Program

Early Registration Check-In

Racism, Sexism, and Video Games: Social Justice Campaigns and the Struggle for Gamer Identity

Lisa Nakamura is the Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor of American Cultures and Screen Arts and Cultures at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is the author of Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet (University of Minnesota Press: winner of the Asian American Studies Association 2010 book award in cultural studies), Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity and Identity on the Internet (Routledge, 2002) and co-editor of Race in Cyberspace (Routledge, 2000) and Race After the Internet (Routledge, 2011). She is writing a monograph on social inequality in digital media history and culture entitled 'Workers Without Bodies: Race, Gender, and Digital Labor'. She is a co-facilitator for FemTechNet, an experiment in open feminist education (femtechnet.newschool.edu) and serves as the Coordinator and Student Advisor for the Digital Studies initiative in the Department of American Cultures at the University of Michigan.

Early Registration Check-In

Registration Check-In and Continental Breakfast

Conference Welcome

Computer Game Studies: Moving Forward (?)

Mia Consalvo is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Game Studies and Design at Concordia University in Montreal. She is the co-editor of Sports Videogames and author of Cheating: Gaining Advantage of Videogames. She is completing The Life of a Game with Jason Begy and has almost (!) finished a book about Japan's influence on the videogame industry and game culture.

Mia runs the mLab, a space dedicated to innovating methods for studying games and game players, at Concordia. She's presented her work at professional as well as academic conferences including regular presentations at the Game Developers Conference. She is the President of the Digital Games Research Association, and has held positions at MIT, Ohio University, Chubu University in Japan and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Learn more about Mia.

Creativity in Leadership

Affect / Meaning

Crafting Meaningful Play: Care and Meaning Making in/as/of/through Games
By: Casey O'Donnell

Meaningful play has served as a useful analytic category for game design researchers. Drawing on Huizinga, who asserted that, "[a]ll play means something," (Huizinga, 1955, p. 1) Salen and Zimmerman set out to construct a productive framework for what they deemed, "meaningful play" (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004, pp. 31-36). In their mobilization of meaningful play, Salen and Zimmerman outline a framework for evaluating "successful game design [as] the creation of meaningful play" (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004, p. 33). The framework advanced includes two vectors for thinking about meaningful play. The first, the define as "discernible," meaning that a player's actions result in an identifiable shift in the underlying systems of a game. Players need to be able to recognize that their actions have identifiable effects. The second is "integration," meaning that actions ought to be larger than simple action/reaction. Put another way, actions should also "affect[s] the play experience at a later point in the game" (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004, p. 35). They also recognize that meaningful play will undoubtedly exceed even the formal systems of a game, that often meaningful play occurs in and around games.

From this foundation, the authors then elaborate on three core concepts, "design, systems and interactivity," (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004, p. 36) as the kind of Legos through which meaningful play is constructed. This perspective is particularly focused on players making sense of games and the world through their experiences of play, which is logical, considering the text is about making games. What I am arguing here, however, is that meaningful play, analytically, is a two-way street. Players do experience meaningful play. At the same time, developers actively constructing playful experiences by making meaning out of the world around them.

Playing with Affections, Digitally
By: Lindsay Grace

Affection games require players to flirt, hug, kiss, or make love to meet their goals. They are games whose core actions are affections. They are bereft of the complex narratives of dating simulations and differentiate themselves via short, situated play. Affection games are typically about that limited moment of affection, not the time before or after. As such, they are also short game experiences, lasting as little as thirty seconds per level.

In a society that still aligns digital play with violent play, affection games offer sharp and meaningful contrast. Affection games are the make love, not war experience of a contemporary play. These games afford players the opportunity to kiss their favorite celebrity (Kiss Justin Bieber), flirt their way into hearts (School Flirt), or practice pleasing an intimate partner (Give a Kiss Brazil). As a genre with demonstrable growth between 2010 and 2013(Grace, 2013), they offer an engaging and growing set of case studies.

Affection games also serve as cultural perspective on social norms, values and dynamics. They provide hints of the developer's own biases, demonstrating through game design a collection of philosophies about affection and human-human relationships. As the game making community asks more critical questions about gender, diversity and representation in games, affection games provide specific examples of the tensions therein.

Core challenges in analyzing and constructing affection games include cultural sensitivity and the procedural rhetoric of gender roles. From previously published work it is clear these games are marketed to young women but it is also clear that wider demographics plays them (Grace, 2013). They are particularly popular on mobile devices, where the scale and intimacy of play affords for an arguably more personal experience.

As the game community becomes increasingly self aware of gender inequality and encoded directives, the analysis of affection games provides a several key benefits. Like other game studies it can provide a unique perspective on the values of both the players and the game makers. Just as Brian Sutton's Smith's analysis of affection games (1959) provided critical perspective on adolescent life, analyzing digital affection games provides a contemporary peak into their media consumption habits and play. Second it provides an opportunity to effect the trajectory of such design by redirecting the standards. As a relatively young digital play genre, there are opportunities to effect the future of affection games through conscious design. It gives future designers the opportunity to turn misogynistic practice into something pro-social, to turn intolerant parody into tolerant play.

This paper provides an overview of the digital affection games genre, providing examples of the most popular affection games produced by independent developers. It also illustrates the few examples of affection game mechanics used in popular digital games. Following the migration of the genre from websites to mobile apps, the digital affection game genre demonstrates a new quantifiable growth.

Culling data from more than 100 published affection games for mobile devices, this paper aims to provide readers with a key set of considerations when understanding this complex digital game genre. These key observations include:

Certain Affections are more Popular than Others:

As the genre evolves it is clear that romantic affections are generally more popular than non-romantics ones. Games involving affectionate kissing and making love receive more installations than hugging and flirting games. While hugging remains the least popular of the affection games, kissing is the most widely distributed. There are 162 kissing games, toys and interactive guides on the Google Play store.

Cultural standards for expression and definition of affection:

Digital affection games are primarily developed by independent developers based in the Netherlands, Japan, China and the United States. The majority of these games share a cultural definition of affection that is perpetuated by popular western media. In these games people kiss as romantic expression or prelude to more intimate experiences. The result is a playable experience that combines artifacts from romantic comedy, harlequin novels, and a dash of children's good feeling media. Players sneak kisses at work, despite the pressure of work (Kiss Kiss Office) or they have the rare chance to enjoy a Mermaid's Kiss (ABC Casual Games).

The distribution of affection games

Any curated collection of affection games is subject to the inherent limitations of the distribution standards. In 2012, affection games were largely distributed via websites targeting female tweens and teens. Aligning with the growth of low cost mobile devices and the relative decline of Adobe's Flash, developers have ported many of these games to Android and iOS operating system. This new distribution model, comes with a new authority.

In the western world relatively restrictive distributors like Apple's App Store substantially limit the number of affection games distributed. Google Play's relatively lax content rules allow for an estimated 12x more affection games (based on parsed game descriptions in Google Play and Apple App Store). In 2013 Apple iOS users had less than 10 kissing games available to them. In the more fragmented Asian mobile markets, the affection game space is dense with cloned games on nearly opposing ends of the censorship spectrum and intellectual property rights.

Marketing Affection

Affection games seem to be marketing along a single spectrum. The self described "nice" affection games, involving kissing and hugging, are explicitly marketed to females. Their marketing language uses female pronouns, pastel palette and typically posits the player character as female. The red light affection games, involving sexual acts, often provide players with male player character and offer more gender neutral pronoun descriptions.

The Dark Side of Affection

Affection games also avail themselves for a less optimistic reading. Many of the games employ affection in Machiavellian terms. Players flirt merely to collect the hearts of young men or sneak kisses to get the greatest personal score. This is further complicated by affection games that involve alternative sexual content.

References:
ABC Casual Games (2014). Mermaid Kiss. [Android Tablet], Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.abccasualgames.mermaidkiss

AlexKeller (2013). School Flirt. [Android Tablet], Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alexkeller.schoolflirt

Examobile SA (2014). Give a Kiss Brazil. [Android Tablet], Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.examoblie.giveakiss

Girls Game 123 (2012). Kiss Kiss Office. [Android Tablet], Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.girlsgames123.kisskissoffice

Grace, L. D. (2013). Affection Games in Digital Play: A Content Analysis of Web Playable Games. Digital Games and Research Association (DIGRA) 2013.

JianQing (2013). Kiss Justin Bieber. [Android Tablet], Google Play

Raby, F., & Dunne, A. (2001). Design noir: The secret life of electronic objects. August and Birkhauser.

Sutton-Smith, B. (1959). The kissing games of adolescents in Ohio. Midwest Folklore, 9(4), 189-211.

Vaisaga Project (2009) Charming Girls 2 [Adobe Flash, Online Game] Girls Games Go Hilversum, Netherlands: played 12 February 2013. http://www.girlsgogames.com/game/charming_girls_2.html

Exploring the Human Condition through Empathy Games and 'Other People Simulators'
By: Richard Wirth

The recent upwelling of indie development and the increasing prevalence of empathic narratives in video games calls for a radical shift in research towards the potential that the field has begun to exhibit for relating the human condition. Gaming is progressing beyond the sole purpose of entertainment, and the medium has vast potential for imparting social and emotional intelligence, evoking empathy, and better understanding our fellow humans. This maturation of game narratives signals the beginning of a critically important movement in video games, which research and media trends are failing to reflect.

An often divisive area of discussion being actively researched in modern sociology and video games scholarship is that of the various effects that playing video games might have on audiences. Concern over potential links to behavioral issues is becoming increasingly frequent due to the news media's perception of games as predominantly violent and dangerous. In response to this public image, a large number of prominent game developers feel that the medium sorely needs to diversify its mainstream titles if it is to be widely accepted (Corriea, 2013). The current literature on social and emotional affect in games is similarly limited, as such concerns have driven research primarily towards the study of violence and aggression. This narrow focus has restricted the common games of study to such notoriously war-like or competitive titles as Call of Duty (Hasan, Bègue, & Bushman, 2013) and Grand Theft Auto (Gabbiadini, Riva, Andrighetto, Volpato, & Bushman, 2013), resulting in a gap in the literature where empathic games are concerned.

The rising prevalence of empathic narratives has even found its way into the first person shooter, which news media generally paints as the most dangerous and morally deficient genre of games. In a major evolution since the series premiered in 1981, Wolfenstein: The New Order uses its intensely violent and graphic themes to not only entertain, but to highlight a moral ambiguity in the way video games typically represent Nazis. Moral psychology studies have taken initial steps into observing the effects of this narrative design, claiming that pairing emotionally affective storytelling with interactive media can lead to the desire for moral cleansing (Gollwitzer & Melzer, 2012), which is indicative of the ability for games to reach players on a very personal level.

This paper looks to expand the discussion by analyzing empathic games that feature complex and private themes; namely, issues of depression, family violence, disability, cancer, and suicide. Within the past few years independent developers have gained a strong presence within gaming culture, bringing about a shift in content towards such serious and profoundly affective themes - what many consider to be the new frontier of gaming (Campbell, 2013). Initial studies have shown that empathic and prosocial gaming may lead to a decreased experiencing of schadenfreude (Greitemeyer, Osswald, & Brauer, 2010), and many games with a central focus on emotionally affective narrative such as The Walking Dead - which won over 80 industry and audience-chosen awards - have received widespread acclaim. Through analysis of games featuring narrative and systemic empathy, and experimental projects known colloquially as 'Other People Simulators' such as That Dragon, Cancer and Depression Quest, the role of video games as a medium for relating the human condition is explored.

The win, the worth, and the work of play: Exploring phenomenal entertainment values in online gaming experiences
By: Jaime Banks and Nicholas David Bowman

Popular opinion of digital games tends to classify them as toys, diversions and distractions, however this focus on games solely as sources of hedonic pleasure is theoretically, empirically, and phenomenologically myopic – it obscures the full range of affective, emotional, and cognitive experiences that one can have when playing digital games. In this vein, this study explores the phenomenal experience of enjoyment and appreciation in online games, addressed through players' descriptions of favorite gameplay memories. Through emergent thematic analysis of these descriptions and statistical analysis of individual differences, we demonstrate that elements of online game content can be both enjoyed as ego-driven reward and achievement and appreciated relationally with respect to other players, characters, and the gameworld. However, memorable game experiences are not necessarily experienced as having entertainment value, such that games scholars should be more inclusive of what is considered as important to players – potentially the win, the worth, and the work of play.

Make the Course You Want to Take: MSU's Surviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse - Usf qgm kmjnanw s fwo osq gx dwsjfafy*

The Meaning of Casual: Serious Dialogues about Casual Games

Game History and Preservation: The Roles of Industry, Institutions, and Fans

• Video Games
• Other games (board games, arcade games, pinball, etc.)
• Technological obsolescence
• Emulation
• The roles of fans, industry, and public institutions
• Ports, remakes, demakes, hacks, homebrew
• Intellectual property and copyright law

Education - STEM

An Empirical Comparison of a Video Game, Digital Video, and a Printed Text for Recall, Comprehension and Solving a STEM Word Problem. (Top Paper Award)
By: Brock Dubbels

When compared to a digital video, or a printed text, a video game should be more considerate for promoting learning, requiring much less cognitive processing for recall comprehension, and problem solving through distributing cognition. Complexity cannot be designed out of a task, but it can be off-loaded until the user is capable of taking on the entirety of the task. By design, a video game off-loads complexity in comprehension by providing multimodal representation, which diminishes the need for visualization strategies and prior knowledge. It may also structure incremental learning through practice, feedback, and rehearsal--activities traditionally offered by a teacher in one-on-one training for the development of metacognition and the development of learning strategies. In this study, a sample of 132 students was randomly assigned to one of three media conditions, controlled for interaction and feedback: video game > video > print (?=.75). Each participant was pretested for prior knowledge, working memory, comprehension and reading ability, and media preference. Results indicate that the video game was much more effective for identification of causal relationships between narrative events, along with statistical significance in improved recall, comprehension, problem solving through analysis provided from protocol analysis (walkthrough of CNA), multiple choice questions, and a word problem.

Digital Game Based Learning for Undergraduate Calculus Education: Immersion, calculation, and conceptual understanding (Top Paper Award)
By: Yu-Hao Lee, Norah Dunbar, Keri Kornelson, Scott Wilson, Ryan Ralston, Milos Savic, Sepideh Stewart, Emily Lennox, William Thompson and Javier Elizondo

Digital games have the potential to help develop higher-education mathematical skills and promote deep conceptual understanding. Using a digital game for undergraduate calculus that we developed, this study has two goals: The first goal is to investigate the effectiveness of using a digital game to teach undergraduate-level calculus in terms of improving task immersion, sense of control, calculation skills, and conceptual understanding. The second goal is to examine student behavior during gameplay to investigate how digital game affordances can facilitate conceptual understanding of calculus. 132 undergraduate students were recruited to participate in a controlled lab experiment. Students were randomly assigned to either a game-playing condition, a practice quiz condition, or a no-treatment control condition. We collected two types of data, self-reported survey data and behavioral-tracking data recorded by the server during gameplay. The results showed that students who played the game reported highest task immersion but not sense of control. Students in the game condition also performed significantly better in conceptual understanding and equally well in calculation skills as students who solved a practice quiz and the control group. Gameplay behavioral-tracking data was used to examine the effects of feedback and visual manipulation on conceptual understanding. The study has implications for undergraduate mathematics education and digital game based learning design.

The Differences Between Problem-Based and Drill & Practice Games on Motivations to Learn (Top Paper Award)
By: Menno Deen and Ben A.M. Schouten

We witness two trends in educational game design: a Problem-Based Learning and Drill & Practice Training approach. The general assumption appears to favor Problem-Based approach above Drill & Practice, in regard to players' motivation. However, the differences between the approaches are seldom studied.

We examined the motivational impact of one game consisting of a Problem-Based-, and a Drill & Practice learning mode. The first presents players with an ill-defined problem and offers various solutions to a challenge. In the Drill & Practice mode there is only one correct answer.

