WASHINGTON, D.C., September 7—The American Educational Research Association (AERA) has released 31 “Ed-Talk” videos that feature leading education scholars discussing cutting-edge research on a range of important education and learning issues. The videos, which are each roughly six minutes in length, are designed to convey key research findings crisply, quickly, and compellingly.

The videos are accompanied by 31 research fact sheets that the scholars developed to provide the underlying findings and cumulative research that frame the Ed-Talks.

The 31 Ed-Talks headlined AERA Knowledge Forum events earlier this year. Held as part of AERA’s Centennial year programming, the Knowledge Forum created an opportunity for leading education scholars and policy leaders to engage in an open, in-depth discussion of research on education and learning using Ed-Talks as catalysts for a series of compelling conversations.

Thirteen of the Ed-Talks were given at a forum held in February in Washington, D.C., on significant research clustered around three themes—how people learn, how we can optimize learning, and how we can foster equitable outcomes.

An additional 18 Ed-Talks were presented at AERA’s 2016 Annual Meeting in April, also held in Washington, D.C. These sessions touched on major issues including education equity, the use of research in policymaking, student learning, opportunities for disadvantaged students, and inclusive education practices.

“The AERA Knowledge Forum was driven by the aspiration to make visible and accessible high-quality education research that is relevant, powerful, and useful for addressing challenging issues facing practitioners, policymakers, and the public,” said AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine. “By broadly making public the Ed-Talk videos and fact sheets, we are not only sharing a critically important research base, but also helping to expand the public’s knowledge and inform the environment in which decisions are made about policy and practice.”

The Ed-Talks and fact sheets—along with scholar bios, a list of funding agencies that made possible the research covered in the talks, and more—are available in the Knowledge Forum section of the AERA Centennial microsite.

To view the 31 Ed-Talk videos click HERE. To read more about the Knowledge Forum scholars and download research fact sheets click HERE. To learn more about AERA’s Centennial programming, including upcoming events, click HERE.

How the power of games inspires solutions to today’s biggest challenges

By Lara Cole

For Sasha Barab, professor of innovation in ASU’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society and professor of education in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, it’s “game on” as he and his team create virtual solutions to society’s challenges.

“We develop games, apps, and platforms to immerse learners in what it’s really like to be a scientist, a doctor, or an engineer by investigating real-world problems in a virtual world,” Barab says.

This type of learning is called transformational play, and it’s much different from memorizing facts for a test. In a game world, the power lies in taking on the role of protagonist and making choices that have consequences. It helps people learn and grow in a context where they can fail safely and come to appreciate themselves as people who can have a real impact in a world—albeit a virtual one.

The center recently launched My LifeLabs, its newest venture to unlock human potential through a growth and impact platform, thanks to grants from Intel, the National Science Foundation, and donations from entrepreneurs.As cofounder and executive director of ASU’s Center for Games and Impact, Barab has been harnessing the power of game-infused learning for five years. Grants from the Gates Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the National Science Foundation, and seed funding from ASU, gave the center its early springboard.

“ASU has the entrepreneurial spirit to manifest designs that can be researched and scaled to make positive change in the real world,” Barab says.

Now that’s a game we all can win.

With technology already an integral part of daily life, nonprofits are seizing new opportunities to incorporate elements of interactive games into their volunteer programs and fundraising campaigns.  Some charities make games their mission but some charities simply incorporate the qualities that make games appealing, like competition and a sense of urgency, into their fundraising strategies, says Dale Nirvani Pfeifer, chief executive of GoodWorld. “We really believe nonprofits need to make giving fun,” Ms. Pfeifer says. “Make people feel they’re on a mission with you and the charity is cheering you on.”

Merely incorporating elements of games into a campaign rarely creates awareness or prompts changes in behavior, Ms. Pollack says. So she recommends creating fully immersive experiences that can raise both awareness and funds.  There’s a lot of money to be gained by tapping into the gaming industry, which in 2015 had total revenues of $23.5 billion, according to the Entertainment Software Association.

“Games can really give you a position of empathy,” says Kathryn Dutchin, interim associate director at the Center for Games and Impact at Arizona State University. “They are opportunities to sit in the shoes of others and gain perspective.”

One potential drawback: True games can be expensive to design, ranging from $25,000 for a very simple mobile app to more than $3 million for a game with detailed animation and many levels of play,   “We have big dreams of diving into the gamification world,” Ms. Schutes says.

Send an email to Rebecca Koenig.

Article was originally published in The Chronicle of Philanthropy https://www.philanthropy.com/article/Games-Add-Competition/237386

February 2016

Thirty-one accomplished scholars and a complementary group of national thought and policy leaders met at the AERA Knowledge Forum, February 18-19, in Washington, D.C. A first-of-its kind event in education research, the Forum aimed to connect the science and scholarship of education research to policy and practice emphasizing the value of diverse expertise.
The February 18 event was a “retreat-type” opportunity to examine the knowledge base and potential modes of knowledge utilization. The February 19 event enlarged the conversation to include education policy leaders from the executive branch of government in a roundtable hosted by the White House Domestic Policy Council (DPC).

The convening on February 18 featured 13 rapid-fire TED-like talks (“Ed Talks”) on significant research clustered around three themes—how people learn, how we can optimize learning, and how we can foster equitable outcomes. Each cluster was followed by in-depth small group discussions, led by 6 other scholars, partnered with thought leaders, to consider the position and potential of research from the vantage of thought leaders’ roles and need. The Ed Talks served to catalyze these compelling conversations.

The Ed Talk topics and presenters included:
Cluster 1: How do people learn in today’s information and technology-rich world?

• Learning with an Emotional Brain — Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, University of Southern California
• Re-Educating the Mind — Patricia Alexander, University of Maryland, College Park
• Games, Learners, and Innovation — Sasha Barab, Arizona State University
• Designing Learning for Equity — Na’ilah Suad Nasir, University of California, Berkeley

Cluster 2: How can increasingly diverse schools and classrooms optimize the learning needed to navigate the world?

• Supporting the Development of Children’s Mathematics — Megan Franke, University of California, Los Angeles
• The Promise of Advanced High School Mathematics Coursework — Chandra Muller, University of Texas, Austin
• Identifying and Reducing Racial Threat in Face-to-Face Encounters — Howard Stevenson, University of Pennsylvania
• Social-Emotional Learning Approaches: Prevent Bullying and Promote Positive School Climate — Dorothy Espelage, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Cluster 3: How can policy and practice foster equitable outcomes for all students?

• Inequality and Academic Achievement — Sean Reardon, Stanford University
• High Quality Pre-K: Taking the Road Less Traveled — Steven Barnett, Rutgers University
• Achieving True Integration in Education — Prudence Carter, Stanford University
• Understanding the Racial College Completion Gap: Demography, Data, and Stakeholders— Stella Flores, New York University
• School Accountability: Time for a New Approach — Helen (Sunny) Ladd, Duke University

Building on the talks and breakout groups, a town hall meeting co-facilitated by thought leaders and scholars called on participants to consider new models and institutional strategies to make research more useful and accessible and the strengthen the connection between high-quality research and policy. The town hall discussion, moderated by Jeffrey Henig (Teachers College, Columbia University), included panelists Shirley Malcom (American Association for the Advancement of Science), Laura Perna (University of Pennsylvania), Russell Rumberger (University of California, Santa Barbara), and Thomas Saenz (MALDEF).

The February 19 event featured education research scholars and high-ranking Obama administration officials meeting to engage together in “Bridging Education Policy and Research.” The DPC roundtable, held in the Old Executive Office Building, was hosted by Roberto Rodríguez, deputy assistant to the president for education. Building on the insights and conclusions from the first day of the Forum the roundtable featured scholar presentations and moderated discussions around three topics—New Designs for Learning and Innovation, Promoting Diversity and Conditions for Inclusive Learning, and Addressing Gaps in College Access and Success.

“Spark presentations” were given in each of the topic areas, respectively, by Sasha Baraba (Arizona State University), Prudence Carter (Stanford University), and Stella Flores (New York University). Moderators included Linda Darling-Hammond (Stanford University), AERA President Jeannie Oakes (UCLA), and Laura Perna (University of Pennsylvania).

Roundtable participants from the Obama administration included Ted Mitchell, under secretary of the Department of Education; James Kvaal, deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council; Tom Kalil, deputy, director for technology and innovation at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; and several other officials representing the civil rights, P-12, and higher education areas of the Education Department and Domestic Policy Council.

Read full article here.

What does the future hold? David Guston, Founding Director of SFIS, encourages scientists and citizens alike to shape a desirable tomorrow. How? Through the development of innovative ideas that address both existing and foreseeable real-world problems.

As Founding Director, what motivated you to establish the School for the Future of Innovation in Society (SFIS) at Arizona State University (ASU), USA?

My ASU colleagues and I have been working on the societal aspects of science, technology and innovation since the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes (CSPO) moved here in 2004. CSPO was initially created by Michael Crow, when he was Executive Vice Provost for Research at Columbia University, to be Columbia’s science policy think tank in Washington, DC. After Michael became President of ASU in 2002, he made CSPO Director Dan Sarewitz an offer he couldn’t refuse to recreate the centre at ASU – and then Dan made me an offer I couldn’t refuse to join him.

So, in one sense, the founding of SFIS is the culmination of activities that we’ve been engaged in for more than a decade at ASU – just formalised in an organisation that is more recognisable as an academic unit than CSPO was. Over the years, we’ve hired new faculty, instigated the creation of new graduate programmes – namely, a doctoral programme in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology and the Master of Science and Technology Policy – and generated a lot of new research, especially in the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at ASU, which the US National Science Foundation funded with an initial $6.2 million, five-year award in 2005 and renewed for $6.7 million in 2010.

But in another sense, SFIS is a brand new beginning because, first, as an academic unit reporting to the Provost, we are in greater control of our own destiny and, second, as a school embracing ASU’s particular mission of access, excellence and impact, we are taking on new challenges like creating an undergraduate major and minor. Like ASU’s School of Sustainability, SFIS is a school created from a problem in the world, rather than from a centuries-old tradition of scholarship or the coalescing of a professional community. For us, that problem is the complex and sometimes ambiguous role of innovation in society, and the role that we all have in making our own futures.

How is SFIS preparing students to build upon the incredible accomplishments of science and technology in years to come?

Our students pay a lot of attention to the so-called emerging technologies – like nanotechnology, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence and so forth – that are characterised by high stakes, high uncertainty and what I like to call a ‘politics of novelty’, in which it is essentially impossible to say whether synthetic biology, for example, is not novel because it merely extends a millennia-old practice of husbandry and agriculture, or that it is novel because it introduces species that not only have not been, but could not have been, crafted by evolution.

With emerging technologies, we’re operating without much data and with multiple kinds of uncertainty, so the risk paradigm really falls apart. We’re teaching our students to pursue a vision of what we call ‘anticipatory governance’, in which they work toward three capacities. The first is understanding or generating anticipatory knowledge of plausible futures with an eye toward what can be done today to help better establish the path toward more desirable futures. We’re teaching them about upstream public engagement, in which substantive, two-way dialogues can be created between lay and expert communities at a point in time at which the differences between the two are minimised due to those great uncertainties. And we’re teaching them how to integrate knowledge across the traditional two-cultures divide, and not just work in, but lead, cross-disciplinary teams aimed at real-world problem solving.

But our students are also interested in legacy technologies – think in particular about large-scale systems like energy, water and food – in which contemporary innovation certainly plays a role, but the key factor is the interaction of numerous social and technical subsystems that have evolved over decades in complex ways. At SFIS, we challenge our students to think about how social change (like behaviour with respect to energy use) and technological change (such as smart metering of affordable roof-top solar panels) interact such that it makes little sense to speak of one without the other. In other words, we teach them to analyse socio-technical systems. We also focus on knowledge systems; that is, the connections among the various ways in which knowledge is produced, validated, disseminated and consumed across society. And we teach them in both national and international contexts, such as through our Master of Science in Global Technology and Development.

Read full interview here.

Arizona State University tops the list of “most innovative schools” in the newly released U.S. News & World Report college rankings for 2016.

“Most innovative” is a new category for the widely touted set of annual rankings by the news magazine, which compares more than 1,500 institutions on a variety of metrics.

