Engagement​ ​in​ ​educational​ ​games,​ ​a​ ​recently​ ​popular​ ​academic​ ​topic,​ ​has​ ​been​ ​shown​ ​to increase​ ​learning​ ​performance,​ ​as​ ​well​ ​as​ ​a​ ​number​ ​of​ ​attitudinal​ ​factors,​ ​such​ ​as​ ​intrinsic​ ​interest and​ ​motivation.​ ​However,​ ​there​ ​is​ ​a​ ​lack​ ​of​ ​research​ ​on​ ​how​ ​games​ ​can​ ​be​ ​designed​ ​to​ ​promote engagement.​ ​This​ ​mixed​ ​met...

This interactive session presents early research findings resulting from a game simulation currently called Gamestar Mechanic through which 70 middle and high school-age players learn to design video games. Gamestar Mechanic is an RPG (Role-Playing Game) style online game through which players “take on” the behaviors characteristic of professional game designers (e.g., designing games, accounti...

Game ́s development process remains a difficult task due to game platform’s increasing technological complexity and lack of game ́s development methodologies for unified processes. In this work we show a way to develop different types of arcade games genre using Model Driven Architecture (MDA). We present a metamodel for game design that allows the specification for a high level abstraction indep...

We present some results of an ongoing research project where university engineering students are asked to construct videogames where they need to use models of physical systems; the purpose of this is to help them learn more about modelling processes and the elements and concepts involved. That is, a constructionist approach of game design is used to promote modelling learning. In the case pres...

Play has been an informal approach to teach young ones the skills of survival for centuries. With advancements in computing technology, many researchers believe that computer games1 can be used as a viable teaching and learning tool to enhance a student’s learning. It is important that the educational content of these games is well designed with meaningful game-play based on pedagogically sound...

Leveraging the prevailing interest in computer games among college students, both for entertainment and as a possible career path, is a major reason for the increasing prevalence of computer game design courses in computer science curricula. Because implementing a computer game requires strong programming skills, game design courses are most often restricted to more advanced computer science st...

This article explores the use of mobile phones for educational purposes through the design, development and evaluation of Role Playing Games (RPG). To accomplish this, we differentiated between the functionality and design of the videogame, developing a videogame engine and videogames prototypes. Thus the engine was responsible for controlling the videogame’s functionalities regarding the proto...

Earth balls, parachutes, word plays, provocative magic ... This session is a discussion of the USC Game Design Community, an attempt to encourage inter-disciplinary game design and research through community play experiments. The USC Game Design Community is a crossdepartmental student group responsible for initiating a series of social play experiments designed to bring students and researcher...

Video games can be a support tool for learning. There are numerous studies which present experiences with good results. Several authors propose sets of characteristics that video games must own in order to be attractive and able to engage players. For a future videogame designer and developer, who is attracted to the use of videogames in education, is fundamental to catch up on this issue to be...

The first generation of video games are known to be tremendously challenging. On top of the classic “easy to learn, hard to master” arcade games, the development of the domestic market saw the rise of more expansive and varied game worlds, in computer RPGs or adventure games. This added complexity is often synonym with a more steep difficulty curve due to the amount of information to assimilate...