Secondary school students played the game and completed a pre- and post questionnaire about their experienced regulatory style for studying mathematics. Results suggest that the Problem-Based game may decline the experience of feeling controlled by others to engage in mathematics learning. In comparison, players of the Drill & Practice game reported increased intrinsic motivations towards mathematics.

Birds of a Feather Lunch (on your own)

• Learning and Education
• Health Games
• Research and Funding
• Design and Development
• Students
• Contagious Creativity and Leadership

Admissions and Discharges: The Ward Game as a Course of Treatment for Education's Mental Health

Design

Designing Video Games for Older Adults and Caregivers
By: Kathrin Maria Gerling and Regan Mandryk

Providing care for older adults is a challenging task, particularly when close family members are involved: instead of spending quality time with the other person, caregiving relationships often focus on daily needs of the older adult, leaving little room for persons to communicate outside the caregiving context. In this paper, we examine the design of interactive technologies to support caregiving relationships through play. We present an exploratory study where ten caregiving dyads played cooperative motion-based video games, and follow up with two case studies to analyze how video game play affects older adults and family caregivers. Our results show that playing games generally represents an enjoyable activity for older adults and caregivers that can be integrated into the caregiving context. Based on our findings, we highlight design opportunities, and outline core challenges that need to be addressed to design accessible games that provide positive shared experiences for a wide range of caregiving dyads.

Ludic Performance: Embodied, Game-Based, Data-Driven Experiences (Paper Version)
By: Heidi Boisvert

Our current technologies, namely the Internet, mobile devices, and now wearables, are numbing our biological self through a form of what Marshall McLuhan referred to as "self-amputation." This talk is a critical examination and a creative reversal of the legacy of cybernetics. It seeks to both interrogate the underlying rhetoric fueling the post-biological technocracy to which we are unconsciously ceding control of our cognitive and affective faculties, and also explores how embodied, bio-adaptive game-based networked performance practices can serve as an antidote. Through two case studies of my own interdisciplinary collaborations, [radical] signs of life and Beware of the Dandelions, this practice-based research attempts to recuperate the biological self by 1) re-inscribing the body, affect and the senses into current techno-utopian discourse, and 2) re-stimulating the peripheral nervous system through kinesthetic play and bio-adaptive feedback.

[radical] signs of life is one of the first large-scale uses of biotechnology to integrate networked bodies and interactive dance. The work externalizes the mind's non-hierarchical distribution of thought through responsive, rule-based choreography and a database of phrases. Music is generated from the dancers' muscles and blood flow via biophysical sensors that capture sound waves from the performer's bodies. This data triggers complex neuro-biological algorithms to be projected onto multiple screens as 3D imagery. As the audience interacts with the images produced, they enter into a dialogue with the dancers. Conceptually, the piece is an embodied examination of self-organizing systems and the increasing disparity between the encroachment of bio-data and the quiet discord of bio-memory.

Beware of the Dandelions (work-in-progress) is an alternative reality game-based, immersive theatre performance that teaches social movement building through complex science. Through a sci-fi parable, the work integrates a data-driven narrative with game-based collaborative problem-solving communicated through live hip-hop and DJ performances. The audience--players--wear biophysical sensors to control a 3D game engine projection mapped onto a 24 x 12 foot sentient pod. Players spatially trigger real-time story content consisting of data visualizations, surveillance cameras, systems communication, embedded clues and puzzles, and embodied social interactions. They are tasked with interpreting the flow of non-linear information to make sense of the narrative in order to act collectively to transform the framework of the AI system--a metaphor for systems of oppression.

Both case studies attempt to define a new genre--"ludic performance"--and offer an alternative technological paradigm, one which highlights embodied differentials; the irreducible and changing differences of bodies and contexts that foreground unpredictability and emergence, and resist social control and quantification. By reifying the centrality of the body, affect and the senses--the messiness of subjectivity--these works reject the human API, and instead attempt to establish mixed reality conditions for the cultivation of a social ecology that optimizes our ability to "experience our own intensity" suspended in multiplicity and relational becoming.

What is ludic about ludic design?
By: Cedric Mivielle and Annie Gentes

This paper focuses on ludic design as part of the paradigm of design research that explores new ways to implement computer systems. In this paper, we want to further explore the specificity of ludic design. First, we introduce Bill Gaver's definition. Second, we compare his claim to theories of ludicity that were developed in sociology and psychology. We then analyze a portfolio of artifacts to better understand how ludicity is embedded in the designs. Finally, we come up with three additional characteristics of ludic design: unconventionality, serendipity, and reflexivity through breaching experiment. These three dimensions of ludic artifacts also help us better define ludicity as openness that is an activity that is generative of meaning and ultimately new artifacts and practices.

Game Design: Art and Science
By: Tobi Saulnier and Elizabeth Mclaren

This paper discusses the development processes, design choices, and outcomes of a project that experimentally tested the impact of a 2D casual, educational game (CYCLES) on training players to recognize and mitigate three cognitive biases: Confirmation Bias, Fundamental Attribution Error, and Bias Blind Spot. Different versions of the game were used to examine the impact of three game design variables on learning and engagement: avatar customization, visual style, and narrative style. The goal was to determine how these factors influenced outcome measures and, in addition, to determine whether a game had more impact on learning that an educational video on the same material. Following the discussion of the results of this testing, this paper then delves into the deeper questions related to applying the scientific process to optimize game design.

NEH Grant Workshop for Games (Part 1)

What Can E-Sports Tell Us About Learning?

• Chris Georgen (Learning Sciences Program, Indiana University) will describe perspectives on understanding systems thinking in Dota 2.
• Christian de Luna (Teachers College, Columbia University) will examine how teamwork emerges in League of Legends.
• Timothy Young (Connected Learning Alliance), will discuss how learning happens in the StarCraft community between building social organizations and participating in top level tournaments.
• Genevieve Conley (Researcher, Riot Games), will describe the collaborative effort between design and research to create a fun, achievable, and rewarding onboarding experience in League of Legends.
• Sean Duncan (Learning Sciences Program, Indiana University) will serve as panel moderator.

Challenges in music education games research and development

• Exploring the domain: In what ways can music exploration and education be meaningfully integrated in digital games? Are there best practices or unique experiments that we can learn from?
• Problem definition: What are specific challenges to music education that we can address or at least need to take into account in game design (e.g. the need for exercise and repetition and keeping people motivated throughout)?
• Selecting context of use: As the debate continues whether music education belongs in compulsory daytime education, we similarly might ask: Can music education games find their place in daytime education, specialized after-school programs and at home?
• Including learning models: How do we deal with different and possibly even conflicting theories and empirical insights on motivation and learning?
• Concept development: What are key requirements for music education games? For example, are improvisation, social interaction and performance critical, and most importantly, why are they critical?
• Prototype development: When is automated feedback and when is teacher feedback on musical performance more optimal? To what extent should learners themselves control the learning process?
• Evaluation: Music education games may require and promote different forms of learning (e.g. physical and digital skills, knowledge acquisition). Which are important indicators and caveats in assessing and evaluating music education game prototypes?
• Content: On the one hand, music or songs with large educational value may not necessarily be content children like to use. On the other hand, popular music may not be the most interesting content from an educational viewpoint. How do we choose appropriate content?

Education in the Classroom

What's in an (educational) game? Ub3r mechanics and 1337 motifs!
By: Spencer Greenhalgh, Liz Owens Boltz and Matthew Koehler

What makes an educational game effective, playable, and engaging over time is a multi-faceted and complex issue. Some scholars have pointed to the importance of themes in providing a game's setting and story, as they provide important first impressions of the suitability of a game for educational purposes (Mayer & Harris, 2010; Sicart, 2009). In contrast, other scholars have argued that it is the mechanics and rules of a game that do the teaching: Mechanics present a particular model of the world (Bogost, 2007; Koster, 2010; Sicart, 2009) and invite players to learn the behaviors that the model associates with success. Oftentimes, the themes and mechanics of a game offer different viewpoints on the educational purpose of a game. By way of example, Mayer and Harris describe the non-digital game Oregon (2010). Although Oregon's theme -- the settling of the American West -- appears to make it suitable for social studies classes, its mechanics -- playing cards that correspond to Cartesian coordinates -- are more likely to teach skills associated with mathematics. This disagreement is more than just a theoretical concern: It presents the possibility that educators may pick games that do not actually teach intended lessons.

To further understand the roles that mechanics and themes play in making effective educational games, we analyzed data retrieved from the social networks and game databases BoardGameGeek and VideoGameGeek. Our analyses focus on answering the following questions: First, are educational games more likely to be described in terms of theme or mechanics? Second, what mechanics and themes are most often associated with educational games? Third, is there a significant difference between the mechanics and themes associated with well-received games and those associated with poorly-received games? In answering these questions, we analyzed every digital and non-digital game listed under the "Educational" Category on BoardGameGeek or under the "Educational" Genre on VideoGameGeek. We then used the tagging systems on each site to extract descriptors about each game. In some instances these tags directly represent "mechanics" or "themes;" in other cases raters determined if a tag related to mechanic or descriptor (or neither). Many games were also rated enough to have an average user rating and an administrator-corrected "Geek Rating." These data make possible analyses of the frequency and distribution of mechanics and themes in educational games, as well as potential differences in mechanics and themes between highly rated and less-popular games.

This study has implications for both research and practice. The results of this study will provide researchers with a descriptive picture of the mechanics and themes are associated with educational games. Such a picture may provide researchers with insights as to the relative importance (and interplay) between mechanics and theme in educational games. Furthermore, a study of educational games that focuses on mechanics may better acquaint practitioners with common mechanics in digital and non-digital games, giving them a more suitable way of choosing games for learning experiences. Designers of educational games may also be able to use these results to design more engaging educational games.

Types of Talk around Video Games in a Classroom Setting
By: Christian Schmieder, Amanda Barany and Kurt Squire

The adventure game Citizen Science is a free, online, flash-based educational tool designed to support engagement and playful learning around science topics (Gaydos & Squire, 2012; Squire, Barnett, Grant & Higgenbotham, 2004). The game encourages players to take on the roles of both scientific researchers and environmental activists - practicing elements of scientific argumentation, collecting lake science data, conducting environmental exploration and discovery, and advocating to the virtual community on behalf of the lakes. As a game designed to reflect the real-world problems facing lakes and watersheds in Madison, Wisconsin and other temperate areas, the goal of the project is to understand how Citizen Science can serve as a "springboard" that inspires student interest in lake ecology content (Squire, 2004), and encourages players to connect in-game activity to real-world understanding and action (Gaydos, 2013).

Previous research on Citizen Science highlights the game's capacity to support learning in classroom settings, and also discusses ways in which classroom environments can shape student experiences with the game and content (Gaydos, 2013). The following research focuses on interactions between educators and learners as an aspect of the learning experience when Citizen Science is integrated into a class curriculum.

Opening the Bottleneck: Descriptive examples of teachers integrating video games for learning.
By: Seann Dikkers

Using digital games for learning has a ten year history of documented potential (Connolly, Boyle, MacArthur, Hainey, & Boyle, 2012). Classroom and informal trials show that learners can be more engaged in learning (Salen, 2011), think critically about semiotic systems (Gee, 2003), and participate in high levels of discussion around game spaces (Steinkuehler & Duncan, 2008). Games have great potential, but mainstream educational adoption of those games relies on a robust understanding of teacher appropriation skills toward use. Little work has been done to document or provide working descriptions of how teachers 1) find, 2) validate, 3) test, and ultimately 4) use digital gaming as a pedagogical device. This information is essential for both teacher professional development (PD) experts and for those that design games for learning with the hope that they will get used in classroom designs. What may seem to be a 'bottleneck' for widespread adoption, may just be a design problem. We ask how teachers that already have used games in the classroom came to that professional decision and how they prepared themselves for classroom adoption? This study is a multiple case analysis of teachers (n=17) that, despite common barriers to adoption, have fully integrated the video game Minecraft into a variety of learning contexts, subject areas, and ages. We find that there are indeed common patterns of 1) discovery, 2) trusted network and student reaction validation processes, 3) trial and iterative practices resembling a developmental PD pattern, and 4) multiple pedagogical approaches for the role of video games for learning. We suggest that each of these elements can be easily integrated into teacher training programs and/or can be a guiding set of principles for the design of future educational game designers. Final rounds of analysis will be ready for presentation by Fall 2014.

MathLand: A Gamified Content Delivery Method for Mathematics Students Who Struggle

Community / Identity

Playing Animal: Coded Human/Animal Identities in Video Games
By: Juan F. Belmonte

This paper studies how computer code and social norms coordinately manage human and animal identities in video games. Just as characters' actions are largely defined by computer code, identity-defining actions are also defined in real life by sets of social norms. Both computer code and social norms concur in the articulation of identity. My claim is, however, that both computer code and identitarian social norms have a binary, arborescent nature. As such, animal and human identities in video games are based on branching either/or dichotomies whose complexity varies depending on the identity being portrayed. In most cases, human characters follow normative identity discourses with little or no exploration of alternatives modes of being in the world. It is, in fact, in animal characters placed in borderline positions (such as animals not being entirely animal nor human or possessing an indeterminate gender that makes them act in unpredictable ways) where new forms of understanding human identities can be found. In order to substantiate my claims this paper will analyze representations of animals (such as the feral wolves of Skyrim and the sapient Red XIII in Final Fantasy VII) as well as humans (from games such as Persona 3, Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age, among others).

The Bone Wars: Design and Development, Social Media and Community
By: Paul Gestwicki and Charlie Ecenbarger

The Bone Wars is an original educational video game about the historic 19th-century feud between rival paleontologists, Othniel C. Marsh and Edward D. Cope. This two-player game explores their race to claim dig sites and discover new species, but its only by publishing their results that the players earn the fame that delivers victory. Just as their historic characters did, a successful player will end the game with little money, few friends, many publications, and crates of unanalyzed fossils. The game was designed and developed in a student-centered, faculty-mentored studio experience by a team of ten undergraduates and one graduate student. The team followed established practices of game design and agile software development, making effective use of a dedicated lab environment. The incremental and iterative development process was publicly shared on the team's blog and on Twitter, and we describe the impact that this had on the team and on the community of potential players.

Co-creating games with children - A case study (Top Paper Award)
By: Karen Mouws and Lizzy Bleumers

While involving non-designers in design processes has become common practice, the competencies required for participating in this process, and the effective mechanisms for collaboratively acquiring, refining and applying these competencies deserve more scientific attention. In this paper, we investigate the role of creative production competencies and practices (e.g. problem-solving and self-evaluation) and cooperative learning mechanisms (e.g. building trust and group processing) in a specific case of game co-design. In this case, 21 school children in Flanders (Belgium) were asked to create game concepts together with a game designer, their teacher, and co-design facilitators. Over the course of a project week at school, participants moved from idea generation to presenting their game concepts, by means of collaboratively created prototypes. Our case study, combining observation and survey methods, reveals that self-evaluation and openness to sharing ideas emerged spontaneously, but the critical analysis of digital games and crediting existing work requires explicit support. The spontaneous referencing to and remixing of popular games and other cultural products can be a starting point for co-design facilitators to bring up these topics. In addition, our observations suggest that technical, critical and creative practices may be influenced by leadership, trust and communication. Indeed, when creative choices become part of concerted efforts and group deliberation, progress in the creative production process critically depends on group functioning. We conclude that by grounding co-design in theory on cooperative learning and media literacy, co-design activities may be understood better and new avenues for supporting co-creators can be identified.

Avatar Projecting Actual, Ideal, or Ought Self: Which One Do We Feel Close To?
By: Young June Sah, Hsin-Yi Sandy Tsai, Rabindra Ratan, Wei Peng and Issidoros Sarinopoulos

Psychological connection to an avatar in a video game increases hedonic (e.g., enjoyment, Klimmt, Hefner, & Vorderer, 2009) and utilitarian values of the video game (e.g., behavior change, Fox, Bailenson, & Binney, 2009). Previous studies showed that when customizing an avatar, rather than using a ready-made one, people feel psychologically connected to their avatar (Bailey, Wise, & Bolls, 2009; Lim & Reeves, 2009). While we know the superiority of a customized avatar over a generic one in making a video game enjoyable, there has been little research regarding how to guide players in customizing their avatar. That is, in what ways should we guide people to model their avatar? Should we, for example, advise them to customize the avatar to be as similar to their actual appearance as possible, or should we suggest that they should create an avatar as an idealized version of self, projecting wishful, even unreal qualities?

