Lara L. Schenck

Computing researcher, maker of monsters

Category: Games

  • Let’s play: “Where is this CSS coming from?”

    It’s a 1+ player game that can last from 1 hour to, um, much longer!

    , ,

  • Social Studies with Charades & SMALLab

    Recently I’ve been thinking about adapting common party games for the classroom. The energy and quick thinking involved in games like Charades, Celebrity, Pictionary, and Taboo would work well to help students internalize facts such as historical names and events. “Who Am I” (title will change, don’t worry) is basically Charades using SMALLab to provide…

    ,

  • Embodied Learning: Research & Thoughts

    Chemistry in the SMALLab. Credit: Ken Howie Photography> In this post I’ll go over two applications of embodied learning. First is SMALLab, a learning environment using motion-capture technology and large scale projections to track movements in space, and second is Science Choreography, a project through Wesleyan University and the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange that combines…

    , ,

  • Reinventing Board Games

    Dominic Crapuchettes (founder of North Star Games) talks about the renaissance of modern board games. A few main points: Tablets are making traditional board games obsolete. Similar to books vs. ebooks: the production process is very expensive compared to buying a game from the App Store, and the convenience of a tablet is certainly desirable.…

    ,

  • Short film about futuristic Gamification

    Very interesting, possibly far fetched. Though Google Glass exists, so maybe not! This certainly bodes the question…how much is too much? via a post on the Coursera Gamification course forum

    ,

  • Article: Gamification is Bullshit by Ian Bogost

    In a nutshell: …gamification is marketing bullshit, invented by consultants as a means to capture the wild, coveted beast that is videogames and to domesticate it for use in the grey, hopeless wasteland of big business, where bullshit already reigns anyway. – Ian Bogost In defense of gamification, from the comments: Where games are rich…

  • Card Sorting to Brain-cleansing Games

    About Card Sorting Card sorting is an exercise in user experience design where a group of users sort cards with various words on them into categories. It is often used to determine a website map or to test the language of product, so the cards’ words would be things like “Pricing”, “Testimonials”, or “Tour”. About…

    , ,

  • DML Conference 2013

    In a couple of weeks (March 14-16) I’ll be heading to Chicago for the annual Digital Media and Learning Conference organized by the DML Research Hub. The theme this year is “Democratic Futures: Mobilizing Voices, and Remixing Youth Participation”. There has been a longstanding narrative of youth political apathy and disengagement from democratic life. As…

    , ,

  • Global Game Jam 2013

    I participated in the Pittsburgh Global Game jam this past weekend. In a sentence, the GGJ is a worldwide event where teams make a game in under 48 hours according to a predetermined theme – read more here. I was the 2D artist on a team with two fantastic programmers, Jim Newsome and Brian Bogovich,…

    ,

  • Notes on the Principles of Game-like Learning

    I just watched a great webinar at Connected Learning with Katie Salen who is a co-author of Rules of Play, and director of the Institute of Play. Below is a recording followed by some notes. Katie Salen: Making Learning Irresistible: 6 Principles of Game-like Learning Key Design Principles How do we to take a theory…

    ,

  • Educational Games Research

    Article: Learning to Play to Learn – Lessons in Educational Game Design by Eric Zimmerman and Nick Fortugno Excellent article summarizing the state of educational games. It addressing the split between educators and developers as well as the importance of using games to communicate process, not raw data: …if your aim is to create a…

    ,

  • #1reasonwhy: what women deal with in the game industry

    via Raph Koster’s Twitter Also check out this segment on NPR: Online Harassment Gets Real For Girl Gamers

  • A Template for Analyzing Game Design

    A note about analyzing vs. reviewing a game: an analysis mainly consists of what is actually present in the game, not what you think should be. Pick it apart and see what choices the designer made and think about why. I figured it’d be helpful to have a template for guidance when critiquing a game.…

    ,

  • Issues & Assets, a card game concept

    Issues & Assets is a card game about WWI I’ve been working on. Pretty random, right? It’s an assignment at the end of Game Design Concepts Level 3 (yes, I am working through this quite slowly) which was: Design a non-digital game with theme a relating to World War I. The primary objective of players…

    ,

  • Analysis of Temple Run for iPad

    I want to start playing as many games as possible and doing brief-ish analyses of them, so here’s a start: Basics Name: Temple Run Platform: iPad Time played: 25 mins Overview Temple run is a free (and ad free) 3D platform game. You are a man running from a herd of what appear to be…