Katie Salen

Game designers traffic in the space of possibility. They design systems that define rules and thus give rise both to play and to a sense that anything is possible. As a game designer, I believe in the value of such spaces. The design of Quest to Learn thus began with an inquiry into the idea of possibility. What, for example, my team asked, might be made possible for kids if we found a way to conceive of school as just one kind of learning space within a network of learning spaces that spans in school, out of school, local and global, physical and digital, teacher led and peer driven, individual and collaborative? What might bemade possible for teachers if their creativity around how to engage kids were deeply valued and they were supported with resources—such as collaborating with game designers—to really understand what engagement around learning
can look like? Download: http://dmlcentral.net/sites/dmlcentral/files/resource_files/Quest_to_LearnMacfou...… (mer)

A massive collection of seminal texts in game studies and game design, created as a companion to the Rules of play text book. It covers design process as well as play experience, economics and aesthetics, case studies and reflective essays, modern technology and play culture as well as foundational philosophy of games and play. For an interaction designer without special skills in game design (such as myself), the collection provides an introduction to the core curriculum of game design and game studies, and I learnt a good deal from it.… (mer)

This is a remarkable book with the overall aim to support design of meaningful play. The authors combine their own significant game design skills with a very ambitious attempt to create conceptual structures of value for other active game designers or game design students. It is evident that they see this task as different from providing concepts for game theorists and critics, which seems highly sensible to me. The book starts with an introduction of core concepts, and then the main part of the book is devoted to in-depth discussion of 23 aspects of games, organized in three main categories of formal, experiential and cultural aspects. The authors themselves call the aspects "schemas", which is slightly misleading: they do not provide mere design schemas but rather elaborate discussions combining their own experience with the expertise of other authors and game designers. Concepts used or developed by the authors are consistently grounded in examples, and a particular strength is that they give equal emphasis to digital and non-digital games. A selection of commissioned game examples with design notes and a comprehensive bibliography completes the book, which I recommend highly for its scope and its mature thinking around games and play.… (mer)