The question of how to customize an avatar is important because it influences the level of avatar-player connection and immersion in the video game. Jin (2010) found that people were likely to develop a psychological attachment to an avatar when an avatar reflected an ideal self, rather than when the avatar mirrored an actual self. Further, another study showed that an idealized avatar made people feel more immersed in the video game than did a generic one (Jin, 2009). Following this line of research, the current study examined the effect of different self-images--reflected in an avatar--on players' game experience. Specifically, we investigated how an avatar reflecting three self domains--i.e., actual, ideal, and ought self (suggested by Higgins, 1987)--influence players' perceptions of the avatar (i.e., avatar identification, similarity, attractiveness, and unnaturalness) and subjective experience of being in the game environment (i.e., sense of presence, Lombard & Ditton, 1997).

NEH Grant Workshop for Games (Part 2)

Meaningful / Meaningless Play: The Brave New World of Play and Games in Educational Contexts

Gender, Inclusive Game Design, & Gaming Culture: An Industry & Academic Discussion

Education in the Univeristy

"The Gradequest Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs" - Evaluating the Second Iteration of a Gameful Undergraduate Course
By: Bob De Schutter

The use of game design techniques in a non-gaming context - or 'gamification' (Sebastian Deterding, Dixon, Khaled, & Nacke, 2011) - offers the promise to make education more motivating, engaging and enjoyable to students. This study reports on both the design and evaluation the second iteration of a gameful class (N= 19) that incorporates a variety of game design techniques through an online application named 'Gradequest'. The course was evaluated using multiple methods. First, a quantitative survey was used to collect data to measure levels of intrinsic motivation and engagement for the course. Second, a teaching log was recorded to capture the instructor's perspective. Third, a focus group session was held, and finally, a Small Group Instructional Diagnosis (Clark & Redmond, 1982) was held at the midpoint of the semester. The project concludes that the applied gameful instruction did not necessary lead to higher levels of intrinsic motivation or engagement in comparison to traditional teaching methods, and that further improvements to the design and documentation of the course are necessary. However, further qualitative inspection indicates that the students appreciate the gameful approach, and that the approach does have potential. The findings of the study are used to formulate recommendations towards the design of gameful instruction, in particular through its assessment of the various game elements that were incorporated in the gameful course design.

Applying Gamification to College Student Retention and Graduation: Play Test and Pilot Study
By: Stephanie Coopman, Ge Gao, James Morgan and Ted Coopman

This paper reports on a project to apply gamification to undergraduate advising to improve current students' retention and graduation rates. One stumbling block to students staying in and completing their bachelor's degree is adapting to university culture and practices. An online quest designed to orient transfer students to the university was play tested with 44 students currently attending the university. Positive responses centered on the quest charting the path to graduation, creating awareness of campus programs, encouraging students to get more involved in campus events, providing a check list for opportunities at the university, giving a guide for what students can expect from school, and keeping students on track. Suggestions for improvement included incorporating more opportunities to interact online with other students, providing greater context for each activity, explaining students' options in more detail, and incorporating videos and images. The paper outlines the rationale that drove this project, the project design and its initial testing, modifications made based on the initial play testing, and describes the next step in implementing the pilot project with Fall 2014 transfer students.

Expanding the Game Design Space - Development of computer games in higher education
By: Lasse Juel Larsen and Gunver Majgaard

This abstract regards game design research in educational settings. It focuses on computer game design in higher education especially education of engineers. The notion of game design space encapsulates the entire development process from beginning to end with emphasis on game design thinking in the development of computer games. Through the last fire years we have been teaching game design courses at the university. Our goal have been twofold: 1) we wanted to create an easily understandable game design model to communicate something as complex as game design and 2) make sure our students learned to act, think, and feel like game designers. In order to meet such an ambition we have over the years discovered a need for clear framing. The first year our framing of the game design process, the outcome, and game design thinking was deficient. Over the years our framing of the design space were expanded, it became better defined and multifaceted. The results in the classroom quickly materialised both in relation to development of greater games and to divergent and creative thinking in the design space.

The expanded game design space consists of four separate yet interconnected layers in the process of game development. The first layer addresses the importance of framing with a clear game design assignment, formulation of intended player experience and description of game mechanics. The second layer creates game design thinking from six different parameters of game design elected in regard to framing of the game design assignment. The third layer sees a clear correspondence between formal elements of computer games and the structure of problem-based creativity. It addresses how game design challenges can be stated and how creative solutions can be measured. The fourth and final layer demonstrates how clear framing can act as guideline for evaluating game design thinking and for measuring solutions made in development process. To strengthen our notion of expanded design space we will present examples from our game design courses.

An Experiment on How Adult Students Can Learn by Designing Engaging Learning Games
By: Charlotte Lærke Weitze

This article presents and discusses the first iteration of a design-based research experiment focusing on how to create a motivating gamified learning design, one that facilitates a deep learning process for adult students making their own learning games.

Using games for learning has attracted attention from many teachers as well as researchers because of their promise to motivate students and provide them with deep learning experiences. Part of the young adult target group in our current case has motivational issues in the formal learning environment, and the use of learning games is therefore worth investigating as a motivational learning strategy. As meaning can be constructed through the manipulation of materials, which facilitates reflection and new ways of thinking, the use of learning games in education is taken one step further into the building of learning games in collaborative settings. It is proposed that this may be an approach that enables deep and motivational learning processes.

The paper discusses which elements, practices, and processes are essential when creating innovative and motivating learning designs for teachers and adult students. This gamified learning design enables the students to be the designers of their own learning, by allowing them to create their own digital learning games, while implementing learning goals from cross-disciplinary subject matters (Figure 1). Another focus has been to create a learning design that scaffolds the students' own learning-game-design process, and enables teachers to evaluate whether the students have been successful in learning their subject matter.

The findings suggest that the current learning design comes partway toward facilitating learning and making the experience engaging. But to enable a deeper learning process, there is room for improvement. Future topics of research are: how students are facilitated in establishing learning goals, how teachers and students engage in the learning experience, and introductory suggestions for students on how to design the learning-experience inside their learning game.

Keynote - Meaningful Leverage: Breaking the System of Ignorance

Erin Hoffman is an author and video game designer. Erin Hoffman was born in San Diego and now lives in northern California, where she works as Game Design Lead at GlassLab, a Bill and Melinda Gates and Macarthur Foundation supported three-year initiative to establish integrated formative assessment educational games. She is the author of the Chaos Knight series from Pyr books, beginning with Sword of Fire and Sea, followed by Lance of Earth and Sky in April 2012 and concluding with Shield of Sea and Space in 2013.

Her video game credits include DragonRealms, Shadowbane: The Lost Kingdom, GoPets: Vacation Island, Kung Fu Panda World, and FrontierVille. She writes for the award-winning online magazine The Escapist, and has had fiction and poetry in Asimov's Science Fiction, Electric Velocipede, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and more. In 2004 her blog on game industry working conditions, "ea_spouse", was covered by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and LA Times, and is now referenced in numerous game history and corporate history studies.

Erin's games have won multiple awards and have been played by millions of kids and adults worldwide. She is multiethnic, with family names including Lee, Asakawa (yonsei), and Drake in addition to Hoffman.

Dinner Break (on your own)

Conference Reception, Game Exhibition, and Poster Session

• the latest research findings presented in the conference poster session
• an exhibition of industry and academia created games
• a great time to mix and mingle with your fellow conference attendees

Poster Presentations

A Case Study Exploring Preservice Teachers' Tension with Online Distance Mentoring in Simulations
By: Jennifer Killham

The purpose of this qualitative action research study was to explore pre-service teachers' mentoring roles in an online educational simulation involving character roleplay. The aim of the online simulation was to enrich young people's ability to think historically through the use of distance mentoring. Preservice teacher/mentors adopted a historical figure to portray and mentored using this persona. The rational for focusing on the experience of the preservice teacher/mentor, as opposed to the experience of the middle school mentee, was that existing research pertaining to mentoring programs focuses almost exclusively on the benefits of mentoring for the mentee. Bullen et. al (2010) and Edwards et al. (2011) stress that little is known about the metamorphic nature of mentoring for the mentor. This poster presents an in-depth analysis of one of the preservice teacher/mentors in this study. Findings include tensions related to mentors' desire to stay in character while shaping student learning, and mentors' focus on attending to student learning while also attending to themselves as learners.

A New Definition for Games: Meaningful Play
By: Mark Chen

This paper is a personal exploration of game definitions and meaning in games, going from more formal definitions that include inherent elements of games to subjective meaning-making in specific game enactments. The paper also details how these definitions affect game design for learning and why many current learning games miss out on the true potential for gaming.

An Investigation of Gender Motivations in Competitive Gaming
By: Joseph Fordham, John Samalik, Peter Burroughs and Rabindra Ratan

While a number of academic studies conclude that women gravitate towards more casual and social gaming experiences, there are a number of female gamers driven by the competitive nature of more male-dominated genres and consistently challenging this notion. This study presents initial conclusions drawn from interviews with female video game players attending a local gaming convention and participating in competitive tournaments. These interviews focused on their own history of playing games and how they became involved with competitive play. While interviewees expressed a strong competitive drive, especially when playing against male opponents, their original reasons for becoming involved with more competitive gaming experiences could be viewed as largely social, expressive, or even casual. Overall, this study suggests that while many female gamers may not be initially driven towards competitive gaming experiences, other factors may motivate female players towards them.

Designing Solving the Incognitum: Toward Automatic Co-regulation based on Play Style in Educational Games
By: Jichen Zhu, Aroutis Foster and Glen Muschio

As computer games become more sophisticated, players of educational games are given an increasing amount of agency, or learner autonomy, in how they interact with the content. However, studies have shown that unchecked learner autonomy and hence pure discovery-based learning is not the best strategy for learning. Most learners, especially in the initial learning stages, do not have the necessary declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge to be metacognitively aware of what needs to be done (Hadwin & Oshige, 2011; Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2006). By contrast, guided-discovery based learning has many advantages in scaffolding active learning and nurturing complex understanding of content (Alfieri, Brooks, Aldrich, & Tenenbaum, 2011) through co-regulation between the learner and the "advanced other" such as a teacher.

In this poster, we focus on the design of "Solving the Incognitum," a point-and-click-based interactive learning environment for teaching the relationships between geological time and fossil records. In an environment based on the historical Charles Willson Peale's Museum of Art and Science, the player can locate and assemble the bones of a mastodon by answering questions about the museum exhibits.

Factors Affecting Active Video Gaming in Adolescence
By: Ji Hye Choi and Hua Wang

Despite the growing popularity of digital games as a new means of promoting physical activity, none of studies have identified important predictors of active video gaming while a number of factors have emerged as significant correlates of physical activity. Based on the ecological model of health behavior, personal, environmental, and social factors were used as three main constructs in this study, and we proposed and examined a structural model discussing the effects of personal, environmental, social factors on active video gaming and physical activity. In addition, the causal relationships between active video gaming and sedentary behavior, physical activity and sedentary behavior, as well as sedentary behavior and BMI were also examined in this study. Results indicated that only social factor was a significant predictor of active video gaming, even though personal, environmental, social factors were significantly associated with physical activity. Although both active video gaming and physical activity had significant influences on sedentary behavior, active video gaming was positively associated with sedentary behavior while physical activity was negatively associated with sedentary behavior. Finally, a positive association between sedentary behavior and BMI was found in this study.

Improve Learning Through Game Development
By: Daniel Bell

Franklin University's Interactive Media Design Degree utilizes a project based approach to teaching. Projects include games for instruction, entertainment, and marketing. The Poster Session details the following items:

• Description of the IMD Program
• Discussion of how Project Based Learning through the design and development of games is a highly effective and engaging.
• Assessment results and student satisfaction display
• Story Board of the Program Capstone
• Presentation of completed student projects

Is the Play the Thing? Video Versus Board and the Space Between
By: Nicolas Lalone

At the 6th Joint International Conference of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour stated that, "We have to understand the computer itself as an institution." The computer is an institution much like the societies and cultures that birthed it - disjointed, hegemonic, asymmetric in their understanding of what the computer is for, and trapped in the ontology of the language computation was designed through - English. This mishmash of development we call a computer has followed a singular path since the personal computer was released in the early 1980s and has grown to a near ubiquitous state (Dourish, 2004).

This research in progress examines the changes in gameplay, strategy, and communication as a game moves from one end of the dialectic to the other. To be more specific, this study analyzes the changes in behavior between how players engage each other in a table top game - Settlers of Catan - and how those same players change their strategies once they play those same players in a virtual version of that same table top game - the Xbox version of Settlers of Catan. These players will be fully recorded during their initial play sessions in a focus group style manner. After 12 sessions, we will move those players to 12 virtual games. The virtual games will be recorded via game capture devices and the players themselves will be interviewed after their sessions to discuss the differences in their gameplay.

KNOWing how to MMORPG: Gamer Knowledges and Knowledge Acquisition
By: Phill Alexander

This poster examines the different types of knowledge that MMORPG players develop as they learn and play the game. Data is drawn from two extensive case-study based research sessions (one with individual players of the game City of Heroes and one of a ten member raiding group in World of Warcraft), Drawing from the work of Aristotle, various literacy scholars including James Paul Gee, activity theory, actor network theory, and the concept of "practices," what is presented here is a matrix of complex gamer knowledge types. The matrix is accompanied by rationale and examples of how the knowledges function in game experiences.

Losing Ourselves in the Game: Moving Towards an Understanding of Loss and the Development of Tools for Analyzing the Loss Experience
By: Justin Tokarski

Loss is one of the most recognizable and essential elements of games, yet there exists a distinct lack of qualitative work on Loss as the sole subject of inquiry. Beginning from the perspective of Object Oriented Ontology, an ontography of Loss was conducted to incorporate as many facets of being as possible to create a full understanding of this abstract concept. As a result of this investigation, four dimensions of Loss were singled out as the most informative and useful in understanding the concept of Loss; The Digital, The Design, The Value, and The Experience. The Digital dimension, initially inspired by McKenzie Wark's analysis of the intersection between analog and digital in Gamer Theory (2007), contains the base conditionals which determine the state of the player within the game with respect to their status as a winner, a loser, or a continuing player. The Design dimension draws most heavily on traditional elements of game design, particularly the Design, Play, Experience framework developed by Brian Winn, and is concerned with the translation of loss conditionals into gameplay moments which are understandable to the player.

The four dimensions of Loss and the ontography of Loss within Mega Man will be presented. The capability of co-opting these techniques for future qualitative analyses of games, and the usefulness of such analyses, will be explored. We will also examine the applications of Loss analysis on design with particular focus being given to comparative analysis in the design of games for entertainment and the utility of Loss analysis in choosing, or designing, games for research.

Making a game of medical entry: Generating authentic responses in selection for medicine using a gamified approach
By: Lauren S Ferro, Philip J MacKinnon and Philip Poronnik

Understanding the dynamics of candidates agendas in medical selection processes is important in ensuring that current selection processes are able identify the most suitable candidates for the profession. While many students come into the selection process to be chosen for professions they genuinely want to engage in, there are some candidates that try "working the system", appearing to be what they are not. As a result, some candidates are able to get through by designing appropriate responses to the methods within the selection process. In medical selection such candidates have been referred to as 'cunning adversaries'. As such, there is interest in identifying ways to promote more authentic responses from candidates thereby reducing the chances of a cunning adversary being successful. Gamification is an approach that we are exploring to achieve this goal. From this theoretical exploration, a potential gamified approach is proposed and discussed in terms of its ability to help promote more authentic responses from candidates.

Mobile Learning: Technology as Mediator of Personal and School Experiences
By: Matthew Duvall, Anthony Matranga, Aroutis Foster and Jason Silverman

As part of a mobile game-based learning process, 8 children ages 6 to 13 were examined for conceptual change in art. Interpretive methods were used to examine children's conceptions of line, shape, and color through gameplay. Mobile learning was effectively mediating participant's school and personal experiences to support conceptual change.

