| Abstrakt: |
Digital games are an ideal medium for presenting engaging content that enriches the educational experience for students. In general, play connects with students at a level that permeates their language and daily tasks, and digital games are becoming an increasingly ubiquitous form of play. By harnessing this cultural link, well-crafted games thrust players into an optimal experience called flow. Games are also teaching tools, merging training, testing and verifying mastery through the use of game content to contextualise an ever-increasing series of tests balanced between expected player ability and challenge. As James Paul Gee (2007) notes, ‘a [good] game, for whatever reason, has good principles of learning built into its design’ (p. 6). Digital games have the capacity to do more than teach variations on the rules of the game. Digital games take learning beyond the classroom, and present educators and students with a means to creatively apply educational content in the form of gameplay. Digital games go beyond rote reinforcement and encourage students to apply or test information learned in the classroom in new and unpredictable ways. Digital games also give the player agency to follow goal-directed actions. In turn, the game will constantly assess the player’s actions and will allow deeper progression through the software only after the player has properly demonstrated assimilation of the knowledge taught by the game. By contextualising the knowledge communicated by teachers, digital games test students in a low-threat, target-rich environment. As a former aaa game designer, I will review how the cultural concept of play relates to education in the American system, how these relate to the concept of flow. Additionally, I will discuss the core structure used to create engaging digital games and how these concepts can be used to serve educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
