Casual Science in the Board Games of Elizabeth Hargrave
My sabbatical is coming to an end and my video game, Nebula Hunter, is not finished yet. Making a game by yourself takes a lot of time! I'll write an…
Memories: Online Games as Identity Performance Spaces
A Facebook memory popped up that twelve years ago today, I submitted a chapter to a forthcoming video game book. I shared the memory and pointed out that despite a…
Why Wordle Matters
I'm sure you've heard of Wordle, the new word game that has taken the Internet by storm in the last couple of months. I'm always curious about why some games…
New OER for Creating Games
I just created a new OER called Creating Games. I have been teaching a course called Creating Games since 2008. It fulfills a Creative Thought requirement in our General Education program and…
Design as a Component of General Education
I have long been interested in design. I started my career as a computer scientist. I had fallen in love with programming at the age of 15 and wanted to…
Women Playing Poker
I played in a women's Texas Hold 'Em poker event at Foxwoods this weekend. I played well but I often felt as though I was fighting against my upbringing as…
Goal Setting and Institutional Change
I've been thinking about institutional change a lot lately. As I move into my new role as the Coordinator of General Education at Plymouth State University, I've been thinking about…
Cluster General Education
I apologize for my silence for the last several weeks. The start of the semester was a particularly busy time with multiple days dedicated to chair responsibilities and University Day…
Cluster Experience Goals
One of the most difficult things about being involved as a guide in the cluster initiative is that there is no blueprint for how to get from where we are…
Unconventional Play
My aunt sent me a link to a Forbes Magazine online article about Words With Friends, Zynga's Scrabble rip-off. (An aside: I got sidetracked by the fact that Zynga's business…
Gamification and Education
A trending buzzword in today's digital culture is gamification. According to most sources on the Internet, the term was coined in 2004 by Nick Pelling, a UK-based business consultant who…
Games and Lessons for Life
I am a sucker for stories about the relationship between games and life. When I was a graduate student, a story in the Tallahassee Democrat about the life of Warrick…
Amazon’s Android App Store
I received this open letter from the International Game Developer's Association. I think it's a very reasoned, educational letter and points to a dominant theme of our times. Corporations are…
We Are STILL Playing a Game
I recently wrote a blog entry in response to Caroline Bender's question about the Scrabble game we were playing online. Since we have different motivations for playing Scrabble, Ms. Bender…
We Are Playing a Game
One of my blog buddies, the fabulous Caroline Bender (she of Drawing In fame), wrote an entry yesterday about the "game" she and I have been playing on Facebook. I…
Game Design Education
I belong to the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) which has a fairly active listserv. The most recent discussion on the listserv was prompted by Brenda Brathwaite's rant at the most recent…
Kid Poker
I am huge fan of Texas Hold 'Em poker. It is an interesting mix of skill and chance with a bit of human unpredictability thrown in and as a result…
Increase Your Probabilistic Inference Skills
The latest salvo in the "games good for you" vs. "games bad for you" debate has been fired. For now, it seems that games are good for you. Researchers at…
Social Games
I recently traveled to Oxford University in England to present a paper at a conference called Videogame Cultures and the Future of Interactive Entertainment. The conference brought together aabout 25…
The Post In Which I Get Philosophical
Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I am an agnostic. So it might be a surprise to learn that this post was inspired by a sign on a church. …