ASU topped the list based on a survey of peers. College presidents, provosts and admissions deans around the country nominated up to 10 colleges or universities that are making the most innovative improvements to curriculum, faculty, students, campus life, technology or facilities.

Though, it’s not just college officials who are noticing ASU’s innovative atmosphere.

Photo Archive/2014/08-August/Wrigley-Hall

“ASU provided us with so many opportunities to excel in entrepreneurship and other projects,” said Jared Schoepf, who was on a team of undergraduates who launched a startup called SafeSipp, which designed and produces water-purifying devices for developing countries.

“We went to several competitions and we realized that ASU gave us that upper edge to compete.”

After ASU, the four most innovative universities were Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Maryland – Baltimore County, Georgia State. Half of the 28 universities on the list, like ASU, are public.

ASU has launched several unique programs in the past few years, including several focused on widening access to higher education, which is a mission of University President Michael Crow.

Last year the school announced the Starbucks College Achievement Plan, a partnership with the coffee company that offers full tuition reimbursement to Starbucks employees who pursue an online degree through ASU. And this fall saw the debut of ASU’s Global Freshman Academy, in which students can take online classes and decide after completion whether they want to pay for the credits, which are offered at a rate of $200 per hour.

ASU is also exploring better ways to teach. Several hundred freshmen are participating in a new project-based learning pilot this year called ProMod. The program combines instruction in general education and students’ focused areas of study while they tackle real life problems. Faculty are researching whether the students are more likely to complete their degrees than students who take classes delivered in the traditional way.

Sometimes innovation comes in the form of foresight.

The W.P. Carey School of Business, which maintained its top-30 ranking for undergraduate business schools in the magazine’s listings, was among the first to create a master’s of science in business analytics, in which graduates learn how to harness the power of massive amounts of data. The program, which was started in response to industry demand, has tripled its enrollment in the two years it’s been offered.

“Ranking in the top 30 for the past decade is a testament to the ability of faculty and staff to focus on individual student attention and program excellence at the same time,” said Amy Hillman, dean of the W. P. Carey School of Business.

For students, the approach to innovation can be both academic and practical.

“It’s spectacular what they allowed us to do,” said Schoepf, who is now pursuing his doctorate in chemical engineering at ASU.

Schoepf and his team launched their product as part of the “engineering projects in community service” course at the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. He said they won several grants totaling more than $50,000 to launch their product, including rent-free manufacturing space provided by ASU.

Among the other U.S. News and World Report rankings, ASU was 8th in “best online programs” and 16th for faculty commitment to teaching undergraduates. ASU also appeared on a list of 92 universities touted as being “A+ schools for B students,” where “nonsuperstars” can thrive. That list was presented alphabetically, not ranked.

But creating a culture of innovation is more than starting separate programs across the university.

“You do need to create a sustainability of innovation across the breadth of the university – a little pocket here and a little pocket there just doesn’t do it,” said Dave Guston, founding director of ASU’s new School for the Future of Innovation in Society.

He credits President Crow with fostering a foundation for innovation.

“The faculty members feel very comfortable crossing boundaries and engaging in collaborations that at other institutions would be treated with something between indifference and hostility.”

Guston said that culture of innovation has helped recruit faculty to ASU.

“Basically, the faculty we’ve brought into the new school are coming specifically to do things they felt they were not able to do at their home institutions.”

Original story here

Mary Beth Faller, Marybeth.Faller@asu.edu
ASU News

A dialogue exploring the potential of multi-user videogames for bringing about academic and pro-social ends

The Power of Play in the Digital Age
FREE | 88 pages
For Apple iBooks (Free)
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This book started as a paper exploring unexpected tensions of freedom vs control which emerged out of our idealistic/activist design experiment, Quest Atlantis (QA)—a 3D multiuser virtual world with a rich backstory that supported the learning of over 100,000 elementary and middle-school students on five continents. This project, designed with generous support from the National Science Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, explored the potential of multi-user videogames for bringing about academic and pro-social ends. Balancing between hope (myself, the idealistic academic) and cynicism (Craig, the philosophical project manager), we opened up a dialogue about the potentiality of media, fantasy, kid culture, and adult role-playing in reactions to QA’s early implementations and data. Coupled with a graphic artist (Craig’s childhood friend, Kit) whose work ranges from major corporate accounts to participatory social commentaries, this little project ballooned into an exploration of the philosophical tensions that riddled our attempts at prosocial and kid-centered education residing at the intersection of education, entertainment, and our social commitments.

Aware of the mass and confusion of messages offered to children in our contemporary society, critical theorists such as Giroux, McLaren, and Lather have asserted that the new ‘educators’ in the 21st century are those who possess the vision and finances to use mass media. These theorists argue that the implicit challenge is to become educators in this new sense – engaging our children’s tendencies toward entertaining, dramatic play – as well as to remain true to our purposes of helping children develop practical, meaningful, and life-fulfilling skills. It was with this provisional understanding that we developed a virtual play space designed to create a compelling learning context for kids.  So, it was through in reflecting on the tensions in supporting thousands of kids and teachers around the world that this book emerged. While most of our other work is more “academic,” finding homes in peer-reviewed academic journals, this book was meant to address a more diverse and a more personal audience. It is our belief that all of us are, at some level, educators and that as a society we have forgotten the importance of play as an important component of the educational process. With QA, we set out with a lot of idealism and energy.  We’re pro-kid.

Quest Atlantis Legend Video from Center for Games and Impact on Vimeo.

Because our experiences have been so visceral, so visual, so aesthetically-oriented and complex, we used the ‘design’ of this piece to embed the reader in an experience that is both playful and sometimes difficult.  In this way, we have tried to create a ‘playful’ book that the reader experiences—not simply reads. We have tried to do this by developing a heavily designed e-book that invites our “adult” readers into a phenomenological space with at least the flavor of the core tensions associated with learning through play and videogames. While designed for printing, we have found that the e-book offers a meaningful experience for those with whom we piloted the content.

This book is written for curriculum designers, curriculum educators, K-12 teachers, parents, and the interested public who want to understand more about the power and challenges of play in general and videogames in particular. We hope that this book will serve as a catalyst for interesting conversations about the power of play and new media in this digital age. We hope the reader will also develop a richer respect for why videogames have become one of the dominant play media of our time, and for the importance (and challenges) of harnessing this power to do good. We especially hope that this book will inspire parents and teachers to appreciate the educational power of play.

The Center for Games and Impact at ASU has partnered with Intel to innovate around their online teacher professional development courses.

Intel, a leader in online teacher PD has trained millions of teachers around the globe through its Engage program. ASU Center for Games and Impact is a leader in investigating, innovating, and cultivating games for impact.

By applying research from the learning sciences powered by game mechanics and principles, the Center is working in deep collaboration with Intel to develop a model, curriculum, and platform to provide teachers a learning experience that goes beyond traditional online learning, and promotes collaboration and practice in the classroom with the ultimate goal of impacting the millions of students that teachers interact with each year.

The first journey to be released, “Designing Projects for Impact”, puts the teacher in the role of designer, using project-based approaches that foster leadership, team work, curiosity, and 21st Century skills, to build deeply engaging learning experiences for their students. This journey is scheduled to begin Beta testing Fall of 2015.

Contact Kathryn Dutchin or Anna Arici for more information.

RebelHold, a local startup focused on bringing engineering and design solutions to stakeholder needs, has joined the Center for Games and Impact to engineer innovations for a better tomorrow. The initial development builds on the work of the Center with numerous stakeholders such as NSF, Intel, Gates, MacArthur and others creating learning experiences to raise Digital Empowerment of young African women, to inspire Latino youth to pursue STEM careers, and to engage students in the Scientific Process.

Beginning as a consultancy, the Center and members of RebelHold are collaborating to build a learning and growth platform to invite, enable, and release the potential of all of us to do great things. From the Center’s perspective, the connection to the users’ needs is as important as the technical details, and RebelHold brings a level of social commitment and interest in enabling users that is often difficult to find in a technology team.

It is this focus on the human potential that makes RebelHold an ideal collaborator in this effort to realize an innovative vision supported by a scalable technology suite. Add to it their strong engineering capability, their design sensibilities, and commitment to local ecosystem empowerment, and we have a powerful recipe for engineering a better tomorrow.

Look for updates on this exciting project in Fall!

Michael Christenson II, has spent the past couple of decades developing businesses, engineering technical solutions to meet present demands, and working with communities to provide stability, ownership, and growth. Included in his most recent successes are an IoT platform used by Intel, IBM, Citrix, and Microsoft, a micro farming platform built to automate individual plots, increasing and leveraging knowledge of global growing conditions, and the continuation of his Mentorship business model as CEO of RebelHold. With a deep interest in the academic and economic success of students, Michael brings to the Center his understanding of life after schooling and a hands on approach to enabling others to build a better world around them.	Jason Goldberger, joins the Center as part of the RebelHold collaboration. As Senior Game Programmer, Jason is responsible for engineering game interaction mechanics and for providing users with smooth, easy-to-use gaming experiences. He enjoys engineering the “full stack” from back to front end, approaching complex problems as systems to be abstracted. Jason is a former soldier (8 years U.S. Army), an avid gamer, and a passionate open-source software developer with 191 contributions to the community in the past year. Jason also has growing interests in machine learning, AI, robotics, and Internet of Things technologies.	Ryan Hurst, has an International Relations academic background focusing on International Economic Relations, Global Environmental Policy, and Sustainable Urban Development. An American University (BA, MA) graduate, Ryan spent a number of years working in Washington, D.C. as a Contractor for the U.S. Department of State, Congressional Intern, and Obama Organizing Fellow. After working in large institutions, Ryan began to desire the flexibility and scalable impact made available through open source web technology. As a result, he learned how to program, design, and develop innovative web-based business models. Now, Ryan finds great joy in helping innovators translate their visions into executable strategies and designs. More than anything else, though, Ryan is a proud husband and father.

Jake Martin shares on his role as a game design consultant for the Center for Games & Impact.

This week the Center for Games & Impact team spent a day with a group of middle school children as part of their summer STEM career camp experience. The students were interested in what it takes to get started in a career in game design and development.

The morning started with sharing about how games are fun and entertaining and can also be used to teach complex information as part of the game experience. The team gave the students an overview of their background, education, and experiences and then they played the award winning Atlantis Remixed: The Mystery of Taiga River, a 3D immersive game designed to teach students water quality science concepts by taking on the role of scientist and solving the mystery of why the fish in Taiga River are dying.

“Our team took care to bring diversity to the kids’ understanding of the gaming career world,” said Dr. Anna Arici, director of the Quest2Teach project at Arizona State University Teachers College. “The kids were very interested to hear about the different ways the members of our team have put together successful careers in making games from project management, development, producing, art, and marketing.”

Campers play ARX: The Mystery of Taiga River and see first-hand a game designed by the Center’s team and how games are fun and educational.

Questions from the campers centered on what kinds of skills and activities the Center’s team focused on when they were middle and high schoolers. There were also lots of questions about how to get started in coding and art for games.

Here are some resources for you, and the children in your life who might be interested in careers in gaming, to get started on this summer:

• Gamestar Mechanic (web-based, middle school+)
• Gamestar Mechanic Jr (web-based, ages 6-9)
• ScratchJr (iPad & Andriod, ages 5-7)
• Hopscotch (iPad, 6+)
• Learn Javascript with Code Academy (middle school+)

Games can be designed to enable players to step into different roles, confront a problem, fail safely, make meaningful choices, and explore the consequences.

The Arizona State University (ASU) Center for Games & Impact (CGI) has been awarded a grant with Educational Testing Service (ETS) to explore the affordances of game-based assessments, with a focus on informing future design and development of interactive computer tasks for National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessments.

“In our project, we will build a new game-based assessment item using Unity3D technology to engage learners within in a 3D role-playing game scenario that they are invested. Here, they will be demonstrating what they are able to do by working through a game scenario in which they are making decisions, receiving scenario-based feedback, and having opportunity to optimize their decision.” said Sasha Barab, Professor and Pinnacle West Presidential Chair in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University, and Director of the ASU Center for Games & Impact.

Student learner navigating 3D environment.