My Life – Elamanipeli: Game for Supporting Life Management Skills of Young Persons
By: Teija Ravelin and Tanja Korhonen

This poster will describe developing My Life - Elamanipeli game at KAMK Kajaani University of Applied Sciences, Finland. My Life is a game to support the life management skills of 16 - 19 year old persons. Game is developed by talented team of KAMK game development and health care students and professionals.

Soldats Inconnus: Challenging metanarratives and fostering historical empathy through multiple-perspective play in Valiant Hearts
By: Liz Owens Boltz

Historical empathy is a fundamental construct that facilitates awareness of multiple perspectives and enables learners to appreciate the complex situational and social factors that have influenced historical events. Research has shown that students exposed to traditional, lecture-based instruction tend to put forward naïve explanations for historical actions (Lee & Ashby, 2001) while students engaged in activities that involve looking through the eyes of people in the past tend to demonstrate deeper, more intellectually complex understandings of history (Levstik & Barton, 2011). Recently, scholars have argued for an updated conceptualization of historical empathy as a dual-dimensional, cognitive-affective construct involving three interrelated elements: historical contextualization, perspective taking, and affective connection (Endacott & Brooks, 2013). Emerging research suggests that videogames may offer special affordances to teach toward this updated theoretical model (Diamond, 2012). In an effort to determine what particular qualities of games may contribute to the development of historical empathy, this poster explores the affordances and constraints of Ubisoft's Valiant Hearts: The Great War (2014). A close examination of the affordances and constraints of Valiant Hearts will provide a starting point for educators and researchers interested in its suitability for the classroom. It will also be useful to developers interested in this game from an educational technology perspective.

The effects of social identity and trash talk on hostility and enjoyment: Paradoxical Findings from League of Legends
By: Kuo-Ting Huang, Wei Peng, Joseph Fordham, Tom Day, Janine Slaker and Rabindra Ratan

Previous research suggests that competitive video game play will increase a player's post game hostility. Hostile messages, usually in the form of trash talk between players, are a normal phenomenon in online multiplayer team competition. For this study, participants played the computer game, League of Legends (LoL), a Multi-user Online Battle Arena (MOBA).

This research revealed several interesting findings and suggestions for future studies. First, the results showing that people in a hostile message condition had less post- game hostility than people in the no hostile message condition. Additionally, the effects of hostile message might vary by frequency and intensity. Also, how many hostile messages sent from participants might be considered as a factor since the hostile condition might be regarded as an interactive condition. For the other manipulation of this study, group identification, the results showed that people might have greater hostility when they compete with in-group members than out-group members.

The Road to Well-Being with Video Gaming
By: Pascaline Lorentz

For Aristotle, theoretical wisdom, leisure and happiness constituted the three goals of human life. Today, video games are part of leisure activities and their study has sparkly grown in the past decade. Simultaneously research on well-being constantly increased and is now mingled with game studies. In fact, at ancient times leisure was envisioned as a condition for the two other goals - theoretical wisdom and happiness - to be achieved.

This paper supports the argument that video gaming is a tool for well-being. Indeed, this work argues that playing The Sims® (Maxis 2000-2014) enhances self-development as a road to well-being.

Toward a Framework for Gamifying Agent-Based Simulations
By: Lori Scarlatos

Agent-based simulations can provide important insights to complex systems where autonomous entities operate in a common environment. The agent-based models used in these simulations are particularly well suited for representing socio-scientific systems - such as human impacts on the environment, or the field of medicine - where scientific, technical, and sociological factors all come into play. Yet a good simulation does not necessarily make a good game, as past experience has demonstrated. Scientists and researchers who develop these models would greatly benefit from some systematic way of turning their realistic simulations into engaging games for learners.

This poster presents a framework that we are developing for this very purpose: gamifying agent-based simulations. For our initial test case, we have been working with an agent-based simulation called Energy Choices, which had previously been turned into a multi-player game by giving players control over individual entities and awarding points for achieving goals . Although using this early version of the game in undergraduate classes helped with learning, students who played it did not find it to be engaging.

Transitioning a report driven academic simulation to an interactive game
By: Mark Fitzgerald, Eileen Quintero, Sean Meyer and Michael Bleed

Although gaming theory is gaining popularity among academic environments, challenges for implementing games in academia include: engaging the user, measuring outcomes, creating the game in the most appropriate media.

In almost any setting, greater performance outcomes can be elicited from self-determined engagement as compared to forced engagement (Deci & Ryan, 2008). Games are an effective method for fostering environments for self-determined engagement. Learning itself is fun, and game incentives and inventiveness can be used to inform an existing, effective higher education curriculum rather than building isolated games with embedded academics (Begg, Dewhurst, & Macleod, 2005). Business and military trainings use games for successful acquisition of social and technical talents (Fortmuller 2009), but fewer games have been deployed in the medical fields where they may be equally useful (Seagull, 2012). Simulations are different than games and require separate planning and implementation to work in a dental setting (Klabbers, 1980). Udin and Kuster found that a board game did not increase empathy or confidence among dental students for treatment of special needs patients (1985), however more recent gaming strategies employed in dental hygiene and prosthodontics specialties found increased test performance and speed among gaming groups as compared to traditional lecture groups (Peterson, Mauriello, & Caplan 2000) (Loney, Murphy, & Miller, 2000).

Vertiginous Play: Debating "Fun" with the Diplomacy Wives Club
By: Aaron Trammell

This poster draws on archival evidence to explore debates around the term "fun." Specifically it uses fanzines from the Ray Browne Popular Culture Library to explore the politics of the term in the 1960s Diplomacy fan community. This research suggests that instances of off-color language can be read as a form of vertiginous play, which works both to refine and construct the boundaries of the play space. Furthermore, this paper explores avenues of resistance, such as the Diplomacy Wives Club, that raised fundamental questions about who was allowed to participate in the "fun" of Diplomacy. Ultimately this paper argues that fun has never been a neutral concept, and that it must be understood for its embeddedness within larger structures of power.

We've Got Issues: A Light Approach
By: Michael Budram, William Jeffery and Greg Kozma

We've Got Issues (WGI) is a game intended to open dialogues about the experience of coping with psychological disorders. WGI has been in development since Fall 2013, and is still a work in progress. We wanted to dispel two ideas: the first is that mental health is not to be taken as seriously as any other ailments. The second is that a person cannot function or live a normal life while having a psychological disorder. Psychological disorders are very real, and they fundamentally change how people live, but they can be managed.

Exhibited Digital Games

1000 Days of Syria
By: Mitch Swenson

1000 DAYS OF SYRIA is a text-based historical fiction game that timelines the first 1000 days of the Syrian uprising through interactive narratives. From the start of the opposition protests on March 15th, 2011 to the dismantling of Assad's chemical stockpile on December 9th, 2013, 1000 Days of Syria seeks to illuminate the smaller stories of a civil conflict. In many ways, the following is an exercise in transmedia storytelling. Part electric literature; part newscast; and part choose-your-own-adventure, 1000 Days of Syria is as much about exploration of players within an architecture as it is about exploration of characters throughout a narrative.

'...by placing the player in the role of these characters, with a certain degree of agency, empathy and connection is built in a different way to linear media such as film and literature.' ' Simon Parkin, The Guardian

After the Storm
By: Classroom, Inc.

Classroom, Inc.'s After the Storm is a unique learning program combining online gameplay, assessment and offline activities. Building on Classroom, Inc.'s twenty-plus years of experience making educational software, we are using game-based learning to create great reading and writing experiences for students of different abilities by harnessing the innovations of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The game empowers struggling students to take control of their learning and find meaning through work.

Developed for struggling readers, the game focuses on the aftermath of a major hurricane in Port Douglas. Players take on the role of Editor-in-Chief of the local online magazine. As students navigate through a day in the life of a working professional, they experience challenges related to how the storm has affected both their workplace and the community. Players must decide how best to respond to these challenges based on the information gathered during the game through informational texts such as press releases, official reports, emails, text messages, conversations with colleagues and much, much more.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (student-created game)
By: James Earl Cox III

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is an interactive narrative adaptation of the Civil War story written by Ambrose Bierce. Besides the title and opening credits, it tells a story without the use of any in-game dialogue, be it text or audio. As such, the story is conveyed through the use of pixel styled graphics, diegetic sounds, and minimal controls. These allow the player to more freely explore the story, encouraging the use of imagination to interpret the art and build the narrative as they progress, regardless of what language the player speaks.

Through these means, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is able to achieve its purpose: to create a gateway to American literature for people of any age or culture. With its lack of in-game dialogue and text, this game encourages the player to discover the plot on their own, possibly to be used for class discussions or cross media comparisons. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is able to move the audience through a deep, historical story within the span of 5 minutes without the use of words as well as provide a portal from gaming to literature.

Balance Coin
By: Tony Morelli, John Foley

Balance Coin seeks to improve the balance ability of the players. It's visuals and haptic feedback create an environment where the game can be played and enjoyed by those who have perfect vision and by those who do not. It has been tested by 15 children who are blind throughout a week long study.

BeTwine
By: Lei Gao, Momo Liu, Tianyu Hu, Weiyi Li, Terry, Jie Lai

Because we are just too busy to regularly keep in touch with those we love and care about, we created a wearable product that keeps you in constant contact with the people who matter the most to you. Our product is based on simulation game that mimics certain activity and health conditions of people in your real life. The data from our wearable device connects you to a virtual universe where you can play games, send virtual pokes, share activity results, and more. We call this wearable simulation game BETWINE -- it's between you and the people you care about the most.

BETWINE brings the positive energy of simulation game play to the real world. In the virtual world of BETWINE, you can download avatars of your boyfriend/girlfriend, your parents, or anyone else to your mobile phone where you can be close to them at all times and without any limitation of time and space.

Brain Powered Games - Africa
By: Brian Winn, Bryan Novak, Michael Boivin, Bruno Giordani

Of the 500 million clinical episodes of malaria occurring globally each year, over 70% occur in Africa. Ten percent of these infections will become complicated by severe malaria anemia (SMA) or cerebral malaria (CM), killing an estimated 1 million children ages 5 years or younger annually in sub-Saharan Africa. Those who survive often experience substantial rates of neurologic morbidity. This can eventually lead to many more serious conditions including cognitive impairment, epilepsy, and comas. Cerebral malaria can have a very profound effect on the mental capacity of its victims. Children ages 4-12 can have their mental capacity reduced to that of a 3-month-old child as a result of the disease.

As a result of the scale-up of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), more perinatally HIV infected African children are now surviving into adolescence and receiving secondary and high school education. While HAART has clearly reduced incidence of severe forms of HIV encephalopathy, deficits persist in expressive language, attention, working memory, and executive functions. Currently there is poor understanding of the frequency and cofactors of such neurocognitive impairment and a complete lack of interventions to address them within resource-limited settings.

Computerized cognitive rehabilitation therapy (CCRT), may provide a valuable tool to address both Malaria and HIV-associated neurocognitive deficits in this population.

Brain Powered Games is a growing collection of digital games developed in the Games for Entertainment and Learning (GEL) Lab at Michigan State University. Each game focuses on exercising one or more cognitive abilities, including attention, memory, language, visual/spatial functions, and executive functions.

Working with MSU neurologists and psychiatrists, a version of Brain Powered Games has been customized for the African context. The games have been piloted as a CCRT in Malawi with children with cerebral malaria and in Uganda with HIV inflected children with successful results.

Cyclotron Game (student-created game)
By: Andrew Dennis, Nicholas Thurston, Chris Benoit, William Jeffery, Sahil Tandon, Tyler Summers, Joshua Shadik, Joseph Dukstra, Andrew Bagdady, and Brian Winn

An exploratory game about the process of discovering rare isotopes, the Cyclotron Game has player take the role of a scientist. Players accelerate particles and assemble new isotopes in the effort to complete the table of nuclides.

Fat Chicken
By: Joshua J Mills

Fat Chicken is a fresh new take on the tower-defense genre, where you play a factory farm manager trying to fatten up the incoming "mobs" -- which consist of cows, chickens and pigs on their inevitable way to grocery store freezer cases. In this meaty tower defense game, you build factory farming towers in various locales across America to fast-feed incoming waves of livestock, while ensuring they are kept "healthy" with doses of antibiotics. Is what you are doing humane or necessary to meet demand? A game about the issues surrounding factory farming.

GetZapp! (student-created game)
By: Sandra Chan, Katherine Chan, Muhammad Azharuddin, Lim Wei Siong, Belcoth Tan, Matthew Ong

GetZapp! is a puzzle platformer set in the alien world of Zubb. You play as a little alien called GooGoo, who followed the Zubb's hero, GarGar, into the dangerous mechanical Sun on an adventure to restore the light. In your quest to repair the Sun, you'll encounter rooms with interesting circuit puzzles where you challenge your knowledge of electrical circuits to progress. Rotate, maneuver and interact with given components in order to piece your way towards the end. Can you save Zubb from eternal darkness?

Guess What!
By: Tiltfactor

Guess What! is the guessing game that takes two! One player sees 12 images, and the other player sees only one image. The second player must give her ally hints to try to help him find her image from the 12. The fewer guess it takes the more points each player receives. You have 30 seconds to give a hint, and if you give great hints, you'll both score big!

IMPACT:
Libraries and museums across the world have millions digital media artifacts, such as audio, video, and images that have no tags. Without tags (also known as metadata) describing their content, these artifacts are unsearchable and virtually unusable. Unfortunately, metadata is time consuming and expensive to generate, and many institutions can't afford to tag their collections.

Guess What! is part of the Metadata Games project, a free and open source suite of crowdsourcing games built to collect metadata with the public's help. Playing Guess What! sends tags back to the institutions from which the images are drawn, allowing them to be more accessible to everyone: to the institutions, to researchers, and to the public.

CREDITS:
Executive Producer: Mary Flanagan
Design: Mary Flanagan, Zara Downs, Sukdith Punjasthitkul, Max Seidman
Programming: Vincent Van Ufflen, Robinson Tryon, Cecile Williams, Sukdith Punjasthitkul, Junjie Guan
Graphic Design: Zara Downs
Audio: Sukdith Punjasthitkul

Guided Meditation
By: Cubicle Ninjas

Need 10-minutes of zen? Enjoy the tranquility of a virtual reality vacation, customized to best meet your personal relaxation needs. Soothe your soul at the desert canyons, tropical beaches, and moonlit forests, all without ever leaving the comfort of home.

It Takes Two (student-created game)
By: Albert Shih, Kiran George, Yimang Lin, Xiao Li, Yuxi Zhang, Yue Zhu

It Takes Two is a co-op puzzle platformer for 2 players. It is a journey about two characters tied together with a rope. Whether they want to compete or cooperate, they have to complete the journey together.

It's for the Best (student-created game)
By: Joseph Dean, Doris C. Rusch

"It's for the Best" is one of four games that are part of the interactive documentary "For the Records" that deals with young adults and mental illness. "For the Records" aims to increase understanding of what it is like to struggle with mental disorders, particularly eating disorder ("Perfection"), OCD ("Into Darkness"), ADD ("It's for the Best") and bipolar disorder ("FLUCTuation"). I am submitting all four games separately.

"It's for the Best" explores the psychological addiction to ADD medication. It is modeled after one of the development team member's experiences. When he was diagnosed with ADD at the age of eight, his parents told him he needed medication to keep up with school. This created the feeling of not being 'good enough' without medication, which persisted all the way through college. He finally decided to stop taking pills and graduated successfully, regaining a sense of self-worth. The game does not propose that medication per se is bad, but aims to raise awareness for how the need for medication can make you feel. As far as mental health issues go, ADD is usually considered 'not a big deal' (at least compared to depression, psychosis or anorexia). This under-acknowledges the feelings of self-doubt ADD brings with it. By allowing the player to experience these feelings, the game aims to create empathy and hopes to promote a mindful way of communicating the need for medication to ADD patients. In It's for the best players try to keep up with assignments represented by papers that flutter onto the screen with increasing speed. Clicking on papers makes them disappear. A pill is featured prominently in the middle of the screen. Clicking the pill clears the screen of papers and slows down their onslaught. Using the pill as a power up, however, is far less satisfying than trying to keep up with the papers through clicking them directly (which is impossible and manifests in growing piles of unfinished assignments that clutter up the screen and create paper mountains of growing self-doubt). The game is accompanied by unnerving whispers of 'you're not good enough'.

