I’m adding all of them together so I know they are uploaded.
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design courses, syllabi, schedules, resources and policies
First Attempt: For my game, I did not have it the first week we were doing games. So, I had a family member try it at home. They liked the game overall, but they wish I had more characters. Originally, I had two characters. The game I was going off of was Candy Land. Similar but had less rules to it. He also suggested I add more rules to the game. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures from the first try of my game.
Second Attempt: I was able to bring my game to class the second week we were trying them out. seems like a lot of people liked it. I noticed some people got a little confused over the rules in this one. But some requested to me that maybe in another change for the game, I added more rules to the game to make it little more engaging.
At home family answers: Questions to consider during play and answer after play.
A team working on an educational game faces several challenges, including:
The team learned several important lessons from playtesting:
Playtesting helps resolve conflicts by providing objective data and real-player insights, which allow the team to see what is and isn’t working in practice. It serves as a neutral ground where differing opinions about design, pedagogy, and scientific content can be tested against actual user behavior, helping to identify where compromises are needed. By seeing how players respond to the game, team members can better understand each other’s perspectives and adjust their contributions to create a more cohesive, effective final product.
As an AI, I don’t play games, but examples of learning games people often engage with include:
The most effective learning game would depend on the individual’s learning style and the subject matter, but constructivist games (like Minecraft Education Edition) are often more engaging and provide deeper, experiential learning opportunities than more behaviorist-focused games.
Ian Bogost argues that gamification—the use of game mechanics in non-game contexts—can often be superficial and ineffective. He criticizes it for reducing meaningful experiences into trivial points and badges, which often fail to foster real engagement or meaningful outcomes. Gamification, according to Bogost, oversimplifies complex systems and exploits users rather than empowering them.
I agree with some aspects of Bogost’s argument, particularly when gamification is used poorly and focuses only on external rewards instead of intrinsic motivation or genuine engagement. I’ve encountered gamification in productivity apps or workplace environments (like Todoist or Slack), where it does encourage small, short-term tasks, but doesn’t necessarily enhance deep motivation or satisfaction. In these cases, gamification often feels more like a gimmick than a tool for meaningful change.
A serious game is designed for purposes beyond entertainment, such as education, training, or social change, often incorporating elements that encourage learning, skill-building, or raising awareness about complex issues.
Serious games aren’t chocolate-covered broccoli because they’re not just “good for you” in a disguised way—they aim to be engaging and enjoyable while still providing valuable educational or meaningful content. The idea is to create experiences that are fun and educational, rather than forcing education into a form that players find unpleasant or boring. Serious games strive for balance, where the learning comes naturally through enjoyable gameplay, rather than feeling like an obligation masked by entertainment.
An activist game is a type of game designed to promote social or political change, raising awareness of issues and encouraging players to reflect on the real-world impact of their actions. These games often aim to challenge the status quo, provoke thought, and inspire action towards specific causes or issues.
Other games with perfect information include:
In these games, all information about the state of the game is available to both players, and there is no hidden information or randomness.
Chance or gambling games may hold spiritual or religious significance because they represent a symbolic connection to fate, the divine, or the unknown. In ancient cultures, these games were often viewed as a way to connect with gods or spirits, relying on chance as a means of divination or to reflect the unpredictability of life.
The earliest battles between governments/religious groups and games occurred in ancient Rome when gladiatorial games were seen as morally corrupting or decadent, leading to debates about the ethics of such entertainments. In modern times, games like Grand Theft Auto, Doom, and Pokémon have been demonized or banned due to concerns about violence, moral decay, or the impact of their content on players.
A fox game is a type of game where one player (the “fox”) tries to evade capture by other players (the “hounds”). It involves strategy, agility, and social interaction. A modern example of a fox game is Tag or Capture the Flag, where one player is pursued by others in a game of chase.
The purpose of Mansion of Happiness, a 19th-century parlor game, was to teach moral lessons and reflect Christian virtues. It was an educational game designed to guide players toward moral and virtuous living through a journey of choices, similar to a life path, based on ethics and societal expectations.
Artists from the Fluxus and Surrealist movements used games to break down traditional boundaries between art, life, and play. Surrealists believed that games could unlock creativity, help players tap into their subconscious, and explore irrationality or chance, providing a means to engage with the world in a new, more playful and free way.
Changes in game mechanics, objectives, and context can signal profound shifts in the way games are played or perceived. During WW2, pinball machines were reskinned to have war-related themes, reflecting the societal mood and aligning the game with wartime imagery and national pride.
Fluxus artists reskinned games like Monopoly and Ping Pong to challenge the conventions of game design and highlight the absurdity of capitalism and consumer culture. By altering these games, they aimed to make a statement about the art of play and the deconstruction of traditional structures.
Artists like Lilian Ball, Marcel Duchamp, Takako Saito, Yoko Ono, Gabriel Orozco, and Ruth Catlow use war games as a medium to critique violence, conflict, and societal structures. Their work often transforms or subverts traditional war games to comment on the human cost of war, challenge militaristic values, and promote peace or alternative perspectives.
It’s important for players to have agency in critical or serious games because it allows them to make meaningful choices and experience the consequences of those choices, fostering a deeper understanding of the issues at hand. Player agency is essential for engagement and for conveying the complexity of real-world problems in an interactive and reflective manner.
Advergames are promotional video games designed to advertise a product or brand. As an AI, I don’t play games, but advergames that people commonly encounter include games like McDonald’s: The Video Game or PepsiMan. While they can raise awareness of a product, research shows advergames rarely lead directly to purchase, as players might enjoy the game without being influenced to buy the product.