The game-based assessment system proposed would reveal more than an individual’s ability to identify a right answer; instead, it would provide data on the individual’s ability to use what they know to solve a problem in which they are invested, as well as their ability to leverage and optimize their performance using consequential feedback from the scenario. This will allow learners to reveal a greater range of ability, at the same time making the test-tasking situation a positive experience for all.

“The Center’s hope is that this is the first stage of an initial set of game-based strategies focused on enhancing the quality, meaning, and enjoyment of large-scale assessments,” added Barab.

Project development will begin in late spring and will continue through 2015.

The Center for Games & Impact (CGI) mission is to investigate, innovate, and cultivate game-infused solutions to society’s biggest challenges with the goal of unleashing the unique power of videogames to create sustainable solutions for society’s biggest social, cultural, scientific, economic and educational challenges.

RSVP below to join us to hear Professor Reed Stevens talk, “Cyborg learning: How our increasingly mobile and networked lives transform the possibilities for learning and education.” This event is sponsored by the Center for Games & Impact, ASU Teachers College, and ASU Learning Sciences Institute.

Description: In this talk, Professor Reed Stevens will borrow the provocative trope of cyborg—a functioning system part human, part machine—to explore what are superficially acknowledged but theoretically and empirically underdeveloped issues for learning and education.Drawing on ideas from distributed cognition and actor network approaches, he will argue that “there’s an app for that” and “just Google it” barely scratch the surface as metonyms for both what and how our lives are being reorganized by our cyborg learning experiences. We explore, work, navigate, search, connect with each other, and play in an ever increasingly media- and information-saturated world. Furthermore, our cyborg learning experiences are thoroughly mediated, as he will show from a decade-long program of research on everyday youth media practices. Taken together, these phenomena have theoretical and methodological implications for research on learning and cognition. Finally, the reality of cyborg learning has massive, uncomfortable implications for 19th and 20th century models of schooling, which obdurately persist. These implications will be considered and possibilities of designing for cyborg learning will be presented.

Event Details:

• Date: Thursday, April 23, 2015
• Time: 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM (MST)
• Location: University Club At ASU (Heritage Room), 425 East University Drive, Tempe, AZ 85281 (click for map)
• Notes: Refreshments will be served. Click here to view the event flyer.
• For more information on Dr. Stevens work visit: http://www.fusestudio.net/program-design

Speaker Bio: Reed Stevens is a Professor of Learning Sciences at Northwestern University. As an ethnographer of everyday experience, Stevens conducts field studies exploring how learning, thinking, and joint action are comparatively organized in range of cultural settings. A leading goal of these studies is to understand the ways that individuals, groups, and standing cultural practices organize and sustain productive activity and, in particular, how people learn together. In the past two decades he has conducted field studies spanning classrooms, professional workplaces, homes, and museums. Topics of prior work have included: STEM learning in and out school, designing by young people and by professionals, learning in families, and media practices among children including video game play, television viewing, and use of mobile devices. Insights from these studies inform designs of new learning technologies and new learning experiences, in both school and out-of-school settings. A current widely adopted project is FUSE Studios (http://www.fusestudio.net/), funded by the Macarthur and National Science Foundations. Stevens has co-led two NSF Centers, one focused on engineering learning (CAEE) and one focused on learning in and out of schools (LIFE). He has expertise with a range of field methods with special expertise in video interaction analysis methods. In 2004 he was awarded the Jan Hawkins Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research & Scholarship in Learning Technologies from AERA. In 2000 he created the video annotation software VideoTraces, among the first tools of its kind.

Learn more about the Wash Away Mobile Game Challenge by UBS Optimus Foundation at via Innocentive:

“AWARD: $20,000 USD | DEADLINE: 6/19/15 | ACTIVE SOLVERS: 19 | POSTED: 3/23/15 In the Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, 5 phones exist for every 2 toilets.

Even in areas with toilets, a lack of education and understanding about proper use has led to 60% of the population practicing open defecation. As a key factor in debilitating health and social inflictions, open defecation is one of the facets that has resulted in an infant mortality rate of 36/1000 (a fifth of these deaths from sanitation related illnesses). This Challenge requires Solvers to present their ideas for a mobile phone game which can educate 5-14 year old children about better hygiene practices and persuade them to instinctively use sanitation facilities rather than defecate in the open. This is a Theoretical Challenge that requires only the submission of a completed application form.”

Click here to read the full challenge brief and visit the Center for Games & Impact Innovation Lab with your game ideas and for support in developing a proposal.

This post is by Deena Gould, graduate student fellow with the Center for Games & Impact.

Foldit is the classic discovery game. An intriguing scientific problem is turned into a playful challenge and suddenly thousands of ordinary people begin contributing to the solution.   Even before Foldit was released in 2008, I was intrigued by the puzzle of protein folding. Since proteins are involved in almost all cellular processes, it seemed that their importance and prevalence would have led us to know more about how they’re formed? Why is it so hard to figure out the shape of the protein if you know the sequence of its amino acids? Would the Foldit game help me understand more about protein folding? Could I contribute to solving puzzles that had eluded scientists?

Foldit player screen with protein puzzle

Game Play

In Foldit, the challenge of figuring out the shape of the protein given the constituent components was turned into a 3D digital jigsaw puzzle. The player turns and twists a protein model to simulate and find the most favorable interactions among the chemical groups. Overall, Foldit reminds me of the Rubric’s cube puzzles that my mother used to love. In Foldit, you quickly learn to make the protein as compact as possible, avoid empty space, and avoid having components clash. Tools with funky names like “shake” and “wiggle” show you how to fix the clashes, improve the backbone, and reassemble the side chains. Juicy feedback in the beginning stages keeps you believing that after just a few more puzzles, and with a little luck, you might be able to unlock some secrets and save mankind from horrible diseases.

Feedback in Foldit

The immersive problem-solving environment enables you to continue improving your skills and coaxes you into trying more challenging puzzles. When you learn that the models you manipulate represent actual proteins that scientists have posted for the community to solve, the game feels real. There are competitions and there are collaborations. I used the in-game chat feature and found that even on a Saturday night fellow players were happy to help me learn to use the “rubber band” feature to change the strength of atomic repulsion. There is a chat tool that allows players to upload a screen-shot useful to discussions between mentor and mentee or peer collaborations.

Game Design

How does someone design a puzzle game if they don’t know the solution to the puzzle? Foldit uses a molecular modeling program based on current knowledge about biochemistry to provide feedback to the players and score the puzzle solutions. Feedback is based on measurements of how chemically stable the folded structure would be based on having the lowest free energy or most favorable set of chemical interactions. Higher scores are awarded for keeping repulsive forces apart, compacting the molecule, burying the hydrophobic chains, and creating or maintaining hydrogen bonds. This seemed like an interesting way to design a game with “real challenges”.

Game Impact and Research

The opportunity to be a “research collaborator” is a powerful motivator. In Foldit, players can actually help create new knowledge that scientists use to build drugs that benefit humanity. When scientists know how a protein folds, they know its structure and can begin to understand its chemical processes that cause or prevent cell malfunctions. So when Foldit players contribute solutions to protein puzzles, they may be generating new knowledge useful to the creation of drugs that interact with the protein and alter the chemical processes to prevent or reverse diseases.

I had heard about the 57,000 Foldit players credited with scientific authorship in the publication Nature, so I decided to look it up. The Nature publication reports that the collective power of many players’ protein puzzle-solving provided useful results that were equal to, or better than, the computer generated simulations scientists had been relying on previously. Since there is a huge landscape to search for optimal protein folding, using the crowd-sourcing contributions of many people has been genuinely beneficial.

Prior to reading the Nature publication, I was a bit skeptical about the authenticity of the impact of Foldit’s crowdsourcing. How were the players able to do something that the computer algorithms couldn’t do, or do it better than the algorithms, if the game rules that gave the players feedback were based on these computer algorithms? The explanation is that human players were much better than computers at generating solutions that require divergent thinking about how to work through molecular instability in unique and creative ways. The publication also reports that good Foldit players have a greater intuitive sense for 3 dimensions and spatial reasoning than the computer. This information about human learning, human cognition, and artificial intelligence is as interesting and useful for advances in society as the players’ scientific contributions to protein folding.

Systems Thinking

The idea of using a lot of people to solve protein-folding problems can be just as intriguing as actually solving the biochemical riddles. Foldit has demonstrated that a multiplayer video game can be useful for scientific problem solving.   How far could the intelligence of collective human game playing take us as the corpus builds over time? Will new systems-level properties emerge? How will new technologies change the way we think about the creation of knowledge?

Cooper, S., Khatib, F., Treuille, A., Barbero, J., Lee, J., Beenen, M., Leaver-Fay, A., Baker, D., Popovic, Z., & Foldit players. (2010). Predicting protein structures with a multiplayer online game. Nature, 466: 756 – 760.

Game design documents are a great way to get a video game idea up and running, keep organized, and make sure all bases are covered. However not everyone on a team designs the game. In small indie companies most people tend to have their say, but in the big corporate world, that is not the case. It is good to understand that when creating a video game, each person has his or her own job to do. This post will outline a few roles on a game development team, as well as some of the hardware and software you might need for a digital creation.

The Jobs

Game artist and programmer working together.

Game Designer

This is one job that tends to be the most misunderstood. A game designer is neither an artist nor a programmer. In fact, many game designers never get the opportunity to touch the art or the coding, though they will have a say in whether the direction is good or not. The job of the game designer is to create the game itself. This is the person who is at the top figuring out what the game is about, the mechanics, how the art should tie in, how to pitch the game to others, and more. It is one of the most crucial jobs because if the game designer cannot delegate what is and is not working as well as mold the game to be both enjoyable and realistic, then the game will be dead when it is released. The game designer can be a single person in a small company or a group of people in a larger company, and depending on the company and the game depends on what kind of control the designer has. An indie game designer tends to be the lead of the whole project while a game designer at Nintendo may be working under a director. Either way, this position requires people who can be creative and put the player first. Without the game designer’s lead, the artists and programmers cannot hope to accomplish the ultimate vision for the game.

Programmer

This is the job description we all know the most about. If it was not for the programmer, those beautiful models and well thought out concepts would do nothing. There would be no movement, no skill trees, no awesome action combos, no functional GUI code… basically nothing would work. Did you know though that there are different types of programming jobs? A lot of these jobs go by the descriptions provided by the company. Software engineer tends to be the most common way for a game company to say, “hey we need a programmer for this game”. The description itself can vary though. Some programmers focus on maintaining servers while others act more like playtesters who find the bugs in the program. Other programmers may deal specifically with visual effects and yet others may deal specifically with physics. It is a good idea to look at game companies you know and love to get an idea about what each listing really means.

Artist

Like programming, we all know what the artist is responsible for, but the art department is, in some ways, more heavily divided than programming. Within the art department of a game company there can be character artists, environment artists, weapons artists, technical artists, UI artists, 3D artists (modelers), and animators. This is not to say that a character artist cannot make a 3D model of that same character, but many game companies do this so that the character artist can focus on coming up with designs while the modelers focus on bringing those designs to life. Though the department may be segregated, it is the job of the art director to oversee it all and ensure collaboration between everyone. The job of the team of artists starts at the concept art level and works its way up until the models are fully textured, rigged, and animated. Research what kinds of art jobs game companies put out in order to fully understand the expectations of a specific listing.

Other

Those three jobs may be the most well known, but that does not mean that other jobs do not exist. If your game is going online, you better have someone who knows how to make a website. What about a marketer to help get the word out? And if the game you are making is controversial, it may be good to invest in a public relations person to make sure your game only receives the right kind of publicity and to shut down any poisonous rumors that may affect sales. The more money you have to create a game, the more you can afford.

The Hardware

Before we even touch the software portion of game creation, it is important to understand that game-making is going to require hardware that can withstand the demands each software program is going to put on it.

Computers

Mac or PC is a decision that matters. If you are going to be programming and using game engines, you will need a PC. Macs have the ability to code and even run game engines, but the way they handle it is less than optimal. Plus most IDEs are created to run on PC rather than Mac, so a PC will have more of them readily available. However, many artists prefer Macs for artistic endeavors because of the UI, graphics processing, and display. If you are indecisive about which to get because you enjoy the Mac displays and the PC processing, then mixing a Mac monitor with a PC computer tends to satisfy both worlds rather equally.