Keys to the Collection (student-created game)
By: Aroutis Foster, Jen Katz-Buonincontro, Bobby Speck, Kevin Gross, Jon Hopkins, Caroline Guevara

Unlock the mysteries of the Barnes collection by turning your visit into a game. Become an art inspector and go on adventures to find the elusive gold key to win the game and reveal a special room where you can create your own art gallery. Customize your character, use exciting art tools, and show your creativity with ensemble design. Expand your experience with augmented reality when you visit.

Lesley The Lover: A Procedural Rhetoric Game for Safer Sex
By: Lindsay Grace

Lesley loves the company of others, but Lesley needs protection. Score as often as you can, but don't get caught without protection or it's game over.

Contains 20 embedded messages and statistics about STD/STI/HIV prevention and uses procedural rhetoric to drive one important message home - use a condom. Game is designed to be a gender agnostic affection game. Affection games are a growing genre of games in which players must flirt, hug, kiss or make love to meet their goals. A playful experience about scoring - safely.

Game provides procedural rhetoric (claims made through game mechanics ) as follows:

• Always Come equipped- When the player has no more protection, non-player characters are to be avoided lest you have "accidental" intercourse
• Always be ready for action-The player can collect all the condoms they want and then run back to the beginning to collect points
• Abstinence is a reasonable strategy - Players can abstain and still win the game.
• Always and only at the right time -Players must repeatedly apply protection (it expires after one use or if unused over time)
• Results are not always immediately apparent- Since STI's and STD's don't show themselves immediately, player is made aware after a short period (but they are notified of non-protected sex immediately). To avoid players who might think it interesting to infect others, the game makes all non-player characters disinterested once the player has had unprotected interaction once.
• If you don't have one, don't even start- If the player has no more protection (condom), the game is designed to encourage players to avoid "scoring" interactions with non-player characters.

Nexus Edge (student-created game)
By: Goh Horng Bor, Chen Zhiling, Thi Chanh Hien, Ivy Liu, Virginia Chiu, Terence Then, Kelvin Koh

Set in a magical realm, Nexus Edge follows the quest of the Cat as he looks for his lost pet mouse. However, things are not as simple as they seem ' as the corruption of the land spreads, its inhabitants change. You control the Cat and travel from island to island to battle and vanquish monsters roaming about, using his crystal barrier magic. What fate will befall the Cat? Will you help him find his mouse? Now, it all depends on you to explore and discover...

Nurbits
By: Stephen Borden, Jef Freydl, Brian Ruggieri

Nurbits is a puzzle game in which players apply neuroscience principles to solve puzzles and make music. In Nurbits the player takes the role of a sound engineer responsible for producing music with a robot band. Each of the robots plays an instrument, but the player must fix the "wiring" in each robot's brain before it can play the piece of music.

To fix the robot's brain the player must hook up computer chips that send and receive signals just as neurons do. Each chip has a threshold. If it receives enough positive stimulation from other chips to reach threshold it will fire and play a musical note. Each puzzle is a phrase in the song the player is assembling. To solve the puzzle the player must hook up the right notes and inhibit the wrong notes. The innovation at the heart of Nurbits is the use of key neuroscience principles (threshold, stimulation, inhibition, excitotoxicity, plasticity and pruning) as the game mechanics.

One Up
By: Tiltfactor

One Up is a head-to-head picture-tagging competition! Challenge a friend and see if you're smarter than they are: the best descriptions of the picture score the most points, but be careful not to be One Upped in this competitive game for Apple devices. One Up is best played by friends in the same room.

How to play:
Challenge your opponent to a game. During each of the three rounds, the players see the same picture. Each player must describe the image using three single-word tags each round. Words can have three values:

1. Regular words give you +1 point each.
2. Awesome words (descriptions that other players have used in the past) give you +3/+5/+7 points each (increasing each round).
3. One Upped words happen when you type a word that your opponent has already submitted for this image. When this happens your word is worth -1 point and your opponent gets +1 point.

The player with the most points at the end of the game wins!

IMPACT:
Libraries and museums across the world have millions digital media artifacts, such as audio, video, and images that have no tags. Without tags (also known as metadata) describing their content, these artifacts are unsearchable and virtually unusable. Unfortunately, metadata is time consuming and expensive to generate, and many institutions can't afford to tag their collections.

One Up is part of the Metadata Games project, a free and open source suite of crowdsourcing games built to collect metadata with the public's help. Playing One Up sends tags back to the institutions from which the images are drawn, allowing them to be more accessible to everyone: to the institutions, to researchers, and to the public.

Play One Up, save digital media artifacts from oblivion.

CREDITS:
Executive Producer: Mary Flanagan
Design: Viviana Ramos, Max Seidman, Sukdith Punjasthitkul, Zara Downs, and Mary Flanagan
Programming: Panaton Inc., Junjie Guan, Anup Dhamala, Sukdith Punjasthitkul
Graphic Design: Zara Downs
Audio: Sukdith Punjasthitkul

Perfection (student-created game)
By: Doris C. Rusch

"Perfection" is one of four games that are part of the interactive documentary "For the Records" that deals with young adults and mental illness. "For the Records" aims to increase understanding of what it is like to struggle with mental disorders, particularly eating disorder ("Perfection"), OCD ("Into Darkness"), ADD ("It's for the Best") and bipolar disorder ("FLUCTuation"). I am submitting all four games separately.

"Perfection" is a game about the eating disorder anorexia nervosa. It plays with perceptions of beauty and perfection to enable an experiential understanding of why someone would starve themselves. The game's core metaphor is the body as garden. To align the player's perceptions with those of someone struggling with anorexia, the game suggests that the perfect garden is devoid of weeds and ugly creepers (= 'imperfect' body parts and unwanted feelings). The game challenges the player to 'reach Perfection'. The garden is enclosed by four walls and surrounded by a scary looking periphery that represents the fear of being judged, criticized or hurt by others. In the middle of the garden is a heart-shaped plant, representing life. The conflict of the game revolves around garden saturation. Watering the garden (=eating) increases its saturation. The weeds (=unwanted body parts) flourish and the numbers of creepers (= unwanted feelings) rise. Eliminating creepers by moving the mouse over them in a scrubbing motion (=exercising) decreases saturation, as does parching the garden (=starving yourself). In a de-saturated garden, weeds start to die but the heart-shaped plant suffers, too, and slowly loses its leaves. The plant is more robust than the weeds, though, encouraging a de-saturation behavior in the interest of reaching Perfection. The Perfection ending, though, is not the win ending after all, because Perfection cannot be obtained without also sacrificing the heart-plant. To win the game, the player has to keep her garden within an ideal saturation range (not too much and not too little) over a certain period of time (this represents adhering to an eating schedule), and to learn to accept that weeds and creepers are necessary components of a healthy life. The true win ending is 'Imperfection' ' a garden without protective walls, filled with all sorts of plants and insects.

Sature
By: Ian Sundstrom, Elie Abraham

Sature is a digital board game designed for two players. Although development of the game is not complete, this demo contains the game's core mechanics in their entirety. Sature features a minimalist graphical interface and unique color-based mechanic. Players take turns placing colored cards on the board which 'mix' with adjacent colors creating unique palettes for each game. Play involves strategic choices of cards based on their color value and their position on the color wheel. Sature encourages players to improve their understanding of complimentary pairs and other color relationships. These basic color theory skills are applicable for work in the fields of art and design. Sature's innovative mechanic calls on players to demonstrate skill both in spatial strategy and visual acumen.

Saving Magic
By: Brian Winn, Justin Girard, Liang Cui, David Ward, Vitor Matayoshi, Evan Cox, Loralee Pearman, and Katie Pastor

The challenge of learning how to properly handle ones finances is that mistakes in real-life during the learning process can have serious and long-term consequences. Therefore, financial literacy is an important life skill for individuals to learn early in life. Unfortunately, it is not a topic that generates excitement in our youth. Saving Magic is an action-adventure game developed by the Games for Entertainment and Learning (GEL) Lab at Michigan State University to help address this issue.

In Saving Magic, dragons are stealing magic from the world. The player's ultimate goal is to defeat the dragons and free magic back into the world, thereby saving magic. To achieve this goal, the player must climb a series of towers, using the accelerometer of the mobile device to steer. As the player plays, he or she earns coins. These coins can be used in the in-game store to purchase additional spells, potions, as well as to customize the character.

Saving Magic includes a feature-rich financial system. To 'save magic', the player must earn, save, and spend money wisely across the 16 levels of the game. The coins that are saved earn interest, even while not playing. The money earned can be put to good use to upgrade the character with new spells and abilities, as well as customize the character with new attire.

The stealth goal of the game is to teach lessons that transcend the game, most notably the concept of savings accounts, spending and saving wisely, and managing resources.

Scarlet
By: Jordan Ajlouni, Andrew Dennis, Marie Lazar, Jon Moore

Phone rings and it looks like your sweetheart is coming home early from a business trip!

Now what to do with the evidence of your affair all over the apartment?!
Hide the evidence of the affair anywhere you can.

Anyway you can.

Your secret must remain a secret.

Scarlet is an experimental game about the nature of secrets. The aim is to create a fear of being caught rather than a fear of death. It was our submission for the 2013 Indie Speed Run, with our given topic being secrecy. It was a top finalist for best game of the competition as well as Peter Molyneux's personal selection for best game.

Scrap Squad
By: Joshua J Mills

Scrap Squad challenges players to manage seemingly endless waves of falling trash by matching the right item to the appropriate recycling robot. The more you match, the faster junk tumbles down the conveyor, keeping the gameplay frantic and fun. Scrap Squad's humorous art will keep you grinning from ear to ear while you collect the day away. Spend your hard-earned in-game cash on upgrades for your hilarious collection of 'bots, and who knows, you may even pick up a few tips about what's recyclable in the real-world!

SpacEcon (student-created game)
By: Jim Lee, Janice Dermawan, Sen Swagato, Linda Yeo, Cherise Cho

SpacEcon is an economics game created around the Singapore-Cambridge 'A' level syllabus that aims to teach students about Productivity.

In the distant future, the civilization of Man has fallen due to pollution and civil war. The few remaining colonies are relegated to wandering in space, looking for a new place to call home.

You are a Space Wanderer who discovers a planet to build your new home! Scavenge for minerals near your planet to construct infrastructure to attract more space wanderers to your planet to help build your economy and manage your resources!

SpacEcon is a fun way to learn the economic principles of growth and efficiency in and outside of the classroom.

Sparks of Eternity
By: Brian Winn, Greg Kozma, Michael Budram, Reuven Margrett, Casey O'Donnell

Sparks of Eternity is a custom, collaboratively designed game between the Games for Entertainment and Learning (GEL) Lab at Michigan State University and the Frankel Jewish Academy. The goal of the collaboration was to create a game that motivates students to be more engaged in the Academy's rabbinic curriculum and further make use of the Academy's one-to-one education technology initiative.

Sparks of Eternity emphasizes the need to preserve the (Jewish) Oral Torah, the Talmud, within the context of an accurate historical depiction of the events of the time. In the game, Jerusalem teeters on the verge of destruction at the hands of the Roman Empire during the time of the Second Temple. At stake is the spiritual and physical future of the Jewish people. Yet, hope prevails in the form of student and teacher. In the game, the player assumes the role of a Talmid (student of the Torah) on a quest to save the oral tradition. The game draws on an "Adventure" style gameplay, where the player traverses Jerusalem gathering items, stories and information leading up to physical transportation of the Talmud outside the walls of Jerusalem.

The Bone Wars (student-created game)
By: Andrew Bauman, Charlie Ecenbarger, Jordan Hale, Paisley Hansen, Joshua Kattner, Austin Pensinger, Scott Schapker, Andy Thompson, Adam Wallace, You Wu, Ethan Burnsides Yazel, Paul Gestwicki

The Bone Wars is a two-player, turn-based strategy game about the 19th-century feud between rival paleontologists O.C. Marsh and E.D. Cope. Players compete to earn the most fame in eight rounds of play.

The World the Children Made (student-created game)
By: James Earl Cox III

The World the Children Made is a game adaptation of Ray Bradbury's The Veldt. It immerses the player in the role of Lynda, the mother of a family that just moved into the home of the future. The purpose of The World the Children Made is to pique interest in classic science fiction and short stories within youth. This game serves more as a gateway into literature than a full educational game, allowing players to actively experience a modern rendition of a classic Bradbury tale before sitting down to read.

Train Like An Astronaut
By: Brian Winn, William Jeffery, Xavier Durand-Hollis, Greg Kozma, David Ward, Jim Pivarnik, Norb Kerr, Alison Ede, Steve Samendinger, Lori Ploutz-Snyder, and Deborah Feltz

Astronauts may have difficulty adhering to exercise regimens at vigorous intensity levels during long space missions. Keeping up with exercise prescriptions is important for aerobic and musculoskeletal health during space missions and afterwards. A key impediment to maintaining intense levels of exercise is motivation. However, finding ways to motivate astronauts to be physically active at the levels necessary to lessen the effects of bone and muscle loss and aerobic capacity has not been explored. Typically individuals become bored with training regimens over time or find them less enjoyable if they do not have strategies to maintain their motivation. Although traditional group exercise leads to higher exercise adherence than individual exercise programs, structured group exercise programs are not possible for astronauts during space missions. Moreover, prior models of group exercise have rarely if ever introduced any real interdependence between exercisers, which have been shown to be powerful motivators for continued effort. Exercise video games have been marketed as a way to increase people's motivation and enjoyment to exercise by being entertaining, engaging and providing a means by which to interact with other players. Although many exercise games involve competition among players, few take advantage of group dynamics to motivate play and, there has been little attempt to analyze what game features and interpersonal interactions would best motivate users to continue exercising with these games.

Train Like An Astronaut is a game, developed by the Games for Entertainment and Learning Lab at Michigan State University, through a grant from NASA, that is designed to determine whether recently documented motivation gains in task groups (dyads in particular) can be harnessed to improve motivation in interactive exercise games using virtual, software-generated (SG) partners. Exercising with an SG partner offers a number of advantages (e.g., availability, flexibility, autonomy) over a live human partner. The game allows players to bike (via a stationary bicycle that acts as a game controller) on various tracks, accompanied by a software-generated partner. The goal of the game is to test whether exercising over an extended time period with an SG partner, compared to exercising alone, results in better aerobic capacity and muscle strength, adherence to the exercise regimen, and enhanced enjoyment in the activity, maintenance efficacy beliefs, and sense of social connectedness.

verilogTown
By: Peter Jamieson, Naoki Mizuno, Boyu Zhang, Josh Collins, Alex Williams, Lindsay Grace, John-Rhys Garcia (artist)

This is a STEM educational game to learn the Verilog Hardware Description Language. The idea is to control the stop lights (with Verilog) to get the cars through the city as fast as possible.

Wise Wizards: Meditation meets Meaningful Play
By: Carrie Heeter, Marcel Allbritton

In Wise Wizards, the "player goal" is to develop inner wisdom by connecting with the presence and qualities of your favorite wizard. The meditation is played in the player's body and mind, with eyes closed. It is a game of skill, based on ability to focus on aligning breath and movement. Repeat play over time enhances effectiveness. Win state side effects include a relaxed body and quieted mind.

