine for an economics class that is designed for other uses like energy policy, health policy,political science, or biology.

For our online program we are starting with simple “low threshold”tools in order toallow greater participation.

the goal is to make game-based learning truly accessible and usable by the largest number of faculty possible and in as many disciplines as possible. The universityhascreated a solution that is program-and faculty-agnostic.

There is no established publishing and distribution channel for educational games. For instructors who aren’t interested in or able to do their own game design/development, the time needed to findgames appropriate to their courses and figureout how to incorporate them into their syllabi and learning experiences can be prohibitive.

More important, postsecondary students value technology—particularly mobile technology—in education

Badges are “used toset goals, motivate behaviors, represent achievements, and communicate success in many contexts.”8While badges for learning are not, in and of themselves, games, the activities (usually called challenges, missions,or quests) that support the acquisitionof badges can have a game-like quality.

This explains the continued popularity of games such as Go, Chess, Bridge, Monopoly, and other board games.

simulations by themselves lack an intrinsic competitive element that is the hallmark of a game.

Those who have spent time playing games report that they have provided many and various learning opportunities, even when those games are for entertainment purposes.

The majority of today’s postsecondary students are digital nativesand have grown up with computer games.

But true adoption and institutional implementation of games in U.S. postsecondary education is still at an early, experimental stage. Indeed, althoughthe market research firm Ambient Insight includes game-based learning among the “eight types of pedagogically-defined learning products,” in an August 2011 interview with IndustryGamers, Sam Adkins noted that “[game-based learning is]not in wide use in higher education.”

A search of the Chronicle of Higher Educationarchives showed over 100 articles that mentioned “game-based learning” or “games in the classroom” during the past year.

computer games for entertainment are influencing our culture and our lives.

through services about which they have questionable expertise

It gives Vice Presidents and Brand Managers comfort: they're doing everything right, and they can do even better by adding "a games strategy" to their existing products

consultants

students rarely have the opportunity to be an audience for other students, or to provide meaningful feedback to each other.

nor do students expect to teach their ―teachers‖ or anyone else, for that matter.

A site we considered to be less nurturing, and that fostered a sense of elitism among participants, did not seem to have any section with links to other spaces or resources, perhaps because of the attitude that all ―important‖ knowledge could be found in the space itself.