As to the hardware requirements, it is best to get a list of your software prior to buying a computer for the endeavor. If you plan to use the latest and greatest software, then you will need to use the latest and greatest computer to run it, and that is going to cost big time (usually $5k+). However if you are fine cutting back on software that is a year older or more, your computer prices will begin to seem more manageable. Still the best idea is to talk to friends and find the best deals that money can buy. Some places may even have an International Game Developer’s Association or a place to go for game startups that will allow you and your team to use their computers and software. Just know that this route may have other costs such as providing them with a percentage of your sales.

Examples of computer requirements:
http://adobe.ly/1rHgLME
http://autode.sk/1nh2MO4
http://bit.ly/QGC7gJ

Other

Any other hardware needed for the game is all up to personal tastes. Some might want an expensive mouse and others may not care. Artists will tend to want either a tablet or a cintiq to make digital drawings faster and easier. If you want realistic motion in your animations, you are going to have to find a space for motion capture. It is best to know what you can afford and what you and your team gravitates towards as to any other items needed for the game.

The Software

And of course, video games cannot be created without the proper software. The core needs for any game are a game engine, an IDE for programming, and art-related software.

Game Engines

Every single game needs a game engine in order to run properly. Without a game engine, the programming is useless because there is nothing for the code to affect. There are many types of game engines that are free to use, and quite a few more that are beginning to become more affordable with subscription prices at $10 or $20 a month. Of course, there is also the alternate route of coding a game engine from scratch so that it will specifically run based on your game’s mechanics without the other unnecessary items. The route you choose depends on what you need in your game. If you are completely new to the game-making process, then going the route of a free game engine like Unity 3D is probably the smartest way to go. If you are familiar with game-making then it all depends on what you need from your game. For example, Unreal Engine has been known to handle more polygons than Unity 3D. If you or another person you know has superior knowledge in programming, then it may be better to focus on creating an engine that will handle what you need.

For the Artists

Photoshop, Illustrator, 3DS Max, Maya, ZBrush, Motionbuilder, and more. If it is made by Adobe and Autodesk then the artist will probably need it. However not every single piece of software needs to be invested in. A game that is only two-dimensional will not require 3D modeling programs like 3DS Max or Maya. However a three-dimensional game is going to need both 2D and 3D software for concepts and modeling. However if you are a student you are in luck. Adobe Cloud is relatively cheap for students with a monthly plan of $19.99 a month or $239.88 prepaid for a year with no commercial restrictions. Autodesk’s student versions are free for three years. However, any content made in the student version cannot be sold, so if you are planning on making a game to sell on the market, you are going to need to shell out anywhere between $4,000 to $7,000 for one program or a suite. Autodesk also allows for monthly subscriptions, but you will still be paying $300 each month. If you are relatively new to the field you could try running Blender, which is a free 3D modeling program, and Inkscape, which is a free 2D drawing program.

For the Programmers

Programmers are going to need IDEs to work in. Considering how many free IDEs there are, this is probably the least expensive department in terms of software. Eclipse is a very popular free IDE, and Microsoft Visual Studio is a very popular IDE that has a 90 day free trial with its basic package costing $20 a month per user. Each IDE has its own strengths and weaknesses, and programmers tend to know what they want from their IDE. It is also important to note that most game engines already have an IDE built-in so acquiring an IDE may not be necessary. However, programs like Github are great tools for sharing code with other members, and it allows for projects to be worked on in multiple locations.

From game design documents to jobs and materials, the process of creating a game is costly in both time and money. It is no surprise why kickstarters for games seem to be so expensive. Nonetheless now that you know the cost of a game, you are even closer to understanding what it really takes to create a video game.

Join us for the first CGI Brown Bag Speaker of 2015!

Professor Rikke Magnussen, visiting from Aalborg University of Denmark, will talk about community driven science learning games, and scientific discovery games for science education. Magnussen will share insights from four years of research into these types of games related to: 1) students reflective embodied learning of highly theoretical quantum physics concepts, and 2) authentic player identity in the game-research collaboration context.

Details:

• January 22, 2015
• ASU Tempe Campus, Payne Hall Room 129
• 12:00-1:00 pm
• Click here for the event flyer

ASU Teachers College’s graduate programs are listed in the top 20 (among 245 public and private graduate programs nationwide) of the 2015 U.S. News & World Report Best Graduate Schools rankings released earlier this year. In Arizona, the Teachers College ranks first among graduate programs in the state. Masters candidates and graduates looking to take educational transformation, innovation, and research to the next level are invited to learn more about and apply to the ASU Teachers College new Doctor of Philosophy in Learning, Literacies and Technologies.

Kelly Tran, Graduate Student Fellow

Teachers College graduate student, Kelly Tran, said she chose the Learning, Literacies and Technologies (LLT) program specifically for the award-winning faculty, including Dr. Elisabeth Gee, associate director for the Center for Games & Impact and Tran’s adviser since joining the program.

“The support we have received as first year doctoral students has been tremendous, and it is clear that the new LLT program has been made a priority,” said Tran who is also a graduate student fellow with the Center, “It’s rare to have such access to mentorship and resources. I’ve learned more about research by working on social impact and games projects than I ever expected to my first year.”

“We are really proud to be a part of ASU’s Teachers College and many of the initiatives that the Center has been able to advance as part of our mission to investigate game-infused solutions to society’s biggest challenges, focus on innovating and transforming education in the United States and around the world. Among the reasons we can carry out our research successfully the exemplary graduate students LLT students we have working with us this year. We are excited to work with new LLT program students in the next year as the program grows,” said Sasha Barab, executive director for the Center for Games & Impact.

From the ASU Teachers College Website:

What We’re Playing is an occasional post from the Center for Games & Impact Innovation Lab highlighting fun and interesting games we’ve played recently, whether work-related or not. This month we will highlight games that our players thought might made good holiday gift ideas. In this first post check out game gift ideas for teens through adults who play on the PC or console systems. In our next few posts we will also make recommendations for younger players and mobile gamers.

**Note: Each game’s image is linked to the game or developer website where you can find more information about the game and purchasing.

A 2014 Favorite: Transistor (Steam, Mac, PS4)

Adam Ingram-Goble, CGI Director of Innovations, played the action roleplaying game, Transistor, this year and really enjoyed the experience. “Transistor is a sci-fi action game from Supergiant Games, the same studio that brought us Bastion (also a great game),” he says. “One of the things I love about Transistor is how it creates a playful narrative around programming and operating system concepts, such as processes, interrupts, and scheduling. As a result it is a beautiful role-playing game that leverages computational-thinking skills and knowledge to drive the action-strategy game mechanics. It is also relatively short, has a cute narrative, but it’s worth noting that it does include a traumatic ending.”

Recently Released: Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (Xbox, PlayStation, PC)

Michael Garcia, CGI Innovation Lab Designer, recommends the new generation, Call of Duty Advanced Warfare (CoD: AW), saying this edition added some new features that weren’t mind bending, but adds refreshing new dynamics for fans of the old Call of Duty formula. “The exoskeleton robotic system designed to make soldiers stronger, faster and heighten their reflexes on the battlefield allowed them to jump dash and sprint faster and higher then previous games,” he said. “This makes the game play a much quicker and an intense experience.”

Serious Gamer: Civilization 5 (PC, Mac)

Doug Woolsey, CGI Lead Game Designer, says Civilization 5 is the gift for new and experienced gamers, alike. He adds, “If the gamer in your life does not have Civ 5, they haven’t earned their gamer wings. It is an excellent strategy game with tremendous replayability and provides opportunities for players interested in exploring strategies not restricted to warfare. With excellent community support and a lot of extra content, Civ V is an experience into which a gamer can sink hundreds of hours.”

An Older Game for a Newer Gamer: Journey (PS3)

Graduate Student Fellow, Earl Aguilera, recommends Journey and recommends it for those that might be new to the world of gaming. He says, “My mind can’t help but go back to my first experience with Journey (Playstation 3) back in 2012. The game’s intriguing presentation, intuitive controls, and subtle, yet compelling storytelling blend beautifully to create a memorable experience for both experienced and first-time gamers alike.”

Revisiting a “Classic”: Portal2 (PC/Mac, Xbox 360, PS3)

Michael Springer, Contributing Blogger, also recommends a game that’s been around for a bit. He says, “for anyone who missed it when it was new, Portal2 is certainly worth tracking down. You wake up in the distant future, unsure of your past, and must make your way through an old research facility, solving puzzles to continue moving forward. While fun in single-player mode, Portal 2 includes a cooperative 2-player mode with a different set of puzzles from the single-player game. With recent console games, multiplayer often means playing with others online, but Portal 2 allows you to actually play with someone else in the same room as you. There is also very little violence, although the difficulty of the puzzles might not make this appropriate for very young.”

What games are you giving?

What did we miss that belongs on this list? Do you have a favorite game gift that you’re giving this year for the teen through adult audience? Please share the titles and a sentence or two about why you’re choosing to gift the game.

Playing for Health: The Games & Impact Cycling Team is blogging, and racing, their way to better health and wellness. The team’s first race, the 2014 El Tour de Tucson is 5 days away and you will be able to track their progress on social media on the CGI Facebook and Twitter pages. Check out the team’s introductory post here. 

We live in a data obsessed culture. At any given moment you can check your credit score, find out if your child has turned in an assignment, log the nutritional profile of your lunch, see a report of your sleep quality, and check the stock market all from your nearest web browser or smart phone.

But, what do you do with the overload of information? It is easy to get lost in the data, wading through a jungle of numbers without a real sense of what they represent. Data can be more than a quick temperature read, more than something that seems positive or negative without a sense of long term implications. Used as component of your personal tool kit, data can be a very powerful tool on the road to making a change.

Data from the last Games & Impact Team training ride before our race. This is an example of how the Runkeeper app presents the workout map, elevation, and speed information.

What types of goals can benefit from data collection? All of them! Of course, health and fitness related goals are some of the first to come to mind. Fitness tracking devices and apps are becoming standard on newer phones, and some companies are offering them to employees to encourage healthy behaviors. With any change you have in mind, there your starting point and your desired result. The progress between the two can be planned, realized, and measured.

Let’s break it down:

The Goal
Creating your goal is perhaps one of the most important steps to success.The key to a good goal is determining what success looks like for you. Perhaps you want to reduce stress. Great! So what does that look like? Maybe that means you want to spend 5 minutes breathing deeply each evening, or take a yoga class, or spend one evening a week with friends. Thinking about a fitness goal? Frame your fitness goals in terms of what you would like to be able to do, in my case, I want to be able to cycle 55 miles in a day.

The Plan
Successful projects start with a plan. Think of your plan as an iea of the steps needed to get from A to B and resources you need to accomplish each step. It is helpful to assign the steps to a timeline or schedule to help you keep track (collect data) on your progress. It is also helpful to be flexible with yourself as you go along. When I jumped back on my bicycle for the first time in a year just a few months ago, I was riding 7-10 miles at a time. I knew that in order to accomplish 55 miles, I would have to add a few miles to the total each week. I threw in a few rounds of hilly rides to build strength, and I had a fairly simple, reasonable training plan.

Do It!
This is the part where you have to dive in with both feet. It is easy to become trapped in “paralysis by analysis”, meaning you spend more time planning, mulling, and tweaking the plan, that you never getting around to the doing and the learning by trial. You will never really get any data to improve the plan until you test, so once you have a reasonable draft of your plan, move forward and try it! You may discover right away that there are pieces of the plan that need to be revised, the point is to that getting started will help you build forward momentum.

You will want to use some method of tracking to help you gather data about your progress. This can be a fitness tracker that you wear, a website that lets you log activities, or simply a spreadsheet that you create. We will talk more about some of the methods we are using later and you can see an example of the Runkeeper app in this post (pictured above, left). Right now though, the form is less important than the function, whatever you choose should be something you will use consistently.

Tweak and Improve
Once you begin tracking your progress, it is time to review where you are at in terms of your longer term goals. If you are meeting the progress points on your timeline, take a moment to celebrate your early successes! If you find yourself off schedule or just not making progress, take a bit of time to review the data you have collected and have an honest assessment of why you are off track. Are there factors that are interfering with your ability to consistently follow your plan? It might be that it will simply take longer to achieve your goal, in which case adjusting your timeline might be the right move.

