Gameplay always occurs somewhere. Any discussion of situated play therefore should consider the actual spaces in which we play. Yet everyday real space is also deeply embedded in the games themselves. Videogames take patterns of spatial use from reality and situate them in their spatial structure. This paper explores these “situations of play” and their implementation in representational video ...

The objective of this study was to assess participation in drinking games among Australian university students; to determine the range of games played, their context and participant motivations; and to analyse the impact of games on alcohol consumption and its adverse consequences. We used a cross-sectional survey incorporating structured interviews and a self-administered questionnaire with st...

Some types of technology-based learning-by-doing environments are tightly structured in several respects. The phenomenon to be studied is clearly defined, without extraneous or unrelated information clouding the situation. Also, at each decision point, the range of possible actions is limited to a few alternatives, all directly related to the phenomenon rather than possibly off-task. Often, the...

We describe a BDI (Belief, Desire, Intention) goal-oriented architecture for a conversational virtual companion embodied as a child’s Toy, designed to be both entertaining and capable of carrying out collaborative tasks. We argue that the goal-oriented approach supports both structured conversational activities (e.g., story-telling, collaborative games) as well as more “free-flowing” engaging d...

Serious games can facilitate workplace learning, for instance when collaboration on solving professional problems is involved. The optimal structure in collaboration scripts for such games has appeared to be a key success factor. Free collaboration does not systematically produce effective learning, but imposing too much structure by design might easily disturb the genuine notion of spontaneous...

Nowadays computers are increasingly being incorporated into school curriculums and serious games are occupying the educational games markets. This article addressed the integration of serious games as tools for learning and teaching English in Iranian schools to zero-beginner students. An experiment was concluded using Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) to investigate the effectiveness ...

Background: Today, due to developing communicative technologies, computer games and other audio-visual media as social phenomena, are very attractive and have a great effect on children and adolescents. The increasing popularity of these games among children and adolescents results in the public uncertainties about plausible harmful effects of these games. This study aimed to investigate the co...