Author: Raph Koster, Will Wright (Foreword) Publisher: Paraglyph Press; 1 edition (November 6, 2004) ISBN: 1932111972

The book features a novel way of showing interactive designers how to improve their designs to incorporate the highest degree of fun. This book will truly inspire and challenge game designers, as well as artists and designers from all segments of the industry. The book covers such essential topics as:

* Why some games are fun and others boring
* Why making a game too hard—or too easy—is a mistake
* Why games have to balance deprivation and overload, order and chaos, silence and noise
* The difference between designing content and creating an experience
* Why both adults and children like to play games
* How playing a game and learning are connected
* The ethics of entertainment

Raph Koster says: “In this book, I decided to tackle the questions of what games are, what fun is, and why games matter. A lot of people are exploring these questions now, and digital games have become big business. The time is ripe for us to dig deeper into the many questions that games raise. In the final analysis, I think that work and play aren’t all that different, and the book explains why I came to that conclusion.”

Website at www.theoryoffun.com

Paul Kearney Senior Academic Staff Member School of Computing & Information Technology UNITEC New Zealand, www.computing.unitec.ac.nz

Feedback for the Game Platform “UniGame: Social Skills and Knowledge Training”. The comments in the attached document were sourced from second year MComp students (Master of Computing), during a class on instructional design for interactive learning. The PDF detailing teacher instructions was supplied to the students, as was the URL of the UniGame site. The students were asked to individually critique UniGame and present their comments in class the following day. This is a summary of their individual views.

Anastasia Sfiri, Maja PivecFH JOANNEUM GmbH, University of Applied Sciences. This work has been financially supported by the EC eLearning Programme

One of the major goals of SIG-GLUE has been the establishment of several different Task Forces to work on interesting subjects, to identify the future trends and try to influence them as early as possible in order to ensure more educational (as well as recreational) value of innovative learning approaches. The aim of the workgroup Educational Game Platforms was to create a knowledge pool of the kind of learning games teachers can integrate in their instructional designs (blended contexts and fully online), and to identify the key issues and concerns of teachers with applying this method. The analysis of the discussion of this group illustrated the perceptions, doubts, and arguments that educational practitioners have toward the adoption of game-based approaches in learning and teaching processes. Issues addressed included learners’ motivation and engagement, the role of assessment, learning game creation for specific learning objectives, and perceived restrictions of the game-based approach.

Oland Folk High School is one of the partners in the SIG-GLUE project. What happens when somebody is working in a project?
Our work in the SIG-GLUE project has passed different stages. Stages, that some times are difficult to predict, because they are outside the original plan.
In a project like SIG - GLUE we have met so many peoaple - filled with inspiration and ideas - and all that is one reason that plans are changing.
On the other hand we think that this imroves creativness - perhaps even improves your brain capacity.
We also think that pedagogical stragies are important. Read a short summury about our pedagogical intentions in our report

This interview was made by e-mail with Chris Brannigan, the CEO of Caspian Learning. Caspian Learning is British software based e-Learning organisation. They create interactive learning applications, in which students are immersed within a 3D games based environment. Their web site can be found here: http://www.caspianlearning.co.uk/. You can find downloadable demos of their product from the web site.
The interview was made in June 2005.

This interview deals with an educational game for children, but the content is still applicable for educational game design in general. The interview was made with Mikko Monto (managing director) and Olli-Poika Parviainen (concept designer) from a Finnish game and content provider company Oy Second Brain Ltd. (http://www.secondbrain.net/).

A short description of the dramaturgic e-learning strategy in Spanish.