Congratulations, you just used data to inform your plan design! Most plans will yield better results when tweaked and adjusted over time, don’t be afraid to experiment, but if you are making steady progress, don’t be afraid to stay the course.

Tracking data has been an important part of training for the Tour de Tucson with the Games & Impact Cycling Team, what data can you track to help achieve your goals?

So, you want to make a video game.

You have an idea already in mind with the art style, mechanics, sounds, and everything else. All you need now is a team of people to get the project moving forward, right? Here is the best advice I have: slow down.

You are not going anywhere until you write down these huge ideas 1) for you to evaluate, and 2) for someone else to see.

What you need is a game design document.

What is a game design document?

A game design document is a “living document” that contains every aspect of a game and presents the vision to the production team and future publishers. A few of the details included in a game design document are story, art style, mechanics, platforms, levels, and any other important characteristic of the game that artists and programmers may need to understand to produce the game’s components. The document is called a “living document” because the process for good game design is one of constant revision as the game is first conceived, iterated on, and then implemented.

Why is the design document important?

Many times a designer comes to the table jazzed about a new idea so grand that it is unrealistic or impossible to produce the game by deadline. Using a game design document helps to clarify what is realistic and necessary. Instead of focusing on creating the next entirely realistic fantasy game, with a completely randomized open-world that spans four countries in entirety, a design document can show the creator the reality of the difficulty of creating that kind of game, and can clarify the realistic costs of implementation. So instead of realistic art, the designer may realize that stylized art is more manageable, timely to produce, and cost effective. In this situation, the designer might also recognize that some amount of linear scripting is more helpful to the story than randomizing every interaction.

Game design documents also help keep the entire production team on the same page. On the one hand, it is nice to have artists and programmers look to the designer for help in their work, but after several weeks it becomes time consuming and less than desirable. If production is taking time trying to find the designer to ask questions, that is less time spent on the work itself. A game design document helps give vision to the artists and programmers so that their time is spent on the work for the designer’s approval. It streamlines everyone’s jobs, meaning deadlines are easier to meet.

What goes into a game design document?

While game design documents are central to the creation of a game, there is not one overarching or correct template for creating one. The content of the document depends a lot on the game and the designer’s vision for it. Some games may be mechanic heavy while others are mainly artistic and still others may be entirely driven by story. Even though there is not one way to make a design document, it is important to remember to keep these subjects in mind when creating one.

• Overview: The people reading the document, whether they are publishers or teammates, need to know, at the core, what the game is about. The overview should be to the point without sacrificing necessary details to understand the game, and it should not describe a game in terms of other games without further description. It is ok to use other games to give an idea, but if it is not backed up by other specifics that make the game its own entity then the idea will not be clear to others reading it.

• Technicalities: It’s nice to think about what a game will look like, but ultimately the player is the one playing the game, not the creators. This means that every aspect of the game’s controls needs to be explained. If there are skill trees, they need to be portrayed. If the game has a combat system, then how does that system work? If there are lives or health then what affects that system? What buttons can the player push to perform an action? Every small detail needs to be outlined as intimately as possible so that the programmers know what to program and the publishers understand the gameplay. It also helps the designer have a better idea of the function of the game as a whole and how every system and subsystem works together.

• Story: This comprises of everything from the main characters to the culture of the world. A breakdown of levels may also be important to the game document if the game is level heavy. By defining the characters (playable and nonplayable) as well as the world’s culture and build, the artists will have a better idea about the direction the designer wants to focus on. Even sidescrollers cannot be created without some idea of the progression of each level and what the ultimate goal is.

• Target Audience: This not only helps the document writer, but it also helps the others involved in the process know who to appeal to. If the game targets children between the ages of 5 to 8, then it’s not a good idea to write character scripts that are above a certain reading level. It may also be a good idea to focus on an art style that appeals more to children than adults. However the target audience is not just defined by age, it is also defined by gender and even personality. Games like Borderlands thrive on people who love morbid humor, and it is obvious that humor is part of their target audience. Describing the target audience is one of the most important parts of a design document because it affects how the story should be written and how the game should be played. If the game does not cater to a certain person, then the message is lost and the game becomes bland.

Below are some examples of design documents and the many ways that they can be conceived:

• http://ubm.io/1nE3tBp
• http://bit.ly/1nRsKJe
• http://bit.ly/1to3CvT

What’s next?

Now you have a general idea of the importance, utility and components of a game design document and you have realized that writing it takes a lot of effort. The only thing left to do is to start. Draft a game idea into a design document of your own. Have others read through it and give you feedback it takes a lot of practice to create a design document that is understandable and realistic.

The good news is, game design documents are edited constantly through the game creation process to match the ever-changing vision and reality of the game. Just as your game will change through iteration, so will the document. Do not worry about getting the perfect design document together, just get started and know that just as every game has failed concepts that have to be scrapped or redone, so might your game design document. Embrace this mentality and it will benefit your game, and you as a designer in the long run.

From building an activity habit to starting a cycling team

Aside, have you played Zombies, Run!? It is a great way to bring more zombie apocalyptic fun into your day in 30 minute to one-hour chunks.

This year CGI Innovation Lab team spent some time running. Well, for some of us (ahem, me) “jogging” is probably a better way to describe it… It all started with someone’s crazy idea that we should run together in the Warrior Dash in April 2014. A few months later, we found ourselves playing the mobile running game, Zombies, Run!, while working on a Public Health Impact Guide themed “Building an Activity Habit.” (What are Impact Guides? Learn more about them here.) The guide for Zombies, Run! prompts players to use the mobile game to build a regular walking or running activity habit and think about how a game-infused tool can support the success of this habit in a new or different way.

So, one of the outcomes of working on this guide and playing this game together is that it led our team at work to talk about other activities we enjoy and how we use game-infused tools to support achieving our activity goals.

Fast forward a few months and the (not-so-)crazy idea to ride in El Tour de Tucson’s 55 mile race distance and a little racing has turned into a bigger thing – the launch of the Games & Impact Cycling Team.

Going from an idea, to a race, to a team

Founding members of the Games & Impact Cycling Team from left: Adam Ingram-Goble, Kathryn Dutchin, Juli James and Sean James (not pictured)

Maybe it’s not totally news that games for health and wellness is growing and we are seeing seeing changes and learning what works at the industry and individual levels. The developing goal of our team is to work together to look at how these game-infused tools are helping our society to rock positive changes in our daily lives (to start). Do you use interfaces to track your activities across devices? What’s worked for you? And, do you share your goals in a group or work on things individually? We each use, or have at least tried, many of the the myriad of health and activity trackers out there from wearables**  like the Jawbone Up24, Nike’s Fuel Band, or the Fitbit One. We also have played with smartphone and GPS tools like myfitnesspal (for diet data), Runkeeper, and Breeze (running, cycling, and walking), and each of us has brought a new flavor of activity (in addition to running and cycling, things like kettlebells or aerial fitness) to the table since we began “talking fitness” together throughout this year.

After running from zombies with co-workers, to jumping into that Warrior Dash together, and now forming the cycling team we are really looking at how ubiquitous interfaces are changing the knowledge and empowerment we can have over our own wellness picture, including important factors like rest, diet and activity. This is just to tease the early thought process that led us to forming the team. We’ll explore these ideas a bit more in posts as we continue training.

How we’re participating in El Tour

So, we began talking about how we can achieve our individual goals as a team, both challenging and supporting each other throughout the process. We will post more as we progress in our training but for now we wanted to introduce the team and share that we also like the idea that our own health goals can have a larger impact on this world. To that end, we are also participating in fundraising to support this year’s El Tour de Tucson primary beneficiary, Special Olympics.

You can follow along our training and even jump into the conversation with us on social media at our Facebook page or on Twitter with the hashtags #cgicycling and #eltourdetucson. Please donate to our team’s efforts and support Special Olympics.

And, check it out, from our most recent training ride:

#cgicycling Training ride approaches 40 miles!

About Special Olympics and our fundraising meter

The mission of Special Olympics is to provide year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, giving them continuing opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy and participate in a sharing of gifts, skills and friendship with their families, other Special Olympics athletes and the community. – via El Tour de Tucson

**The mention of any activity tracker or device does not imply endorsement by the Center for Games & Impact. Additionally, we were not solicited by any company mentioned to evaluate any device or app, and neither the Center, nor its employees, received any compensation for doing so.

What We’re Playing is a twice-a-month series from the Center for Games & Impact Innovation Lab highlighting some of the interesting games we have played, whether work-related or not. Please join in and comment with your takes on the games mentioned, or to share what you’ve recently played that has left an impression on you. Check out our last post here.

In this edition of What We’re Playing – setting the mood for Halloween! It should be no surprise that a group of gamers is excited for Halloween at the end of the month. When I checked in with the team to see what they were playing since the beginning of October, it turned out most of us were playing games that somehow turned up the creep factor, whether in large or small ways. As usual, click the game image to jump right to its section, otherwise scroll down to read our quick takes on Limbo, Papa Sangre, and Don’t Starve.

Limbo: Disturbing… Dark… Beautiful

Kelly Tran, Graduate Student Fellow

Learn more about Limbo: http://playdead.com/

I recently revisited the game Limbo, and found that it is still as haunting as ever. Although it may appear whimsical at first glance, the game has a pervading eeriness that makes it exceptionally creepy. The player assumes the role of a young boy who is traveling through.. a dream? The afterlife? It is up to the player’s imagination to fill in most of the details of the story. The game’s palette is a moody greyscale, and everything is shown in silhouette. The player never sees anything in the game in color or detail.

This makes it even creepier when the looming shadow of a giant spider emerges from a tree to impale the young boy, or an unseen bear trap in the tall grass ensnares him. The death animations here are brutal, and the player is sure to see them many times throughout the course of the game. However, despite the violent and often disturbing nature of this game, there is an undeniable beauty to it as well. The animations are fluid and elegant, and the world itself is rendered in a softly hazy way, reminiscent of a dream. Were it not for the multitude of dangers that the player faces, the game’s setting would seem almost serene. While Limbo is a very dark game, its uniquely haunting atmosphere makes it well worth playing.

Papa Sangre: Seeing with your ears

Juli James, Coordinator, Sr.

Learn more about Papa Sangre: http://www.papasangre.com/

Papa Sangre is an audio-driven horror game that I played on my iPhone. It was really interesting experience because it was the first time I played a game where I had to “see with my ears.” As a horror experience, Papa Sangre offers intense sounds that made the hair on my neck stand straight up. The story is that I am dead, trapped in the afterlife and I have to navigate a series of rooms to save my love and escape together. As an interesting game play experience, Papa Sangre is played with headphones the entire experience is sound – to get through a room I had to move using the top of the iPhone screen to turn toward or away from sounds, and by tapping alternately on the bottom of the screen to simulate walking. In each room there was a sleeping (snoring, snarling) monster that you must navigate around (WITHOUT WAKING), a light to pick up (a chiming sound that gets louder as you approach), and a door to exit (a beeping sound). If you wake the monster by walking too close to it or bumping into something, it would chase you and eat you while you shriek in terror and pain.

I enjoy mobile gaming and different gaming experiences, I came across this title while reading a piece on gaming accessibility and was not disappointed by the mechanics of having to navigate by sounds – which is a pretty interesting experience. It helps to close your eyes to play this game. If you are looking for a different kind of mobile experience full of creep factor and immersion where sound is not just the atmosphere but also the mechanic – I highly recommend checking out Papa Sangre. The sequel, Papa Sangre II, will be released at the end of the month and I am looking forward to playing it, perhaps right on Halloween!

Don’t Starve: Creepy Minecraft on steroids

Sam Robison, Innovation Lab Intern

Learn more about Don’t Starve: http://www.dontstarvegame.com/

I started playing Don’t Starve after scrolling around to find something to play on the Center’s PS4. Don’t Starve caught my eye and I decided to play it.

The game starts out with an creepy cartoonish animation. Your character, Wilson, is in his attic trying to ‘do science’ (and is failing). Then, his radio starts talking to him and claims to have the secret of knowledge and offers to share it with him. Wilson graciously accepts the offer and builds a machine that causes a set of shadowy hands to appear from the floor and drag him into a new world.Once Wilson is in the new world a figure appears and says something like, “You don’t look too good. Find food before night falls.”