Zombie Yoga - Recovering the Inner Child (student-created game)
By: Lab 707, Doris C. Rusch

"Zombie Yoga" is a third-person, single player Kinect game for emotional empowerment. Equipped with a lightball (an external manifestation of one's inner light), the player enters a metaphorical gamespace ' the mind of burnt-out dancer Aya ' and embarks on a journey into the soul, to heal and liberate Aya's inner child.
Directing the lightball with Yoga poses (e.g. Warrior I sends it up, Warrior II forward, variations of Goddess pose send it to either side and Tree pose calls it back) one fights an inner darkness by illuminating the gamespace and diffusing Zombies (representations of inner fears) into black smoke.
The journey takes the form of a downward leading spiral path that leads from the present to the main character's childhood. On the way, the player faces three challenges from Aya's past: her struggle to accept her grandpa's death; individuation from an overbearing mother and recovery her authentic, playful sense. These challenges are presented as stations on the spiral path and contain (e)motion puzzles.
At the bottom of the spiral, the inner child is trapped in a black bone cage. Completing each station opens up the bone cage until the inner child is liberated. The game banks on the emotional and mental potential of the Yoga poses themselves to empower the players, as well as on visualizing one's 'inner light' as the light ball and giving the player agency over it.

Exhibited Non-Digital Games

Cops and Rubbers
By: Lien Tran

Sex workers across the world must often make a dangerous choice between protecting their health and avoiding police harassment or arrest. In many countries, police treat condoms as contraband, confiscating or destroying condoms they find on sex workers during both legal and illegal searches. Prosecutors may use confiscated condoms as criminal evidence of prostitution.

Cops & Rubbers (opensocietyfoundations.org/publications/cops-rubbers) is a board game designed for Open Society Foundations for use by health and human rights advocates, health practitioners, academics, and policymakers that demonstrates the real consequences of these policing tactics for sex workers ' including increased vulnerability to HIV infection.

For more information about the dangers of treating condoms as evidence, please visit the Open Society Foundations website: opensocietyfoundations.org/reports/criminalizing-condoms

Game video: http://vimeo.com/lienbtran/cops-and-rubbers-promo

Ending the Cycle - The Board Game (student-created game)
By: Peter Wonica

Ending the Silence is a board game designed for four people to simulate the experiences of individuals in
abusive relationships, with a specific focus on queer issues. It's a way to begin a serious conversation about abusive relationships and get people to analyze systems of abuse and discrimination.

Gut Check
By: Tiltfactor

Gut Check is the game of truth or care about the quality and cost of health care and the need for transparency for patients to make the best decisions.

Each player alternately takes the role of a patient about to undergo important medical procedures, and the role of a hospital. As a patient, each player increases his or her odds of getting the best care possible by persuading opponents to show their hands and reveal the true quality of their services. As a hospital, each player tries to make the most money possible by convincing other patients to come to his or her institution. The game is over when each player takes 4 patient turns. Each player's score is the sum of the care he or she receives, and the money he or she makes.

IMPACT:
Gut Check highlights the need for transparency in the quality and cost of medical care for patients, and encourages players to use all of the information available to them when seeking health care. The game aims to illustrate how publicly accessible health pricing and quality data leads to higher quality outcomes at reduced prices.

Gut Check supports Aligning Forces for Quality, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's signature effort to lift the overall quality and value of health care in targeted communities, reduce racial and ethnic disparities, and provide models for national reform.

CREDITS:
Executive Producer: Mary Flanagan
Game Design: Mary Flanagan, Max Seidman, Ben Sawyer, Lucas Sanford-Long, Royce Park, Nick O'Leary
Graphic Design: Sarah Ettinger,
Production: Max Seidman, Lucas Sanford-Long, Royce Park, J. Patrick Lewis

Humans vs. Mosquitoes
By: Clay Ewing, Lien Tran

Humans vs. Mosquitoes is a card game that allows children and humanitarian workers to understand and engage on an emotional level with the complex and abstract concepts of climate change and disease transmission. Based on the original physical game of Humans vs. Mosquitoes, this card games translates the original physical mechanics to a portable strategy card game.

Microbes
By: Tiltfactor

Collect the most gems without getting your hands dirty in this frenetic card game of balancing and dexterity!

Microbes challenges 4 to 8 players, ages 9 to adult, to claim as many jewels as they can by slapping the cards. If you're the fastest you'll get the jewels ' but watch out! You'll also get the germs. You must balance collected germ tokens on the back of your hand, because if enough of those germs fall off, then all of your gems will be worthless! Can your hand hold any more germs? If not, better find a handwash card quick!


IMPACT:
Designed at the request of the Minister of Health of Rwanda, Dr. Agnes Binagwaho, Microbes was developed to emphasize the importance of hand washing to children in rural Rwanda. However, lack of washing hands is not a uniquely Rwandan problem ' Microbes was created to be played by children and adults both at home and abroad. Players have enjoyed the game in locations and settings as diverse as Rwanda, Haiti, classrooms in New Hampshire, and gaming conventions.

CREDITS:
Design Studio: Tiltfactor
Executive Producer: Mary Flanagan
Designers: Zara Downs, Max Seidman, and Mary Flanagan
Art: Zara Downs, and Alannah Linkhorn
International Project Coordinator: Madeleine Parker
Special Thanks To: Our on the ground collaborators in Haiti and Rwanda

Monarch
By: Tiltfactor

Your mother, The Queen, has lived out her years and will soon be with you no more. The time has come for you and your sisters to demonstrate your intelligence, compassion, bravery and strength as leaders to defend the kingdom from threats of invasion. Only the most worthy will be selected to become heir to the throne. Who will become the Queen?

Monarch is a strategy game in which players aim to collect court cards depicting wise advisors, exotic animals, and symbolic regalia. These court cards provide crowns, and at the end of the game the sister with the most crowns becomes Queen.

IMPACT:
Monarch was designed and created to combat common 'princess culture' stereotypes as depicted in mainstream media; the sisters in Monarch are the future rulers of their kingdom and have to prove themselves as such.

In addition Monarch was built to be a gateway game: an accessible strategy board game to introduce infrequent board gamers to the wonderful world of modern nondigital games. Monarch is enjoyed by 'hardcore' board gamers, families, and nongamers alike.

CREDITS:
Design Studio: Tiltfactor
Executive Producer: Mary Flanagan
Game Designers: Zara Downs, Mary Flanagan, Max Seidman
Graphic Design: Zara Downs

Skyline
By: Tiltfactor

Skyline is a cooperative puzzle game in which players work together to construct buildings so that the skyline of their shared city matches the skyline arrangement shown on each of their cards.

During each carefully designed level, players work together to match the city's skyline from each of the 4 directions to the skyline shown on the cards, using as few blocks as possible. Once the city's skyline matches all of the cards, the group wins, and their score is equal to the number of blocks left over. New players can simply aim to beat each level, or can attempt to maximize their scores. Skyline's levels increase in difficulty, each one teaching new strategies for succeeding to be applied to future levels.

IMPACT:
Research shows that spatial reasoning and visualization skills are vital to students' retention in engineering fields. The barrier of underdeveloped spatial reasoning skills has been shown to disproportionately affect women, likely due to less frequent interaction with spatial building toys as children. Fortunately, spatial reasoning skills have been shown to be easily learned! Skyline's goal is to challenge and improve players' spatial reasoning abilities while also (of course) being a blast to play! The Tiltfactor team is conducting ongoing studies to assess Skyline's efficacy at improving players' spatial reasoning abilities.

CREDITS:
Design Studio: Tiltfactor
Executive Producer: Mary Flanagan
Game Designers: Max Seidman, Lucas Sanford-Long, Royce Park, Mary Flangan, J. Patrick Lewis
Level Designers: Max Seidman, Lucas Sanford-Long, Royce Park
Graphic Design: Zara Downs
Special Thanks To: Naomi Clark

Vanity
By: Clay Ewing, Lien Tran, Sophia Colantonio

Vanity is a tabletop game designed to promote tanning bed avoidance and to prevent melanoma in adolescents and young adults. The game centers on a 'Fitness, Tan, Style' theme inspired by the TV show Jersey Shore that popularized indoor tanning among youth.
Players are aspiring actors ready for fame and fortune as TV and movie stars. Refine your style, improve your fitness and maximize your all-important sun tan to land the best roles in Tinseltown. But of course too much time in the Californian sun could pose a risk to your health and jeopardize your quest for screen success.

We've Got Issues (student-created game)
By: Michael Budram, William Jeffery, Greg Kozma

We've Got Issues is a Serious Dice / Card game designed and created by 3 Graduate Students in the Serious Games specialization at Michigan State University.

By taking a 'Not-So-Serious' approach, We've Got Issues promotes a light atmosphere filled with laughs, excitement, frustration and conversation about dealing with Psychological Disorders.

Why did we make the game?

We wanted to dispel two ideas: the first is that mental health is not to be taken as seriously as any other ailment. The second is that a person cannot function or live a normal life while having a psychological disorder. Psychological disorders are very real, and they fundamentally change how people live.

There are any number of valid approaches to the problem we have taken on. As game developers, we chose to create an experience to try and make our point. The simple metaphors of randomness and arbitrarily imposed rules is at the core of the We've Got Issues experience.

We wanted to drive home the fact that anyone can manifest a psychological disorder at any time, and that they are coped with, not cured. We want to be the reason for google searches and players cheering one another on as they each stare down the odds. People with issues are in dire need of more support from friends and family, and we want them to know that it's not all seriousness all the time. We sincerely hope our game reflects these values in its design.

Registration Check-In and Continental Breakfast

Keynote - Lessons Learned in Ruining Videogames

Deirdra "Squinky" Kiai is a game designer, writer, programmer, musician, and visual artist. Deidra was nominated for four awards at this year's Independent Games Association awards. Their game, Dominique Pamplemousse in "It's All Over Once The Fat Lady Sings!" is a stop motion musical detective adventure game. Their #1ReasonToBe a game designer talk, "Making games is easy. Belonging is hard." received a standing ovation at the 2014 Game Developers' Conference. Learn more about Deirdra.

Truth in Game Design Applied: Behind the Development of Hero Generations

Development

The Quest for Fairness
By: Stephen Sniderman

One crucial element that all competitive play shares is the ideal of fairness, but when we look closely at how we compensate for unfair advantages, we find no consistency. For example, the World Cup pits tiny, poverty-stricken nations against massive, wealthy behemoths, and nobody expects special consideration for the weaker side, yet in sanctioned competition from junior high to the pros, we often "protect" the presumably weaker players. For example, we almost never let adults in their prime play against children or senior citizens, and we rarely allow men and women to compete against each other at any level. Despite these and other inconsistencies, however, our best resource for understanding fairness in our culture is games and sports. When play does not involve winning and losing, fairness is irrelevant. And more serious types of competition, like politics, business, and war, do not allow us the luxury of worrying about fair play. Ideally, a careful analysis of games and sports would enable us to see why some competitive activities gives weaker players or teams a "head start" and others do not. Unfortunately, no current theory explains all the variations we find, but we can still gain valuable insights into the nature of social and political justice by paying close attention to systems of competitive play.

How Are Ideas Connected? Drawing the Design Process of Idea Networks in Global Game Jam
By: Xavier Ho, Martin Tomitsch and Tomasz Bednarz

The moment of inspiration is described by a rich vocabulary and a wealth of knowledge: the Eureka! moment (Gruber, 1981), the flash of illumination (Metcalfe & Wiebe, 1987), epiphany (Dyess, 1964), and an unexpected stroke of insight (Taylor, 2006; Smith & Blankenship, 1989), to name a few. Many scholars agree that the primary sources of ideas and inspiration are external (Eckert & Stacey, 2000; Fredrickson & Anderson, 1999; Hagen, 2012; Lehrer, 2012; Thrash & Elliot, 2003; Zook & Riedl, 2013).

As ideas are understood and externalised through language, they are being communicated, and on a higher level, synthesised and reused. The notion of an idea network is implicitly and automatically constructed, and we argue this self-construction may be substantially comparable to Milgram's (1967) 'six degrees of separation' phenomenon.

In this paper, we propose idea networks as a tool for design-oriented qualitative research. We will outline the design process to develop idea networks, our rationale of using it on qualitative research, and suggest ways to extract insight from idea networks. The construction of an idea network was first proposed by Metcalfe (2007) for problem conceptualisation and framing.

The Financial and User Experience Effects of Online Game Fraud
By: Ben Medler

Game companies have a stronger digital presence today than they had even half a decade ago, seeking to create larger, connected systems where players can play games, interact with other players and purchase content. With the raise of digital distribution services, micro-transactions, early access and downloadable content, game companies have direct lines to their players when it comes to delivering digital products. In turn, these direct lines means game companies become liable for and susceptible to nefarious actions that often plague other commercial entities, namely fraud.

Comparing the Impact of 'Emphasis Frames' on Player Motivation and Performance in a Crowdsourcing Game
By: Geoff Kaufman, Mary Flanagan and Sukdith Punjasthitkul

As crowdsourcing approaches have been increasingly employed as a powerful research tool in virtually every field (Yuen et al., 2011), mounting evidence has demonstrated that masses of voluntary users can be efficiently and effectively mobilized via online platforms to generate vast amounts of new knowledge, particularly for domains in which investment in the same enterprise would not be considered feasible or cost-effective (e.g., Mavandadi, 2012; Rankin et al., 2008; Thorne, Black, & Sykes, 2009; von Ahn, 2006). Moreover, some of the most effective crowdsourcing projects, such as Foldit (Khatib, Kamps, & Milic-Frayling, 2011), Citizen Sort (Prestopnik & Crowston, 2012) and Zooniverse (Borne & Team, 2011; Lintott et al., 2008), have reported great success with utilizing online games that target specific problems (see also Anderson & Rainie, 2012; Cooper et al., 2010). Given their growing ubiquity in everyday life, digital games offer a logical, effective means to foster a widespread and sustained interest in crowdsourcing endeavors (Newton, 2012; Squire & Dikkers, 2012). Indeed, as noted by Ridge (2011):

A well-designed crowdsourcing game can be more fun and more productive than other crowdsourcing interfaces. Not only does good game design entice more people to make their first contribution, but games are also designed to motivate on-going participation. Just as games have been called 'happiness engines', crowdsourcing games could be called 'participation engines.'

Migrating Learning Objectives Into Gameplay: A Workshop

Efficacy: Measuring the Impact of Game-Based Learning

Game Design as an Intro to Computer Science

Persuasive Play from 10,000 Feet

Birds of a Feather Lunch (on your own) and Industry/Student Meet'n'Greet

Lunch

• Educational Games
• Health Games
• Research and Funding
• Design and Development
• Students
• Contagious Creativity and Leadership

Industry/Student Meet'n'Greet

My Favorite Games and Why They Work!

• Why we use games in business decision making. This section of the presentation will discuss fuzzy goals, lack of predictability and the need to have ready-to-go alternatives as change happens at faster and faster rates.
• What's up with the brain and how to trick it. The brain is hard wired. It sees what it wants to see based upon past experiences. The key to successful innovation and creativity is to get the brain to see things in new ways.
• The four-part process for innovation. This includes divergence, emergence, convergence and the setting of goals.
• My favorite games. While Andy is an Innovation Games facilitator, a unique part of his expertise is the way he uses three games from Innovation Games and one that is not in the IG game deck.
• Some client examples. Andy will provide some examples from his experience of running games over the past two years. (Note: The names of the organizations will have been changed to protect client confidentiality.)
• A practical exercise. If time allows, Andy will provide a practical exercise for active learning.

1. How the use of games in the Innovation Process is critically important for the front and back end of effective change
2. Why the engagement in games works even among total strangers
3. The process offers as much insight as the output for the creation of new innovations

Race / Ethnicity / Disaspora

A Saga about flapping: Real games, developer pedigrees, race, class and capital
By: Mia Consalvo and Christopher Paul

Discourse shapes the way we see the world. In game design and game studies, discourse shapes the games we make, the games we play, and how we think about and study games in general. In prior work we investigated a key discursive construction in contemporary game culture that functions to portray some games as 'real' or 'authentic,' rendering others as fake or lesser, taking social games as a point of departure (Consalvo & Paul, 2013). In that project we analyzed the discourse of real games by focusing on four key discursive constructions that prop up notions of real games: developer pedigree, game mechanics, the celebration of depth and complexity, and the payment structure for games. Using the framework of constitutive rhetoric as developed by Charland (1987) we argued that these appeals also construct a category of real gamers that has a substantial impact on what games are available and how we think about them. We also pointed out how games studies as a field has worked to privilege certain types of games as 'real' through structuralist frameworks that position some artifacts as fitting definitions of 'games' while others are 'not games' and not legitimate for study. We believe such discourses limit what game studies scholars conceptualize as valid objects of analysis, producing overly restrictive boundaries for investigating games and game culture.

