An Overview of Institutional Support for Game Students in Higher Education


Zagal José P.
2020 DiGRA ’20 – Proceedings of the 2020 DiGRA International Conference: Play Everywhere

What are some factors that contribute to the success of a game program? The curriculum and how it is taught, the way a program is organized, and understanding game students are all important factors. There is an additional aspect: the role that extra- curricular initiatives and supports play. We report on an interview study where game educators discussed the things their game programs do outside of the classroom to support and help their students. These efforts are grouped into initiatives that contribute towards strengthening a community of learners, those that help students develop their professional identities, efforts for broadening student’s experience, and managing/creating relationships with the game industry. By presenting and collecting these initiatives we can identify possible gaps in a program and encourage a more holistic perspective on higher education focused not only on the curriculum, but also on those things that can happen in between or adjacent to coursework.

 

“Gamification Does Not Belong at a University”


Palmquist Adam Linderoth Jonas
2020 DiGRA ’20 – Proceedings of the 2020 DiGRA International Conference: Play Everywhere

This paper reports a case study in which some students in a large-scale gamification implementation project wrote a script that automated their progression. The incident was followed with multi-sited ethnography and analysed through the lens of Goffman’s frame analysis. Based on chat logs, mail correspondence, data on user behaviour in the learning management system, informal conversations and student interviews, the study shows that different actors have somewhat different perceptions of gamification, as they framed the incident with the script in different ways. The students saw their actions as a form of resistance and activism towards problematic game design and had a desire to uphold specific tech-student identities. The gamification designers treated the incident as an act of playfulness and display of technological skills. The university, on the other hand, framed the incident as cheating. The study highlights the need for educational institutions to be knowledgeable about games and gaming behaviour if they want to implement gamification.

 

Civic and political transgressions in videogames: the views and experiences of the players


Santos Hugo Saldanha Lucinda Pinto Marta Ferreira Pedro
2018 DiGRA Nordic '18: Proceedings of 2018 International DiGRA Nordic Conference

Video games are commonly considered transgressive for providing the context for excessive violence, hypersexualized imaginaries, cheating, bullying and other sorts of inadequate behavior. Transgressions can be linked to struggles for social change, and video games present and represent ideological materializations, and therefore it is possible to look politically at the transgressions that different video games challenge players to negotiate. To explore the civic dimensions of video games, data was collected in a series of ten workshops involving 73 participants, in mixed groups of students, researchers and lecturers of various fields of study. Analyses allowed us to identify four types of transgression - i) the transgression of linear narratives; ii) the transgression of the ideologically aseptic idea of truth; iii) the transgression of the idea of free choice and merit and iv) transgression of individualism and the myth of “Other” - that were present in the experience of players, and that can contribute to understand how video games can contribute to the promotion of meaningful civic learning experiences.