At that point, I was then sent loose without any explanation of what to do next. I began to think of the game as a creepy version of Minecraft on steroids. The gameplay consists of exploring the world, dealing with monsters, managing hunger, maintaining sanity, and collecting supplies. The only goal of the game is to stay alive as long as possible. Unlike Minecraft, once you die you cannot respawn, but you can but you can play again and again, and try to get better.

What are you playing?

What are you playing that’s making the hair on the back of your next stand-up? Share your favorite Halloween plays with us in the comments!

The Center for Games & Impact is incredibly proud to announce that the Joan Ganz Cooney Center has officially released their case study about the innovative teacher training program Quest2Teach. This initiative is created in partnership by the Center, E-Line Media, the Sanford Inspire Program, and ASU Teachers College faculty and leaders including, Professor Jim Gee, Dean Mari Koerner, Kate Weber, and other ASU faculty and students.

“We are the first case study that Cooney is featuring in their series called “Teaching with Games,” which will profile five of the most creative programs out there aimed at teacher professional development,” said Dr. Anna Arici, director of the Quest2Teach program, “This is great visibility for the Center for Games & Impact, E-Line Media, and our collaborations with ASU, the MLF Teachers College, and Sanford Inspire to innovate teacher education.”

From GamesandLearning.org:

“One of the major trends within education is the idea of developing personalized learning tools that allow a student to develop skills at their own pace. But teaching a teacher how best to use newly created game-based tools takes a different kind of professional development.

That’s where Arizona State University’s Quest2Teach comes in…”

Click here for the full Quest2Teach profile on the Games and Learning website.

Click here to learn more about Quest2Teach.

Additional information is also featured on the Institute of Play’s website: http://playmakers.instituteofplay.org/quest-2-teach

What We’re Playing is a twice-a-month series from the Center for Games & Impact Innovation Lab highlighting some of the interesting games we have played, whether work-related or not. Please join in and comment with your takes on the games mentioned, or to share what you’ve recently played that has left an impression on you. Check out our last post on Destiny here.

This week members of our team experimented with music and rhythm, had a hand at keeping up with changing policies and managing immigration documentation, and one of us lead his sons through a journey controlling two brothers… Click on the game image to jump right to its write up, or just scroll down.

Moving to the pulse

Adam Ingram-Goble, Director of Innovations

Pulse is a music and rhythm game available on iPad and Android tablets that I find I just have to keep playing. It is a mechanically simple music game, based on tapping nodes orbiting a central “speaker” as pulses of sound radiate out to the edges of the screen. The combination of music with pacing of pulses and the distribution of orbiting nodes creates an experience that engages my whole body as I play. I find myself grooving in my chair, or getting up and dancing with the rhythm to keep my hands moving to the music…which feels a bit amazing given that I’m playing on an iPad.

Pulse is one of my favorite games to introduce non-gamers to gaming because it simple to learn, and has a well-designed challenge ramp that keeps players engaged. One of the most fascinating aspects to the game is how strongly embodied gameplay is, given it is a tablet game. The musical experience is stronger than I’ve experience with Kinect-based dance games, which is really saying something.

More papers, please 

Victoria Janacek, Innovation Lab Intern

When I heard of Papers, Please I assumed I would be playing either as some office worker (do not ask me about that logic) or a as an American police officer forced to stop anyone who was not white. Instead I found myself in the midst of the communist country of Artstotzka who had just ended a war and was intent on creating a border patrol area. And I got picked in their October Labor Lottery. Well lucky me! I would sure love to become the border control for a country due to my name being picked from a jar.

Nevertheless, Papers, Please is a game that should be boring. It should be, but it is not. I am not sure how creator Lucas Pope knew how to make checking passports interesting, but he did so with perfection. As the game progresses, nothing really becomes monotonous. In the first level only passports are required to pass the border checkpoint, however only Artstotzkans can be let in. But then in the second stage foreigners are allowed in provided they have the right information. As each level progresses a new mechanic is added to the mix. If the picture does not match the person you can get their fingerprints. If their documents are forged, you can detain them. In the case of terrorists… well I do not want to spoil too much of it now do I?

Brothers playing Brothers

Lee McIlroy, Researcher Specialist

My two boys and I recently played through Brothers, a unique puzzle game where a single player controls both brothers simultaneously. The story is rich with compelling narrative and beautiful artwork that carries the player through an epic journey.

The game’s narrative positions the two brothers as entirely dependent on each other in order to succeed. As a father, our collaboration on the game offered a meaningful opportunity – a teachable moment if you will – to my boys about the value of family, the importance that brothers have in each other’s life and how the choices they make together impact the world they engage with.

Each of us took turns trying to solve the various problems we encountered in the game. What was powerful was my boys’ ability to take turns, learn in the moment, and listen to each other to problem-solve together, which, as any parent knows well, isn’t always easy for siblings to do. As a father, I noticed my own inclination to step in and offer help too quickly. But, the game afforded me a lesson about the value of patience allowing my children to fail safely. For us, Brothers became a shared family activity rather than simply a game that we played.

What did you play this week? Let us know your thoughts on these games or share your different plays with us in the comments.

What We’re Playing is a twice-a-month series from the Center for Games & Impact Innovation Lab highlighting some of the interesting games we have played, whether work-related or not. Please join in and comment with your takes on the games mentioned, or to share what you’ve recently played that has left an impression on you. 

Guardians Moon: Image from http://www.destinythegame.com/

This week’s “What We’re Playing” focuses on BungieStudios and Activision’s recently released game Destiny (2014). Maybe you’ve heard of it? Admittedly, I have not played it, though I was excited to hear Paul McCartney’s video game score. Anyway, this week we have three great players with their early takes on Destiny this week – two from our team in the Innovation Lab, and one from a former graduate student fellow. Have you played Destiny? Leave us your thoughts on Destiny in the comments.

You can skip right to Destiny game impressions from:

• Rebecca Hoffman, guest writer for the Center and former graduate student fellow who moved from the Center to Microsoft Research New England earlier this summer.
• Michael Garcia, Innovation Lab Designer for the Center for Games & Impact.
• Jessie McIntosh, Innovation Lab Intern for the Center for Games & Impact.
• Around the Web, a nowhere-near-comprehensive set of links to other write ups of Destiny from around the web.

Pausing in digital space: A moment to take in the skies

Rebecca Hoffman, Research Assistant, Microsoft Research

There is an overwhelming criticism, one perhaps even encroaching on fear, that we have become too attached to our smartphones and technology. This is something most apparent to me in the moments I’m standing on the subway platform, waiting for the train to arrive, and see faces turned downward, illuminated by the screens in their hands. We look up at the sky only through Instagram, see life in filters of Amaro and Walden.

Living in the city means I am almost unable to see the stars anymore, means that I don’t stop to look up as much as I might have used to when I was a child, but this is something realized instead by Destiny, a recent release from Bungie, the studio behind the well-loved Halo franchise. In the heat of battle, just as in the bustle of life, it is sometimes hard to remember to look around and see, with clarity, the beauty that surrounds us. Sometimes we simply can’t, because of where or how we live. But Destiny stops to pause every once in a while and presents the sweeping vistas of a future Earth rendered in gorgeous, lifelike graphics, of a tropical Venus, of the starry sky on the moon. I have watched the northern lights just as I used to in Skyrim, have watched the sun rise over Russia, have watched satellites and space stations float in the darkness of the cosmos. Even in the digital space, I can marvel over the beauty of our solar system, of our galaxy, of our universe. And though I might not be able to see those things from my own window in real life, I am reminded that they are there, hovering where the city lights can’t obscure them.

Perhaps it isn’t that we no longer stop to look up at the sky, but that we can simply do so in different ways.

Bringing the feeling of new back to the ‘ole first person shooter

Michael Garcia, Innovation Lab Designer

The creators of the popular game Halo – Bungie Studios and Activision – released their new game Destiny last week. Destiny, is a Sci-Fi persistent online first person shooter set in a distant future when the Earth has become a wasteland. The game sets the player on a path as a guardian to restore Earth’s savior and protector, the Traveler (a large planet-like celestial being). My thoughts while playing this week were that Destiny does not reinvent the wheel in first person shooter genre, but it does bring a new sense of teamwork, which has been lost to these games in recent years. I like that players can unite for random world events and join fire teams and complete missions together. By far, this is the most interesting aspect of Destiny. Destiny also caters to players with a more competitive side, but still requires team on opposing sides. My first impressions of Destiny are that it brings a new feeling back to the persistent online first person shooter. So far, new is good, and it seems at this point it can only get better. I plan to continue to invest time in playing Destiny and expect the “good” to change to “great”!

Like Halo, Unlike Halo

Jesse McIntosh, Innovation Lab Intern

Playing Destiny reminds me of many favorite games wrapped up into one neatly polished package. With the core gameplay revolving around the familiar Halo shooting style, I found myself reliving the days when XBox Live first became popular. Unlike Halo, Destiny contains many more elements that allow for personal customization. Instead of being locked in as Master Chief, I get to create my own guardian, choose his race (which only affects appearance), and his class. Meeting up with two of my friends online we stormed through the story missions and collect gear that is dropped by defeated enemies. As I level up and unlock more abilities and gear – like any good MMO – Destiny becomes more and more challenging and it is hard to put the controller down.

Even after completing the initial story missions my team and I group up to fight other players in the PvP arena, the Crucible. Defeating players in matches sometimes gives the reward of rare or legendary loot drops, and this is all the incentive I need to play the competitive multiplayer modes. Bounties can be taken out for both competitive and cooperative missions that give extra experience and other rewards. I find myself constantly going between Crucible matches and cooperative strikes to complete bounties and get my guardian to the highest level. In order to keep things fresh, the developers at Bungie will continue to add more maps, enemies, quests, and gear for some time to come through new raids and expansion packs. Knowing this keeps me committed, I’m ready to get back to playing so that I can continue my personal quest to “Become Legend”.

 A few other takes on Destiny from around the web

• Destiny review: No Fate (via Polygon)
• 8 Things Bungie’s Destiny Does Very Well (via Time)
• In Defense of Destiny, What Bungie Got Right (via Forbes)
• ‘Destiny’ is a Beautiful Mess (via The Verge)

CGI lead game designer, Doug Woolsey, and his game project, Sand Hat Games, realized funding for their card game, Vye: The Card Game of Capture and Control, less than 24 hours from launch on Tuesday.

The Sand Hat Games team, made of Woolsey, and colleagues Joe Morrissey and Vince D`Amelio, are veteran game developers who have worked on both digital and table-top games throughout their careers. Woolsey said they have worked on Vye, iterating the art and game play, for about two years.

Doug Woolsey, Lead Game Designer

“We printed versions of Vye through the Game Crafter so we were able to test it out in the world and really refine the game before we were ready to do the Kickstarter. We spent about eight months prepping for Kickstarter and to launch at 5 p.m. and then meet, and begin to exceed our goal by noon the next day… It’s very exciting,” said Woolsey.

About Vye (via http://vyegame.com/)

Outwit your opponents as you “Vye” for control!

You are the ruler of a fledgling kingdom in the land of Vye. Around you are untamed lands ripe for the taking. But you are not alone! Other rulers seek to broaden their holdings as well. You must carefully protect your borders even as you race to expand them. Will you control the largest kingdom? Or will you see your power splintered? Plan your moves well – it will take strategy and a little luck to win the battle for Vye!

Vye is a strategy card game played by 2-4 players. The goal of the game is to have the largest connected kingdom when the game ends. You grow your kingdom by placing Land and Building cards on the table, claiming the cards you place and potentially others around them in the process. Vye is easy to learn and can be played in about 20 minutes.

Check out the video and visit the Kickstarter to learn more and download the print and play pre-release version of Vye today.

The campaign closes in 29 days and we will keep tabs on the progress. Woolsey said his team has a few more games in the pipeline and additional funding above what is needed to produce and release Vye will go toward Sand Hat Games next release.

I spent some time today catching up on interesting reads in the world of eSports today and noticed the president of ESPN, John Skipper, mentioned he does not consider eSports to be sports. Here’s Skipper’s quote taken from re/code:

“It’s not a sport — it’s a competition. Chess is a competition. Checkers is a competition,” said Skipper last Thursday at the Code/Media Series: New York conference. “Mostly, I’m interested in doing real sports.”