For this project we extend the work to more recent discussions in the game industry with a particular focus on the concept of 'developer pedigree' -- game developers and how they position themselves as well as how they are situated by others relative to their credibility in the industry and their history of making 'real' games. More specifically we will concentrate on and juxtapose the actions and discourses related to two sets of developers: the social network gaming giant King.com and developer Runsome Apps, creator of CandySwipe; as well as Flappy Bird's Vietnamese indie developer Dong Nguyen and Super Hexagon creator Terry Cavanagh.

Playing Subaltern: A Postcolonial Response to Videogames
By: Souvik Mukherjee

The postcolonial has still remained on the margins of Game Studies, which has now incorporated at length, contemporary debates of race, gender and other areas that challenge the canon. It is difficult to believe, however, that it has not defined the way in which videogames are perceived; the effect, it can be argued, is subtle. For the millions of Indians playing games such as GTA 4 or Max Payne 3, it is a moot question whether their gameplay is influenced in any way by their colonial history. However, when they play games such as Empire: Total War or East India Company, their encounter with colonial history is direct and unavoidable, especially given the pervasiveness of postcolonial reactions in everything from academia to day-to-day conversation around them. Likewise, the middle-eastern Arabic youth playing America's Army (or conversely, mods such as Under Ash ) as well as the gamer from Central Africa playing Far Cry 2 certainly engage with a distinct political consciousness where discourses of power and colonization are involved. The ways in which games construct conceptions of spatiality, political systems, ethics and society are often deeply imbued with a notion of the colonial and therefore, also with the questioning of colonialism. This paper aims to examine the complexities that the postcolonial undertones in videogames bring to the ways in which we read them.

I'm Dancing with the Man in the Mirror: An Experimental Study of a Dance Video Game on Racial Attitudes
By: Janine Slaker, Rabindra Ratan, Benedict Hilado and Annette Kim

This study investigates how racial attitudes are effected by dancing with various characters in a dance video game. A 2(race of character)x 2(music genre) experimental design was used to test the effect of game use on implicit racial attitudes and stereotype endorsement of musical genres. Results indicate that dancing with video game characters influences racial attitudes.

Classroom PAL: Points, Avatars and Levels (part 1)

Meaningful Cardboard: Towards a "Tabletop Games and Learning"

• Sean C. Duncan (Learning Sciences Program, Indiana University) will describe recent work on "story games" and the unique affordances of tabletop play for fostering collaborative narratives. In particular, Sean will discuss the design of several commercial "story games" (narrative-heavy, mechanic-light) tabletop role-playing games, including Fiasco, Dog Eat Dog, and Monsterhearts, to first categorize and distinguish these games from their digital counterparts. Focusing on the specific affordances of tabletop role-playing experiences, he will discuss the ongoing results of a new study of story games focused on the learning of collaborative practices, narrative construction, and the evolution of identity play.
• Mark Chen (Gameful Design Lab, Pepperdine University) will describe learning practices of members of two Meetup.com groups that schedule weekly informal game nights in a tech-biased urban area. Mark will detail interview and participant-observation data that explores how certain games spread in popularity in part due to spontaneous mentoring and sponsorships, how newcomers to the groups enculturate into the groups (some almost immediately and others more tentatively), and how members of the groups are variously connected to larger issues with gaming culture through their individual participation with online and local communities.
• Matthew Berland & Adam Mechtley (Games+Learning+Society Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison) on the ways that language serves as a marker of enculturation to the popular board game community site boardgamegeek.com. In particular, they have used statistical text mining techniques with data drawn from boardgamegeek in order to assess the ways that users' language changes over the course of their participation within the community, finding that newcomers' vocabulary is both more diffuse and more diverse than the vocabulary of the more experienced participants in the space. This work illustrates that communities of board, card, and tabletop gamers represent complex sites of learning within which experience is tied to the use of specialized language.
• Colleen Macklin (PETLab, Parsons the New School for Design) on the design of non-digital games for both learning and play. Focusing on the design of the cultural argumentation card game The Metagame, which was designed by herself, John Sharp, and Eric Zimmerman (as Local No. 12), she will describe striking a balance between designing games for fun and designing games to be adaptable for instructional purposes. She will describe the ways The ?Metagame can and has been used for learning, while attending to the unique affordances that a ?card-based game provides over digital alternatives.

Digital Games in Later Life: Challenges and Opportunities

Health

Measuring the Social Impact of Games for Health and Policy Reform
By: Lien Tran, Katharina Lang, Nick Carcioppolo, Clay Ewing and David Beyea

As games continue to grow as a medium for social change and as we design more games with a desired social impact, it is important that we conduct sound research that tests our hypotheses and can turn assumptions into factual understanding. This talk will present preliminary findings from two game assessment studies conducted at the University of Miami. One study evaluates how the presentation mode of a role-taking game (Cops and Rubbers) versus a written report influences an individual's reaction and willingness to advocate against the condoms-as-evidence policy. The second study assesses the effectiveness of a tabletop game (Vanity) to influence attitudes, knowledge, and intentions regarding tanning behavior and skin cancer prevention.

Much game studies research focuses on player engagement, narrative, and violence in commercial video games or learning outcomes of education games. Little formal research addresses the impact games have on people's perceptions of or prosocial behavior towards real-world issues. As a result, humanitarian organizations and their partners may be hesitant to use games as advocacy tools. This is in spite of the fact that games provide unique experiential learning opportunities whereby players take on someone else's perspective via role-taking (when an individual temporarily pretends that he or she is another person in order to gain insight into that person's thoughts, attitudes, intentions, and behaviors in a given situation) as well as internalize in-game cause and effect to draw independent conclusions leading to a call to action in real life (Gee, 2008; Peng, Lee, & Heeter, 2010).

Games going gray: A longitudinal study on the adoption and use of technology by older adults in assisted and independent living communities
By: Ruth Shillair, Hsin-Yi Sandy Tsai and Shelia Cotten

A frequently overlooked population that can benefit from computer-mediated games is older adults. They form an increasing percentage of the world's population. By 2030, it is projected that adults over the age of 65 will comprise over 19% of the population of the United States (Administration on Aging, 2013). Yet, this age group is rarely included in the discussion about the potential advantages and uses of games. Games can not only provide an engaging pastime for older adults, but they can also demonstrate to this community a reason to personally use technology. A key to adopting technology, especially for the older adult, is seeing the personal advantages that can be gained from using it (Eggermont, Vandebosch, & Steyaert, 2006). Games can be personally entertaining and help participants to feel comfortable using computing devices. They can also be a method for connecting individuals to others (Jung et al, 2009). Using social games could help older adults who feel isolated from family regain a sense of connectedness. The use of social games allows for continued interaction with remote family and friends (Jung et al, 2009).

The purpose of this study is to examine the occurrence and frequency of game playing among a sample of older adults in assisted and independent living communities. We also examine whether game playing is associated with quality of life outcomes. Participants were part of a larger randomized controlled trial that brought technological access and training to older adults in 19 different assisted and independent living communities. The overall purpose of the larger study was to determine whether using information and communication technologies could enhance social capital and quality of life among older adults in these communities. For this study, we utilize the subsample of participants who received technology training and who remained in the study until the end of the study (n=65). Participants were surveyed at five time points: pretest, posttest, and at 3, 6, and 12 month intervals. Quality of life outcomes examined included geriatric depression, life satisfaction, loneliness, mattering, and other quality of life measures.

The Design of a Software-Generated Workout Partner to Boost Motivation in Exergaming
By: Brian Winn, Emery Max, Greg Kozma, William Jeffery, Xavier Durand-Hollis, Samuel Forlenza, Stephen Samendinger, Norbert Kerr, Karen Pfeiffer and Deborah Feltz

Background: Recent research has shown that exercising with a more capable partner where one's performance is indispensable to the group (referred to as the Köhler motivation gain effect) leads to greater effort in partnered exergame play.

Objective: Based on positive results with young adults, current research is examining whether a Köhler effect can be observed in an exergame by middle-aged adults exercising with a moderately superior software-generated partner-- one that is anthropomorphic but clearly artificial and synthetic.

Methods: The current research includes middle-aged adults interacting in a custom designed exergame that involves holding a series of five plank exercises for as long as possible. Ss complete the exercise individually, and after a rest, completed the same exercises with either a software-generated partner (SGP), or no partner at all (IC). The partner is presented as being slightly more capable at the plank activity than the Ss based on the Ss initial exercise scores. The experiment includes measures of exercise persistence, perceived exertion, self-efficacy beliefs, enjoyment, and intentions to exercise.

Design: The designs of the characters were based on focus groups with the target audience. The SGP is represented as a three-dimensional animated male or female character generated out of Mixamo Fuse and then customized in Maya. The SGP speaks through the voice of a prerecorded voice actors and moves with human-like motion based on a combination of human motion capture date, keyframe animation, and software generated movements. The Ss initially meet the SGP during either an interactive dialog based on a preconstructed dialog tree or a prescripted, non-interactive dialog to attempt to establish a human-like relationship with the partner. The exergame was inspired by the Playstation 2 Eyetoy: Kinetic, though the Kinetic does not employ a SGP. The exergame was custom built in C# on top of the Unity3D engine. The graphical user interface was built on top of the NGUI architecture.

Results: While data is still being collected, thus far the difference scores suggest a significant Köhler motivation gain effect will be observed for both partner conditions over the control. NOTE: Data collection and analysis will be complete by the time of Meaningful Play.

This research was supported by research grant 1R21HL111916-01A1 from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Ludic Performance: Embodied, Game-Based, Data-Driven Experiences

Sex / Sexuality / Gender

Gender and Social Network Dynamics in a Large Massively Multiplayer Online Game
By: Cuihua Shen, Bettina Riedl, Dora Cai, Rabindra Ratan and Arnold Picot

Online games allow users to assume identities that are unburdened by offline biases, thus potentially serving as "social levelers" that facilitate equal exchanges across genders (Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006). However, research suggests that they are not fulfilling their potential, and instead "gender gaps" that occur offline are also manifested in virtual worlds (Collier & Bear, 2012). Studies in various MMOs have produced descriptive statistics about how men and women differ in their sociodemographic profiles and play styles (Williams et al, 2009, Lehdonvirta et al 2014), yet systematic examinations of how men and women engage in social interactions in these worlds remain scant. How do men and women build social relationships in these worlds? Does gender influence community participation and network dynamics online, in ways offline gender norms would predict? These questions not only would help us better understand the extent to which gender disparities exist in these worlds, but also may illuminate how gender disparities come into existence as player networks develop and mature over time.

This on-going project aims to answer these questions by examining how women and men's networks form and change over time, and what attributes predict the these changes. In addition, this project will examine social behavior across multiple cultures, in the US, Japan and Brazil, offering an international comparison unprecedented in previous research. It will draw from a unique large-scale longitudinal dataset from Travian, including both behavioral logs and survey data from users in 23 countries, representing each cultural group in the GLOBE study (House et al., 2004). The data used in this study are part of a larger research program on collaboration (Gallenkamp, Picot, Welpe, Wigand, & Riedl, 2011; Riedl, Gallenkamp, Picot, & Welpe, 2012; Tumasjan & Strobel, 2012; Wigand et al., 2012). Travian is one of the most popular multi-national browser-based strategy games in the world. Players set out as chieftains in their own villages, and collaborate as well as compete with each other to be the only winner (per server) at the end of the game. Every game has a duration of approximately one year, and our data of 12-month covered games on multiple servers in their entirety. It runs on numerous countries in six continents. Each country has its own dedicated server, where up to 25,000 players of the specific country can interact in their own native language. Based on the findings from FeatureSelector, a computational tool for massive game log analysis (Cai et al, 2014), we selected the US, Japan and Brazil to be included in the current analysis.

BREAKAWAY: Combating Violence Against Women and Girls through Soccer Video Game and Youth Camps
By: Hua Wang, Ann Demarle, Jihye Choi and Yishin Wu

Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a major global economic, health, and human rights issue and causes severe damages to individual victims and societies at large. Early interventions among youth are crucial for combating VAWG. BREAKAWAY is an online, narrative-based, role-playing soccer game purposefully designed to educate youth worldwide about the issue of VAWG and to change their attitudes and behaviors. In 2013, the BREAKAWAY team hosted two 5-day youth camps in El Salvador.

Event-based time diary, participatory sketching, gamification strategies, and supplementary post-hoc Facebook Insights analysis was used for assessment. Overall, the game and camp experience had a profound impact on participants in terms of awareness, knowledge, attitude, skill building, and initiation of behavioral change regarding gender inequality and VAWG. Through game play around the main characters and their dialogues in various challenging situations, participants formed their understanding of the good qualities of sportsmanship, debated about the rationale of different decision-making processes, wrote individual letters to the abusive character, and co-constructed RESPECT acrostic poems/rap songs. They showed empathy and sympathy to the characters that were mistreated in the game and admiration and approval for the positive role models. They were also able to sketch out real-life bullying scenarios and demonstrate some of the VAWG strategies they learned from the game and camp activities. Participants chose significantly more female player stickers as rewards than male player stickers. The BREAKAWAY Facebook page attracted more traffic and engaged more user activities.

Girls getting played: Video game stereotype effects on gendered career perceptions
By: Joseph Fordham, Kuo-Ting Huang, Corrie Strayer and Rabindra Ratan

The continued desire for more graduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) fields has resulted in a number of educators proclaiming video games as the next step in motivating students towards these careers. While the popularity of games with children lead many to believe that games may be the key to driving girls toward STEM careers, the negativity surrounding the "girl gamer" stereotype may actually continue to drive females away. The present study investigates the effect of stereotype threat on female video game players and how this effect impacts the perception of gender and overall appeal towards both gaming and STEM fields of study. A 2 (gender of opponent: male or female) x 2 (article type: stereotype threat or non-threatening) experiment found that game-related stereotype threat caused participants to rate STEM careers as more suitable for males but actually did show an increase in the appeal of certain STEM careers such as Computer Science. These results suggest a connection between perceptions of gender in video games and STEM which must be understood and addressed in regards to motivating more females toward STEM careers.

Playing Online with Boys: Women's Strategies for Coping With Harassment While Gaming
By: Amanda Cote

Despite the rise of casual games and the changing image of video gaming as "for everyone", there is strong evidence that players who do not fit the stereotypical image of a straight, white, male gamer often face harassment within the gaming community. However, this behavior, while likely off-putting to many potential gamers, does not stop all members of these groups from enjoying games; many still play, and have developed specific coping strategies they employ to avoid or to respond to harassment they encounter. Presenting a gender-based case study, this paper draws on a series of interviews conducted with female gamers to explore their coping strategies and how they are used in varying situations. With that knowledge, it will provide recommendations for developers who desire a game that can be inclusive to many players. With this knowledge, developers can potentially reach a wider market, while individuals who worry about the negative influence of gaming culture in society may be able to encourage reassuring change.

Classroom PAL: Points, Avatars and Levels (part 2)

Growing the Game Industry in Michigan: 2014 Update

• Brian Winn, Michigan State University (moderator)
• Margaret O'Riley, Michigan Film Office
• Shawn Tooley, S2 Games
• Sean Hurwitz, Pixo Group
• Josh Freeney, Yeti CGI
• Cory Heald, Underbite Games
• Matt Toschlog, Reactor Zero
• Scott Brodie, Heart Shaped Games
• Gregg Seelhoff, Digital Gamecraft

In the Game

An analysis of open world PvP in LOTRO's PvMP
By: Toh Weimin

This article proposes a methodological framework for the analysis of PvP (Player versus Player) in online games, based on the case study of PvMP (Player versus Monster Player) in Turbine's The Lord of the Rings Online. The argument is that although there is a core system of PvP which LOTRO shares with other online games, each type of online game has a specific kind of PvP system which attracts players to engage in the gameplay. For instance, the open world sandbox type of PvP attracts certain players to play in LOTRO's PvMP. One of the main aims of this study is thus to investigate some of the core systems of PvP gameplay in open world sandbox PvPs.

