Fireside Chat:
What Left 4 Dead Can Teach Us About Kids Games
This fireside chat challenges designers to explore opportunities for children’s games by delving into their personal media libraries to find new inspiration in casual and hardcore games. Games like Left 4 Dead, Borderlands, Halo, and Plants vs. Zombies are not designed for children under 12, but they present interesting design features and approaches for cooperative play, data collection, and achievements that, when properly framed within child developmental needs, can inspire great kids products. This session will explore multiple “grown-up” games and foster discussion of which of their features can be applied to the design and development of children’s games.
Carla Fisher, Anne Richards, Natalie Golub
Fireside Chat:
Dancing (and Wrestling) with Learning Objectives and Game Mechanics
Designs for intrinsic learning-game are often created through processes where game mechanics are inspired and built from the learning objectives the game designers want to embody in the play experience. It’s a wonderful process - it sounds straightforward, but in our experience it’s not: Mechanics are built and played, and the play teach the designers new things that lead to looking at the objectives differently, and therefore the mechanics, in a challenging creative cycle. In this Fireside Chat, we’d like to host a lively discussion of practitioners who have been living this structured and improvisational process – telling tall tales, sharing wisdom (and hairy moments) from the work.
Bert Snow, Scot Osterweil, Jason Haas, Alex Chisholm, Dan Roy, Dave McCool, Caitlin Feeley
Fireside Chat:
Building the next science generation through game-based learning in museums
In this chat, the American Museum of Natural History and The Field Museum will highlight different approaches to build a science-positive generation through museum-centered digital gaming programming both on-site and off. The case studies cross a spectrum of technologies and museum-centered goals, and speak to the diversity of techniques being used. Case studies will introduce broader questions about digital gaming and museum-based learning, such as: Is there a conflict between the physical assets of a museum and the ephemeral nature of digital tools? Can youth only learn by simulating the scientific process or can they work with the same tools and data as scientists to participate in and contribute to on-going investigations? To what extent do museum-led digital learning programs need to be centered in the museum’s physical space? How can a museum support youth to navigate their interest-driven learning and to develop a lifelong passion for science?
Audrey Aronowsky, Beth Sanzenbacher, Barry Joseph, Preeti Gupta, Beth Crownover
Fireside Chat:
What’s Next in Studying Online Social Networking? Future Research Directions for Creative, DIY-Based Sites
Social networking sites (SNS) have garnered a great deal of media attention (and some research interest) in recent years. Among these, sites which focus on the making and sharing of media, or Do-It-Yourself (DIY) social networking forums, are surfacing as spaces with great potential for learning and as supportive, engaging communities. In this Workshop, we seek to map out a new agenda for research on these types of sites over the next decade. We bring together several scholars who have studied DIY-based social networking forums to engage with graduate students and interested researchers in identifying the key questions, themes, and distinguishable attributes that will propel study on this genre of sites into the next generation.
Deborah Fields, Sara Grimes, Alecia Magnifico, Jayne Lammers, Kimberley Gomez, Jen Scott Curwood
You know what we need?@?#!! We need vision agendas, honeypots, neurotherapuetics, more stars, practice-based behavior change for schoolwork, and games for everyone...
You know the problem with talks? They're usually canned stuff the speaker has been "working" on for months and probably delivered 10 other times over the past year. You know what's great about fireside chats? The speaker can't do this. We can talk about the more emergent ideas the speaker has, the things they're likely to be thinking about NOW, that are likely more opinionated and not refined to the point of almost being conventional and dull.
Ben Sawyer has been involved in the use of games beyond entertainment since 1999. We asked him for a title and he sent through a stream of consciousness stitched into a title. He promises the result will be an original, opinionated, and useful discussion to anyone working on games for education, productivity, health and other large-scale national challenges.