More links on the matter:

• Sorry, Twitch: ESPN’s Skipper Says eSports “Not a Sport”
• ESPN Boss Declares eSports ‘Not A Sport’
• ESPN’s president says that eSports are not ‘real sports,’ and he’s wrong

And, ICYMI – earlier this year, CGI Innovation Lab Intern, Ross Dunham, wrote a bit on the rise of eSports and the viewership traffic and business trends related to Twitch.tv:

Ross Dunham, Former CGI Innovation Lab Student

The growth of electronic sports — better known as eSports — has been rapid over the last two years. The term eSports is an umbrella that describes the competitive gaming community based around real-time strategy,fighting, first-person shooter, and multiplayer online battle arena games where teams of four or more compete for trophies and prize pools. As the community has evolved over time, video game developers are being asked to consider eSports when designing. The parallels between professional sports and eSports have become more and more prevalent as 2014 rolls along. Where football and basketball draw millions of viewers on a given night, the gaming community is gaining steam in that department. (click here to read the full piece)

What do you think about sports and eSports? For a general overview, there’s also Ross’s link roundup on eSports from last fall. Here’s a few more recent reads related to the ways eSports is having an impact on the world:

• In E-Sports, Video Gamers Draw Real Crowds and Big Money
• Why One School Is Giving Out League of Legends Scholarships

In any case, it seems that when it comes to business, the differences between sports and eSports may not matter. Did you come across anything interesting related to eSports this week? Share your reads with us on Facebook, Twitter, or here in the comments.

Welcome to the first of our new “What We’re Playing” blog series at the Center for Games & Impact. At the Center, we take the power of video games to bring about positive social impact very seriously. And, we also just enjoy playing new (or, new to us) games, sharing these experiences with you and hearing about what other people enjoy playing. This month a few of us spent time revisiting games for education and health, and one of us is enjoying navigating a world as his favorite DC superheroes.

Here are the games we are playing as we say good-bye to summer 2014 and beginning to dig in to the fall semester (*click on the game art to jump right to that summary):

Thinking with Portals, again, in Portal 2

Angelica Monserrate, Innovation Lab Student

Click to learn more about Portal 2.

Portal 2 has won awarded to numerous awards including winning the title of “Ultimate Game of the Year” in 2011. As a result of its success and fame, I was curious to play and see what the game was about. At each level, the Portal 2 teaches the player new ways to solve puzzles – whether it is getting a laser to point into a certain direction to open a door, or learning to use the different gels in the game – the player learns to manipulate tools and the space around them to advance to the next level. The concept sounds simple, but the puzzles get pretty complex.

I found myself really studying my surroundings in the game to  strategize ways to get objects and move lasers around the room. Since this was my first time playing the game, it took me a while to understand what my task was, and find ways to  solve the puzzles at a faster pace. The game really challenged me to think about how to use portals to think critically about how to use the space around me in the game. A few levels in I had to move my companion cube from another area of the room I was in, onto a moving platform, while I could not leave the platform… Without spoiling the puzzle, I’ll say that I really had to think beyond the obvious to place portals in the right place to move the cube. I enjoy the feeling of strategizing ways in order to solve the puzzle. Overall, I enjoyed playing this game because of its unique features and concept and I understand why so many people are in awe about the game.

Using Zombies to Rebuild a Running Grove

Juli James, Sr. Initiative Coordinator

Click to learn more about Zombies, Run!.

This week I started replaying Zombies, Run!, a mobile running game that I spent some time playing when I was just starting a new workout program. In Zombies, Run!, the player is a runner who is sent out on missions to collect supplies and weaponry for a survivor camp after, of course, a zombie apocalypse. There is also a bit of mystery built in for the player, trying to figure out what (or, perhaps who) caused the zombie outbreak, and what is happening in rival survivor camps. The game is a neat experience, and keeps your mind engaged in a story while working out, which can help when building up mental stamina for a new distance running program. It can also genuinely creep you out with zombie sound effects and chases, all while running in what looks like your very own neighborhood.

To play the game, I downloaded it to my iPhone, opened the app and made a few choices: 1) Do I feel like sprinting? Then, zombie chases = On. And, 2) How long do I feel like running? The player can set 30 minute or 1 hour workouts.

I noticed a few updates to the game since I first played. I liked discovering that it is now three seasons long (with each run equaling an episode) and includes a lot of new customization features for workouts. The developers added side missions where the player can pick up supplies in the real world by dropping a pin on the map, create unlimited length runs for supplies, customize interval training workouts, and complete races at various lengths (5k, 10k, 20k). There is also a 5k training plan (for an additional cost) for new runners (or those building up to the 5k distance). It is also important to know that this game can be used for a walking program as well, players do not have to include zombie chases to play the game, and, if a player chose to activate that feature for a walking session, the acceleration from casual walking to speed walking might be enough to evade zombies… (Or, maybe not!)

Role Playing as a Favorite DC Superhero 

Mike Garcia, Innovation Lab Designer

Find out more about Injustice: Gods Among Us.

I am playing Injustice: Gods Among Us, from the new developers of Mortal Kombat series. Injustice uses the heroes of the Detective Comics (DC) universe, such as Batman and Superman, and pits them against each other in hand-to-hand combat using their powers, abilities, and tools in each match. The game’s story is an alternate universe where Superman is out of control and Batman must use a time warp device to bring other versions (not corrupt) of iconic DC superheroes to work together try and regain control. The game also has a challenge mode, where the player can fight against a series of random characters to climb the ranks of superheroes or villains.

Getting to play as my favorite superheroes and fighting and winning against my least favorites (cough… Superman…) was what drew me to Injustice: Gods Among Us. In comic books these heroes rarely fight each other, but the question of who would win if they did, interests me. Injustice allows for these fights to happen, and levels out the superpower-playing-field, so to speak.  Generally, the game is a fun way to pass time, the rounds go quickly, and are a fun test of either your skills or button mashing abilities (depending on your fighting style). If you are a fan of superheroes, and fighting genre of games, I recommend giving Injustice a go. Play with a friend, and go head to head with your favorite superheroes to settle your debates over who is better.

Share your favorite plays this month with us!

Have you played any of these games? Tell us what you thought of Zombies, Run!, Portal 2, or Injustice: Gods Among Us. We are always looking for new games to play as well, share links to what you are playing right now, too.

*Cross-posted from ASU News: http://asunews.asu.edu/20140615-starbucks-asu-partnership

June 15, 2014 – Starbucks and Arizona State University have announced the Starbucks College Achievement Plan, a powerful, first-of-its-kind program designed to unleash lifetime opportunity for thousands of eligible part-time and full-time U.S. partners (employees).

Starbucks chairman, President and CEO Howard Schultz hosted the first Partner Family Forum in the U.S. in New York’s Times Center and joined ASU President Michael M. Crow and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to officially launch the Starbucks College Achievement Plan. This significant investment will create an opportunity for eligible partners to finish a bachelor’s degree with full tuition reimbursement for juniors and seniors, through a unique collaboration with ASU’s research-driven, top-ranked degree program, delivered online.

Through this innovative collaboration, partners based in the United States working an average of 20 hours per week at any company-operated store (including Teavana®, La Boulange®, Evolution Fresh™ and Seattle’s Best Coffee® stores) may choose from more than 40 undergraduate degree programs taught by ASU’s award-winning faculty, such as electrical engineering, education, business and retail management. Partners admitted to ASU as a junior or senior will earn full tuition reimbursement for each semester of full-time coursework they complete toward a bachelor’s degree. Freshmen and sophomores will be eligible for a partial tuition scholarship and need-based financial aid for two years of full-time study. Partners will have no commitment to remain at the company past graduation.

“In the last few years, we have seen the fracturing of the American Dream,” said Schultz. “There’s no doubt, the inequality within the country has created a situation where many Americans are being left behind. The question for all of us is, should we accept that, or should we try and do something about it. Supporting our partners’ ambitions is the very best investment Starbucks can make. Everyone who works as hard as our partners do should have the opportunity to complete college, while balancing work, school and their personal lives.”

Starbucks’ investment is designed to support the nearly 50 percent of college students in the United States today who fail to complete their degrees due to mounting debt, a tenuous work-life balance and a lack of support. The Starbucks College Achievement Plan is created specifically for the company’s partners, and aims to provide an excellent academic foundation along with the flexibility, financing and comprehensive support that working students need to complete their degree.

“ASU is pioneering a new university model focused on inclusivity and degree completion, and Starbucks is establishing a new precedent for the responsibility and role of a public company that leads through the lens of humanity and supports its partners’ life goals with access to education,” said Crow. “We are very pleased to collaborate with Starbucks, who has impressed us with its strong commitment to its employees by providing this unique opportunity for a first-class college education. ASU has the vision, programs and scale to deliver it to Starbucks employees in every part of the country.”

ASU is gaining national attention for its efforts to increase access to high-quality, rigorous education with a focus on inclusion and impact. ASU is ranked the second most innovative school in the country by U.S. News & World Report, and ranks fifth in the nation in producing the best-qualified graduates, according to a Wall Street Journal survey of campus recruiters. Additionally, ASU is among the top producers of students awarded Fulbright scholarships to study and teach abroad, now ranking third in the nation for research institutions, tied with Princeton and Rutgers, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“Our investment in high-quality education will attract and retain passionate partners who will move our company and our economy forward,” Schultz said. “ASU’s commitment to provide any talented student from any family background and any income level with a top-notch education makes it the singular partner for Starbucks.”

“I was put here to play music, and my goal is to change someone’s life – at least one,” said Abraham Cervantes, who has been a Starbucks barista for two years. “I want to teach at a university, and for that, you need a college degree. For me, the opportunity to earn my degree means I have the chance to teach others and make a better life for myself and my mom, who raised me and my three siblings on her own.”

In addition to financial support, Starbucks and ASU have developed an innovative retention model to support the unique needs of working students. Partners will have a dedicated enrollment coach, financial aid counselor and academic adviser to support them through graduation. The program will also include adaptive learning services to help students progress at the right pace for them; networking and community-building opportunities; and additional resources to help students plan their educations.

“We applaud Starbucks’ leadership and vision in the creation of the Starbucks College Achievement Plan,” said Lumina Foundation President and CEO Jamie Merisotis. “By so clearly investing in its talent, Starbucks is providing employees with the opportunity to complete college – an investment that will pay off for them as individuals, for the company and for the nation, for generations to come.”

“Those who’ve been clamoring for bold, new initiatives to reduce the barriers to quality higher education in America should applaud this announcement,” added Crow. “As others follow Starbucks’ example, we will hear those barriers come crashing down, to the lasting benefit of all Americans.”

The alliance between Starbucks and ASU was inspired by participation in the Markle Economic Future Initiative, co-chaired by Schultz and Markle President Zoë Baird, with Crow as one of its members. The initiative is committed to expanding opportunities that help Americans succeed in the global digital economy and reignite faith that the American Dream is achievable.

“This pioneering collaboration between Starbucks and ASU is exactly the kind of innovative action this country needs to help Americans reach their dreams,” said Baird. “This is a breakthrough in using online learning, backed by the financial resources that make it possible to participate. America urgently needs leadership to help people successfully transition to today’s economic realities. Howard Schultz and Dr. Michael Crow understand the challenges we are facing as a nation. Their commitment to the Markle Initiative and to embracing a more hopeful vision of America’s economic future is a path I encourage all leaders to follow.”

Watch Schultz and Crow address hundreds of partners in New York, live at the first Partner Family Forum in the U.S. on Monday, June 16, at 7:45 a.m. PT by visiting starbucks.com/collegeplan. To watch a video, download photos and read interviews and stories with Schultz, Crow and partners, visit news.starbucks.com/collegeplan.

The growth of electronic sports — better known as eSports — has been rapid over the last two years. The term eSports is an umbrella that describes the competitive gaming community based around real-time strategy, fighting, first-person shooter, and multiplayer online battle arena games where teams of four or more compete for trophies and prize pools. As the community has evolved over time, video game developers are being asked to consider eSports when designing.

The parallels between professional sports and eSports have become more and more prevalent as 2014 rolls along. Where football and basketball draw millions of viewers on a given night, the gaming community is gaining steam in that department.