Conceptualizing Player-side Emergence in Interactive Games: Between Hardcoded Software and the Human Mind in Papers, Please and Gone Home (Top Paper Award)
By: Christopher Yap, Youki Kadobayashi and Suguru Yamaguchi

The concept of emergence--that a certain thing may emerge from several distinct (and not necessarily related) parts, which is different, larger in scope, and mostly originally unintended or expected--exists in many fields such as Philosophy, Information Science, and biology. With respect to the modern video game, emergence can potentially manifest as emergent narrative and/or emergent gameplay. Furthermore, emergence in games can potentially manifest through true technological, procedurally-generated gameplay and/or a game design which encourages emergence from the game elements within the mind of the player.

In this paper, we engage in a critical discussion about what it means for an interactive video game to have emergence. Firstly, we will be briefly discussing what emergence means to other scientific disciplines, and in doing so delineate specifically how we will be using the term "Emergent" in reference to interactive video games. We then frame the discussion of Emergence in games by considering a range of recent video game examples, and a close critical look at the indie games Papers, Please and Gone Home. From these analyses, we propose a concept of "Player-side emergence in games," in which emergence in the form of narrative is expressible and observable in games as the result of the current technological capabilities of games, which relies not on the game software itself, but rather upon the complex system of the human mind for reconstruction of the game experience and a subsequent expression of emergence. In this proposed concept, the constituent narrative pieces offered by a game can be expressed emergently as a unified, overall game narrative experience by the player mind. Based on this concept, we propose that emergence in a game need not wait or rely upon the advent of a truly, technology-based procedurally-generated platform, but rather can be an expression of player-side experiential reconstruction. We conclude that emergent narrative between video game and player can manifest so long as a human player can be encouraged via the game's mechanics towards an overall narrative reconstruction whose blueprint does not wholly originate from the source game, and we also contend that such an emergent design consideration can be potentially useful for designers who are trying to deal with the trade-off of Ludo-Narrative Dissonance in their games.

Platformer as Platform: LittleBigPlanet and the Limits of Protocol
By: Brian Keilen and Brian Keilen

Allowing users to generate their own content is a growing trend in the video game industry. From building games such as Minecraft to games containing level editors such as LittleBigPlanet, developers are giving gamers the ability to create a wide variety of their own games and levels spanning a variety of genres. While these games are steeped in the rhetoric of "freedom" and "creativity," their underlying mechanics reveal a rigid structure of control. This paper explores the history of game modifications, from early PC mods of Doom to the modern conception of user generated content. Using Galloway's (2006) notion of protocol and Montfort and Bogost's platform studies (2009) as a starting point, I argue that these games mask platformer as platform in order to co opt the labor of their users in order to perpetuate their own systems.

Meditation as Entertainment: The inverse of serious games
By: Carrie Heeter

I spent about a decade designing, studying, and teaching about serious games. I was intrigued by possibilities for leveraging the power of play for meaningful outcomes. Over the last 2 years I have engaged in a personal journey and exploration into the idea of creating technology-enhanced meditation experiences (cybermeditation). I have meditated more than 1500 times, experienced more than 100 guided meditations on different meditation objects. I took a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction workshop to be knowledgeable about that modality. I participated in yoga therapy as a yoga therapy client with a goal of learning more about the mind-body connection, and ended up healing through this relationship. I have been studying in the ancient one-on-one tradition with Marcel Allbritton, my teacher-mentor/yoga therapist/meditation expert for more than 2 years.

Marcel agreed to collaborate with me as I started a company to design and distribute cybermeditation experiences. I have learned 7 programming languages and systems, developed and tested and revised myriad prototypes. I've read hundreds of PubMed research articles about the psychological, physiological and neurocognitive benefits of yoga and meditation. We're developing two flavors of cybermeditation experiences: outcome-based meditations to help achieve a particular outcome, and the one I'll talk about today: meditation as meaningful play.

For me, meditation is fascinating and fun. I'm intrigued by the expertise that goes into structuring and guiding an experience and by the role the player (or meditator) must take in order to have the experience. The meditation objects in our meaningful play cybermeditation are things like wizards and purring cats. An attitude of playful exploration is very helpful. Player motivation and gamification concepts apply. And cybermeditation as meaningful play has all of the same body-mind benefits as more traditional meditation objects.

With serious games, we took something fun and added a serious twist. It's not surprising that when I got interested in meditation (something serious), I wondered about adding fun. In this short talk, I will elaborate on the journey and share example experiences.

Keynote - Story Places

Jan Sircus is Past-President of the Themed Attraction Association, Canada, and Principal of Studio Sircus, a creative consultancy for innovative media projects and story place making. Prior to Studio Sircus, Jan was co-founder and Managing Director Creative of Maple Leaf Studios (MLS), Vancouver. At MLS, Jan led master planning and design for the successful Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics Bid Resort and Village in Sochi, Russia. He was also creative lead for final round competition concept bids for BC Canada Place at the Beijing 2008 Olympics, and for the 'City Being' main theme pavilion and the GM-SAIC pavilion for the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. Shortly thereafter, Jan was Creative Director for Aldrich Pears Associates for the site wide interpretive exhibits design of the Al Ain Wildlife Park and Resort in Abu Dhabi. Recently, Jan provided creative concept and design consulting for Soaring Attractions and their 'Flyover Canada', an OmniMax-scale 'immersive film simulator ride' at Canada Place, Vancouver. He is currently providing similar consultation to a major museum in the US whilst pursuing 'Arts Vista', a city-based arts event preview site that he founded and launched earlier this year - artsvista.com

Before MLS, Jan led Lunny International's planning, design, and content development for numerous high-profile projects, including master planning for the Calgary Exhibition & Stampede in Alberta, Canada, the 'Ancient Worlds' resort and theme park in Dubailand, Dubai, and the China Western Movie Resort and Theme Park in Xian, China. Jan was creative director for the BC Canada Place in Torino, Italy, for the 2006 Winter Olympics, and co-creative director for the Canada Pavilion at Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan.

During 25 years in Los Angeles, Jan was a Senior VP, Creative Development for Walt Disney Imagineering, leading major international Theme Park projects and heading up Location-Based Entertainment (LBE) design. Jan had Executive Producer and/or Creative Director roles on such major themed attractions as Disney Studios Paris, and Disneyland Hong Kong. His LBE concepts included DisneyQuest, Club Disney, and Flagship Stores for Las Vegas and New York's 5th Avenue.

Jan was on the Piano + Rogers architectural design team of the Centre Pompidou. As an early adopter of interactive media, Jan created pioneering and award-winning media projects for the J. Paul Getty Museum and NASA. He also worked with the Warner Brothers Record Group, developing pilot programs for the CD-I platform. Originally from the UK, Jan holds a Master's degree in Architecture and has taught design at UCLA and the Southern California Institute of Architecture.

Dinner Break (on your own)

Pure Michigan Game Exhibition and Celebration

Registration Check-In and Continental Breakfast

Keynote - Game Design as a Radical Practice

Colleen Macklin is the Director of PETLab (Prototyping Education and Technology Lab) and Associate Professor at Parsons The New School for Design. Colleen develops games for experimental learning and social engagement. PETLab projects include a curriculum in game design for the Boys and Girls Club, a set of statistical games for the Red Cross Climate Centre, and big games such as Re:Activism and the "fiscal" sport Budgetball. She is a member of the game design collectives Local No. 12, known for their card game the Metagame and The Leisure Collective. Her work has been shown at Come Out and Play, SoundLab, The Whitney Museum for American Art and Creative Time. BFA, Media Arts Pratt Institute, graduate studies in Computer Science, CUNY and International Affairs, The New School. Learn more about Colleen.

As a profession, most discourse around game design focuses on how to make better, more effective games - whether they're for entertainment, learning, or social change. This talk proposes to do something different: to look at the act of making games as a radical practice in and of itself. We'll look at case studies in teaching game design to transgress (à la bell hooks), the practices and potentials of the game design community, and the use of participatory design and co-design for community-based games.

Representing Culture in Interactive Immersive Transmedia

VR and Post-VR

Dissimulation, Disability Rhetoric, and the Application of Virtual Reality-Based Therapy
By: Kristopher Purzycki

Advocates of disability right have been vocal about the terminology used to describe disabling conditions and the rhetoric used to address or speak to those living with them. In light of the upcoming wave of commercial virtual reality technology, this paper reflects on the language used to describe VR experiences and recommends a slight shift in the way we refer to digital environments. Specifically, advocates prefer language that implies a possession of a functional condition rather than a lack of function or loss of a limb. Considering this, we might use Baudrillard's term dissimulation rather than simulation, to describe the VR experience for disabled persons.

World and Object Designs for Virtual Environments
By: Lisa Rebenitsch, Charles Owen and Sarah Coburn

Three dimensional displays such 3D television, Oculus Rift, and Sony Project Morpheus, provide a virtual reality gaming capabilities in the home. However, broad interface guidelines for developing applications for these systems are limited. In particular, object size and three dimensional world structures in virtual reality are in earlier stages of interface design. Serious games will be unable to leverage the immersive qualities of these systems if interfaces are confusing and lead to disorientation or cybersickness. We reviewed two dimensional guidelines, past applications using virtual reality systems, and observation in our own virtual reality system to offer guidance on what performs well in these systems. We offer suggestions as to minimum object size and world design that consider the limitations of accurate navigation in immersive virtual reality.

Creating Effective Rules (part 1)

Too Many Masters? Balancing Entertainment and Education in Serious Games

• Balancing fun and fantasy with the realism required for research.
• Incorporating data gathering--invisibly.
• The demands of the play environment and the demands of research.
• The game design process with plenty of input.
• Urgency in the commercial market vs. the academic research pace.

Games for Legal Services

Tales From the Aloran Insurance Salesman: Bridging the Gap Between Learning Games and Indie Hits

Creative Chaos

Drew Davidson is the Director of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a professor, producer and player of interactive media. His background spans academic, industry and professional worlds and he is interested in stories across texts, comics, games and other media. He completed his Ph.D. in Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to that, he received a B.A. and M.A. in Communications Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He chaired Game Art & Design and Interactive Media Design at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and the Art Institute Online. Drew has taught and researched at several universities. Drew also consults for a variety of companies, institutions and organizations.

Instructional Design

How Games Work: Exploring the Instructional Design of Diablo III
By: Carly Finseth

This paper describes a portion of a three-part case study designed to research the instructional patterns that occur within role-playing games (RPGs). It presents a set of nine heuristics for learning in RPGs and analyzes how and where those heuristics occur within the game Diablo III. The findings from the study include an overview of a cyclical learning pattern that occurs with RPGs, as well as theoretical and practical implication for both industry and academic contexts.

We're in this together! What children can learn about collaboration and equity from educational media
By: Sandra Crespo and Shalom Fisch

This paper presentation examines the potential of educational media to teach children about collaborative learning that can inform both designers and educators that work with children in formal and informal educational contexts. We focus on Cyberchase (http://pbskids.org/cyberchase/videos/), a public television NSF-funded and Emmy-Award winning animated series for children ages 9-12, because it is specifically designed to provide young viewers with a positive representation of diverse youngsters (Inez, Jackie, and Matt) creatively and collaboratively doing and succeeding with mathematics. In this paper we first discuss the lessons about collaborative mathematics learning that the show makes available for children to learn. We connect this analysis to observations we made about the ways in which students who participated in our larger project were noticing and taking up from the Cyberchase kids' approaches to collaboratively working together in mathematics. We then close with lessons and implications for educators and media designers.

Creating and Assessing a Playful Online Course Design: A Case Study
By: Seann Dikkers, Chris Hawks and Amira Alkhawajah

This paper provides a mixed-method accounting of a midwestern university graduate level course iterating toward a differentiated, "quest-based", self-paced learning experience. Previous research has applied 'game-like' assessment and vocabulary to online course design, but often used traditional pedagogical approaches. Our case was a re-designed online graduate course that employed game-like vocabulary, and continued to product test a "dashboard" user interface and multiple forms of feedback (leaderboards, quest acceptance, and experience points), as other past work has done successfully. We continue this line of investigation by sharing our design process, and replicable models, for using a full unlocking 'quest tree' (174 quests total), hidden 'eggs', help forums/hotline, learner driven, repeatable, content, and context to present expert 'play' to other 'players via video conferencing. In our preliminary data and analysis, we present generalizable themes suggesting that continuing to add game-like elements to online course design continues to improve previous findings of increased student motivation, engagement, and striking investments of time, (i.e. 14 assignments in the previous iteration, to an average of 66.2 completed 'quests' in the playful design), that increasingly resemble hobby or game like behaviors and generate fan like communities of practice. This study included three course iterations, all three are complete, and we are still analyzing data for the second and third classes that so far reaffirm positive outcomes. We will have a full paper ready for Fall 2014 that includes data from all three iterations.

What Does Make Players Want to Play More? A Moderating Role of Construal Level of Game
By: Young June Sah, Rabindra Ratan, James Chirackal, Lisa Doan, Ciara Johnson, Grant Kunzelman and Shaurya Srivastava

Video game players enjoy themselves from various features of a video game, ranging from low-level sensory and motor stimulations (e.g., controlling the character in realistic visual and aural presentation) to high-level goals and meanings given by a game context (e.g., taking a role and completing missions). Accordingly, people may construe the in-game experience at different levels. To some players, for example, playing a sport video game can be experienced at a low level as operating an input device to mimic a required bodily motion in a sport, whereas to others it can be construed at a high level as competing with other athletes and trying to win the competition. The level of experience, or construal level, has drawn attention from researchers in social psychology because of its potentials to generate psychological and behavioral consequences (e.g., Burgoon, Henderson, & Markman, 2013; Ledgerwood, Trope, & Liberman, 2010; Liberman & Förster, 2009). Particularly, a high-level construal of an object or event has shown to result in consistency between attitude and behavior toward the object (Ledgerwood et al., 2010; Ledgerwood & Trope, 2010). Drawing on this notion, we developed a hypothesis on the moderating role of construal level on the relationship between evaluation of game experience and behavior to decide to play the game more or not. That is, we expect that people who have high-level experience of video game will behave in a consistent way with their evaluation of the game experience, in such ways that they choose to play a video game more when they enjoyed playing the game but they choose not to play when didn't enjoy playing it.

Creating Effective Rules (part 2)

Composing Play: Epic Learning in Literacy Spaces

Meaningful Play: Gamers as Teachers

Lunch

Keynote - Attack From All Directions: Building Educational Games With Multiple Paths of Transformation

Jesse Schell is the CEO of Schell Games, a leader in creating transformational games. Since starting his company in 2002, he has grown it into the largest and most successful game development company in Pennsylvania. Under his leadership, Schell Games has produced an amazing array of innovative, transformational and award-winning entertainment experiences for some of the world's most respected brands, such as Disney, SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment, Amplify, Yale University, Lionel LLC and The Fred Rogers Company.

Jesse currently serves as Distinguished Professor of Entertainment Technology at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), where he teaches game design. He authored the critically acclaimed book, The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, which captured Game Developer magazine's coveted "Front Line Award" for 2008.

Prior to starting Schell Games, Jesse was the Creative Director of the Disney Imagineering Virtual Reality Studio, where he worked and played for seven years as designer, programmer, and manager on numerous projects for Disney theme parks and DisneyQuest. Learn more about Jesse.

Creating games that meaningfully change a player is tricky business. In this talk, Jesse Schell presents case studies of games that Schell Games has created that each attempt to enact change several ways simultaneously. Showing examples from Playforward: Elm City Stories (with Yale Medical) and Lexica (with Amplify Learning), Jesse makes the case that by having multiple systems of transformation, you help more players, take less risk, and broaden the appeal and effectiveness of your game.

Conference Closing and Game Awards