Tooth Protector and Escape work because they combine entertainment with education, subtly embedding the brand message while engaging players. By associating the brand with fun and rewarding gameplay, players are more likely to remember and connect the brand with positive emotions.
Chase the Chuckwagon and Shark Bait fail because they lack engagement and don’t offer compelling gameplay. These games rely too heavily on repetitive tasks without meaningful player interaction or connection to the product, making them forgettable and ineffective as promotional tools.
Volvo’s Drive for Life advergame successfully combines a sense of adventure with the brand’s message of safety, allowing players to explore and understand Volvo’s commitment to safe driving. It subtly reinforces the brand’s core values and connects the driving experience with positive emotions like security.
Many companies have used in-advergame advertising, but a prominent example is Pepsi, which used games like PepsiMan to engage players and promote its brand through entertainment.
One of the first home-console advergames was Cool Spot, a platformer released for the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo, created to promote 7 Up.
The Toilet Training game is sophisticated because it uses personalized engagement to address a specific, everyday issue while embedding a product or brand within a context of routine life, making it subtly persuasive. I agree that it is a clever use of the medium, but its effectiveness depends on how well the game resonates with its target audience.
Advergames and anti-advergames both use video games as a tool to communicate a message, whether positive or critical. Both rely on interactive engagement and storytelling, using gameplay to persuade or influence players’ perceptions, though advergames promote products while anti-advergames critique or resist advertising.
1. What are the issues Ian Bogost raises about social games with Cow Clicker?
Ian Bogost critiques social games for being exploitative, designed to encourage addictive behavior through minimal rewards and constant in-game purchases. His game Cow Clicker satirizes this by reducing gameplay to the mindless act of clicking, highlighting the emptiness of such games.
2. How do social games like FarmVille enframe friends?
Social games turn friends into resources and tools for progress, where players rely on each other for in-game rewards. They also create social pressure by encouraging competition and validation through in-game achievements shared with friends.
3. How do social games destroy time outside of the game?
Social games keep players engaged with constant notifications, reminders, and time-sensitive tasks that demand frequent attention. This creates a sense of urgency and fear of missing out, drawing players back into the game even when they’re not actively playing.
Game progress and rules, worked in project with Sarah Juristy
https://rmu.andrewyames.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Daria-Komarova-Progress-of-game.docx
For this week, I decided to prototype “We Didn’t Start The Fire” (does the name have to change for copyright purposes?? idk) . It is based off of the Billy Joel song. I know that a lot of people either really like the song or hate it, but I feel that it includes some useful references that Americans should likely understand.
To make the game a little more relevant, I decided to also include reference to the 2023 Fall Out Boy version of the song that contains even more newsworthy topics and events.
I think that this game is important to help people become educated on both culture and historical events. It is a very simple trivia game right now, but I see potential for adding some more fun mechanics in regards to the music aspect of the game. I really feel like I am mainly creating this game for my little brother, as he loves both trivia games and the Fall Out Boy songs. I see this being a great educational tool for at least him (and myself as I learned a lot in the making of this game).
To make the game, I found a few very incredible articles on Britannica that explain all of the references in both of the songs (over 100 in the old and over 80 in the new). I selected one reference from a few line “chunks” of lyrics and developed a trivia question based on that. I included the full lyric on the top of the cards so the full song is presented throughout the cards that I made.
The design is fairly simple, with a red gradient, black square, and white typography. I was really excited to do this game because I think it has really good potential for some fun and creative typography.
i also made the cards very big because why not!
What was the most frustrating moment or aspect of what you just played?
While there are a lot of moving parts to getting the game started and getting into the meat of the gameplay, besides considering that, I think the most frustrating thing about the playtest was trying to understand the consistency between players. It felt like “two steps forward, one step back” kind of deal, as when I would purchase a vehicle, someone else would blow it up (thanks Collin >:P) I think that is more an inconsistency with not establishing a sense of the goals at the get go, but other than that I didn’t find any serious frustrations.
I would like to also say that this is my second playtest of this game. I played it maybe a year ago, and the tiles were cardboard, and a lot of the features in the game were not yet implemented. I would say looking back in comparison, I had a lot of fun being able to do more! I hope I can play it again!
The challenge of creating an educational game as a team is the difficult task of creating a game that is both engaging in a sense of teaching the player something they might not be familiar with, while also maintaining a sense of entertainment, fun, and keeping players engaged throughout the game in solid execution of both mechanics and content.
The scientist focused on the game’s effectiveness in communicating accurate scientific content. Their main concern was that some of the game ideas might oversimplify or misrepresent the science, reducing the educational value of the game. However, the pedagogy expert was primarily concerned with how well the game would facilitate learning. Especially when it came to some game ideas, which would not effectively promote the desired learning outcomes or would fail to engage students in critical thinking and problem-solving. And the designer was concerned about the game’s playability and the overall user experience.
Playtesting helped the team understand how well the game ideas were meeting both the educational requirements and the players’ engagement needs. It gave valuable feedback on whether the games were fun, engaging, and whether they hit the learning goals as intended.
Playtesting provided the team with concrete data, such as how players reacted to different aspects of the game through the educational, engaging, and experience aspects of the game’s design. This feedback helped resolve conflicts by giving team members evidence on which to base their decisions, rather than relying solely on subjective opinions. It also gave each team member a sense of whether their contributions to the game were executed properly.