Metrics obtained recently by DeepField.com show that Twitch.tv ranks 4^th in peak Internet traffic, surpassing both Facebook and Hulu in viewers, accounting for 1.8% of the U.S. viewership. Netflix leads the charge with 32%, followed by Google (22%) and Apple (4.3%).

Twitch, an online platform where users can stream what games they’re playing or watch others play, is “one of the biggest users of bandwidth in the U.S. and the world,” according to their information page on the site. At the beginning of February, the Twitch team announced they hit one million active broadcasters, and that’s not to mention the amount of viewers they hit in a month (estimated around 45 million).

The fact that Twitch.tv has so many viewers on a monthly basis suggests a couple of things: people’s interest in video games is not only on playing terms now; and much like sports, they’re a new form of “television” entertainment.

“We receive a significant amount of traffic from the major esports events and nobody really comes close to us in terms of audience size in that market, but it’s the presence of the rest of the video game ecosystem, spanning casual gamers to developers, publishers, and media, that create the real magic,” Twitch’s VP of Marketing Matthew DiPietro told onGamers in an interview in February. “It’s a safe to say Twitch is the central hub for the entire video game industry to share their passion for games.”

This piece isn’t supposed to be solely focused on Twitch, but it’s hard not to tie the current success of the gaming community with the live streaming platform.

“When video game historians look back on gaming a decade from now, 2013 will be the year they cite as the tipping point of streaming,” said Matthew DiPietro Twitch’s VP of Marketing at the time. “Every major event, publisher, developer, and media outlet in the gaming industry had a presence on Twitch, and streaming became an ever-present piece of the gaming experience. And it’s only going to get bigger.”

The rise of eSports can be linked to live streaming as well even though the competitive gaming community has been around much longer than sites like Twitch. Many professional players stream their team’s practices and play sessions for fans to watch, and they typically range from about six to 12 hours at a time. A lot of the professional gamers make a living off of ad & subscriber revenue via streaming websites like Twitch or MLG.tv. Take pro Call of Duty player, Matt “Nadeshot” Haag for example — he mentioned that he’s making six figures a year just from Youtube royalties, and that’s not including his winnings from tournaments.

Stats obtained from esportsearnings.com show that the highest earning professional gamer, Jae Dong Lee, has made over $500,000 playing the Starcraft series competitively. While there is a considerable amount of money in eSports, it is still dwarfed by professional sports. The top paid athlete in the NFL, Aaron Rodgers, is making a whopping $40 million a year. Miguel Cabrera of the Detroit Tigers in the MLB just signed a deal that guarantees him $292 million over the next ten years.

That’s not to say the money surrounding eSports isn’t growing. In March, Activision – contributors to the Call of Duty series – held the Call of Duty Championships in Anaheim, Calif. where the winnings totaled a million dollars. According to quantcast.com, MajorLeagueGaming.com, who was in partnership with Activision and live-streamed the event, reached over 240,000 viewers on March 30^th for the grand finals. The International 2013, a Dota 2 tournament held in Seattle, had the largest prize pool of any eSports competition to date with a grand total of $2,874,407. The winning team from that tournament took home over $1,400,000.

The eSports community now has a great effect on the developers of video games. Michael Condrey, the co-founder of Sledgehammer Games which is making the next Call of Duty in the series, has already spoken out that eSports are a very important aspect of their online play.

.@Drift0r I disarmed you w/ my charm, not the question 😉 The competitive scene is v.important to @SHGames. Can’t wait to talk eSports!

— Michael Condrey (@MichaelCondrey) April 21, 2014

For years, professional players have complained that the developers don’t focus enough on the competitive scene, and too much on just the average gamer’s experience. Rightly so, the majority of the people buying their games aren’t professional players. Yet, with the growing audience glued to the eSports, developers have no choice but to adapt much like Condrey and Sledgehammer Games are.

We are really only on the cusp of the competitive gaming community. Kids are growing up in an age where video games are the main source of entertainment.

Tempe, Ariz. — The Center for Games & Impact exists within the ASU Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. ASU Teachers College’s graduate programs were listed in the top 20 (among 245 public and private graduate programs nationwide) of the 2015 U.S. News & World Report Best Graduate Schools rankings released at the end of March 2014. In Arizona, the Teachers College ranks first among graduate programs in the state.

“We are really proud to be a part of ASU’s Teachers College and to watch it climb in rankings in recent years. Many of the initiatives that the Center has been able to advance as part of our mission to investigate game-infused solutions to society’s biggest challenges, focus on innovating and transforming education in the United States and around the world. We can be successful largely due to the support, access to resources, and exemplary graduate students in the Teachers College,” said Sasha Barab, executive director for the Center for Games & Impact.

Teachers College graduate student, Kelly Tran, said she chose the Learning, Literacies and Technologies (LLT) program specifically for the award-winning faculty, including Elisabeth Gee, associate director for the Center for Games & Impact and Tran’s adviser since joining the program.

“The support we have received as first year doctoral students has been tremendous, and it is clear that the new LLT program has been made a priority,” said Tran who is also a graduate student fellow with the Center, “It’s rare to have such access to mentorship and resources. I’ve learned more about research by working on the Play2Connect intergenerational play research project with Dr. Gee and Dr. Siyahhan than I ever expected to my first year.”

Other Center for Games & Impact education-related initiatives at the Teachers College include the Quest2Teach game-infused teacher training program and Atlantis Remixed project for innovative middle school curricula.

About ASU’s Teachers College Ranking and Graduate Programs

• http://education.asu.edu/news/view/teachers-college-graduate-education-programs-rank-among-top-nationally (Teachers College)
• http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-education-schools (US News & World Report)
• http://azednews.com/2014/03/20/asu-teachers-college-ranks-in-top-20/ (Arizona Education News)
• http://education.asu.edu/programs/masters-programs (Teachers College)
• http://education.asu.edu/programs/doctoral-programs (Teachers College)

Additional Links

• http://atlantisremixed.org (Atlantis Remixed)
• http://play2connect.org (Play2Connect)
• http://quest2teach.org (Quest2Teach)

About the Center for Games & Impact
The Center for Games & Impact (CGI) mission is to investigate, innovate, and cultivate game-infused solutions to society’s biggest challenges with the goal of unleashing the unique power of videogames to create sustainable solutions for society’s biggest social, cultural, scientific, economic and educational challenges.

Having worked with the Center for Games & Impact since its inception, Dr. Elisabeth Gee, Ph.D., takes on a new role as Associate Director this month.
Photo Credit: Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College

Tempe, Ariz. — The Center for Games & Impact (CGI) is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Elisabeth Gee, Ph.D., to the position of Associate Director. Gee, who has worked with the Center since its inception, will be involved in moving forward the Center’s mission of investigating, innovating, and cultivating game-infused solutions for positive social impact across interdisciplinary projects around the university, within the ASU Teacher’s College, and nationally and internationally with corporate and foundation partners.

“With the addition of Betty in a leadership position at the Center, we will be able to broaden our scope of work while enhancing the reputation and potential impact more nationally,” said Sasha Barab, executive director. “I see her as having the collaborative spirit and commitment to innovation and impact that lies at the core of our Center ethos. Her thinking about affinity groups and women in games more generally, are key to unlocking the power of games for impact, so it is with great enthusiasm that I welcome her collaboration.”

Gee cites her involvement with the Center as having connected her with other researchers with common interests and helping her to grow her vision for game studies classes at ASU. Over the last year and a half, Gee connected with Dr. Sinem Siyahhan, also a fellow at the Center, and together they created the Play2Connect intergenerational play research project. Gee also played an integral part in creating and securing approval for the Games & Impact Certificate program administered by the Center.

“In my new role, I am looking forward to getting to know the staff and projects better so that I can also help the rest of the world also get to know what we are doing with games and social impact,” said Gee. “Part of my charge as associate director is to support the staff in working toward the Center’s vision as well as maintaining alignment with the ASU Teacher’s College and larger university goals.”

Gee says in addition to maintaining and growing these strategic alignments, she also looks forward to the launch of the Center’s game-infused learning platform as part of the Games & Impact Certificate program experience, connecting researchers with like interests in games and social impact, and expanding the opportunities for graduate students to teach and research with the Center.

For more about Gee’s work visit:

• Elisabeth Gee, Delbert & Jewell Lewis Chair in Reading & Literacy and Professor (ASU Teachers College)
• Move over, Monopoly: ASU researchers find families bond over video game play (ASU News)
• Video games as teaching tool (ASU Teachers College)
• Play2Connect Project

The Center for Games & Impact (CGI) mission is to investigate, innovate, and cultivate game-infused solutions to society’s biggest challenges with the goal of unleashing the unique power of videogames to create sustainable solutions for society’s biggest social, cultural, scientific, economic and educational challenges.

Executive Director Sasha Barab talks codeathon participants through principles for designing technology social impact.

The Center for Games & Impact, last week, prepared participants for a two-day coding for social impact event at Arizona State University. The Clinton Foundation Codeathon, also sponsored by Microsoft Youthspark, took place before the start of the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) 2014 at ASU. Titled “Code for Impact” (#codeforimpact), the event preceded the kickoff of CGI U and participants where challenged to spend 48 hours building unique digital prototypes inspired by CGI U Commitments to Action.

A team from the Center, along with Executive Director, Sasha Barab, and Director of Innovations, Adam Ingram-Goble, primed participants for their objective with an intensive, applied introduction to designing games for social impact.

“It was an honor to be invited to kick off the codeathon with the Clinton Foundation and Microsoft. At the Center we are passionately committed to empowering the next generation of our world’s leaders with the tools they need to create powerful social impact technology solutions,” said Barab, “Games are a powerful medium for igniting positive change in our world and the principles of impact game design can apply across interactive technology solutions.”

After a presentation from Director Barab, participants played through a paper-prototyped game design to practice identifying a message and refining game mechanics to contribute to that message.

Adam Ingram-Goble, director for innovations at the Center for Games & Impact, guides codeathon participants through a game design exercise.

“When we teach students game design we focus on a few key things to get them started. First, we want them to clearly define the learning or social impact objective for their game because this will inform the initial design and the subsequent iteration as things develop,” said Ingram-Goble, “Then, we want them to consider which game mechanic might lend itself to playing their message quickly so they can jump right into making and playtesting their games. The same ideas apply here and at game jams, hackathons, and codeathons when working under a tight deadline to test technology ideas for social impact.”

After the introductory exercise with the Center teams spent the rest of their time working on design concepts in the areas of water quality, medicine, and education. Day two of the event culminated with presentations from each team pitching and demoing their concepts to a panel of judges including Chelsea Clinton, vice chair of the Clinton Foundation. The winning team, MediText chose the medical focus area and pitched a design for helping doctors support patient adherence to following medication guidelines. The concept included a doctor dashboard, the use of a “virtual friend” to gently remind patients about these guidelines for the medications they take, and could even engage the patients friends and family if necessary.

Read the highlights from all the CGI U 2014 events at and around Arizona State University here.

Visit our Codeathon Facebook Album for pictures from the event:

About the Center for Games & Impact
The Center for Games & Impact (CGI) mission is to investigate, innovate, and cultivate game-infused solutions to society’s biggest challenges with the goal of unleashing the unique power of videogames to create sustainable solutions for society’s biggest social, cultural, scientific, economic and educational challenges.

*posted in collaboration with the Clinton Foundation and CGI U

#codeforimpact participants discussing the relationships among design, mechanics, and messaging before they jump into designing their own social impact technology solutions.

Come watch the culmination of the Codeathon on Friday, March 21, 2014!

The Clinton Foundation Codeathon at CGI University 2014 sponsored by Microsoft YouthSpark challenges student developers and designers to build digital tools inspired by CGI University Commitments to Action. The event concludes with student presentations and a judging panel, led by prominent thinkers in technology and social impact:

Time: 2:30 PM to 4:15PM
Place: Arizona State University Campus, 501 E. Tyler Mall, Engineering Center, Room ECG 140
No RSVP required

We are also excited to announce that Chelsea Clinton will be participating as a judge during the student presentations.

We invite all CGI U and ASU students to join us and hear about the incredible projects that have been developed by Codeathon participants and be a part of #Codeforimpact.