This article examines the rise in popularity of wearables and their intersection with mobile gaming to identify their potential for composing non-discursive, multimodal texts in writing classrooms. Using play and creative misuse as compositional strategies, I argue that the recent shift away from personal computers as the main way of...
The Avatar’s new clothes: Understanding why players purchase non-functional items in free-to-play games
Free-to-play online games create significant revenues through sales of virtual items. The argument that the sale of items that provide a competitive advantage (functional items) fuels a pay-to-win culture has attracted developers to business models that are solely based on the sale of non-functional items (items that provide no objective...
I Wanna Play Too: Factors Related to Changes in Social Behavior for Children With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder After Implementation of a Structured Outdoor Play Curriculum
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulties interacting with same-aged peers during unstructured play (e.g., on the playground). Thirty-five toddler and preschool children with and without ASD participated in a structured 15-min outdoor play curriculum. The intervention, the Buddy Game, used familiar songs, movement, and games to promote peer...
Adapting LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® methodology in higher education
The huge amount of knowledge sharing in the process of education is increasing day by day. The typical normal methods of teaching courses remain the same even of the variety of techniques that are been used. This paper presents an attempt to find new learning methods, with the objective of...
In-Game Play Behaviours during an Applied Video Game for Anxiety Prevention Predict Successful Intervention Outcomes
Anxiety disorder is the most prevalent and frequently diagnosed disorder in youth, and associated with serious negative health outcomes. Our most effective prevention programs, however, have several limitations. These limitations can be addressed using game-based interventions. Results from two randomized controlled trials on the video game MindLight show improvements in...
Developing a Teddy Bear Therapy Training Program for Family Therapists
Teddy bear therapy (TBT) represents an innovative application of family therapy within the context of child, and specifically play, psychotherapy. Drawing on play and storytelling, it entails the therapist and the (referred) child telling a story about a teddy bear that is facing difficulties similar to the child's. Together, therapist...
Zombies and ethical theories: Exploring transformational play as a framework for teaching with videogames
Videogames are included among the wide array of digital resources available to teachers to foster student engagement and teach domain-specific content. In this study, we analyze how two teachers in two countries used the commercial videogame The Walking Deadô to teach ethical theories in upper secondary citizenship education. In both...
The Benefits of Recess in Primary School
Although recess has traditionally been a regular practice in primary school settings, today recess is being reduced or eliminated in an effort to provide more instructional time and increase achievement. However, empirical research does not support the elimination or reduction of recess. Research documents that recess affords many physical, cognitive,...
Children’s play and culture
The connection between play and culture has an illustrious past. In 1950, the classic play theorist Johan Huizinga articulated the position of play as a cultural phenomenon, one that humans share with animals. In this work, he introduced the defining criteria of play and its relationship to other higher forms...
Technology & Play
The world of iPods, mobile telephones, portable wireless computers, and devices of every description, including toys that contain computer chips, memory, voice recognition, and interactive connectivity has forever changed the landscape of play. User-generated content allows players not only to play, but to shape the games they play, and by...
Movement as a Way of Knowing
Movement comes in all sizes. It is stretchable, temporally elastic, and full of energetic possibilities. It can be tailored to any occasion. It can be discreet or boisterous. Like anything that is overdone, it can tire you out or even knock you out. Children often excel in it and of...
Evolution of American Playgrounds
Common usage claims broad application for the term playground including school playgrounds, park playgrounds, wilderness playgrounds, zoo playgrounds, arboretum playgrounds, camp playgrounds, casino playgrounds, dog playgrounds, cruise playgrounds, street playgrounds, rooftop playgrounds, loose parts playgrounds, check-a-child playgrounds, wilderness playgrounds, imagination playgrounds, accessible playgrounds, intergenerational playgrounds, natural playgrounds, etc. Even politicians...
The Impact of Speed of Play in Gambling on Psychological and Behavioural Factors: A Critical Review
Conceptually, there is a common association between gambling games with fast speeds of play and problem gambling. This relationship however, is largely correlational in nature, which comes at the expense of carefully controlled empirical investigation. Research that does exist aimed towards investigating the impact of gambling speeds on psychological and...
Through a Shot Glass, Darkly: The Study of Games in the Light of Drinking Games
Drinking games have a history several millennia long. Yet the global community of game scholars has barely touched drinking and games, leaving the area for researchers of health and safety issues. This article is a think piece that approaches drinking games as games and as play, ponders what the study...
One-dimensional creativity: A marcusean critique of work and play in the video game industry
Creativity is at the heart of the video game industry. Industry professionals, especially those producing blockbuster games for the triple-A market, speak fondly of their creative labour practices, flexible work schedules, and playful workplaces. However, a cursory glance at major triple-A franchises reveals the persistence of sequel game production and...
Two-player Tower of Hanoi
The Tower of Hanoi game is a classical puzzle in recreational mathematics (Lucas 1883) which also has a strong record in pure mathematics. In a borderland between these two areas we find the characterization of the minimal number of moves, which is 2 n- 1 , to transfer a tower...
Play, game, and videogame: The metamorphosis of play
The question, the Fragestellung, which drives this paper is, can football video-games be analyzed from a religious perspective? We can answer positively, at least, provisionally. First, in order to demonstrate our approach, we will take into account the different conceptions on play drawn along sociological theories. Second, we will analyze...
Why do people play location-based augmented reality games: A study on PokÈmon GO
PokÈmon GO brought the location-based augmented reality games into the mainstream. To understand why people play these games, we created an online survey (n = 2612) with open questions about the reasons to start, continue, and quit playing PokÈmon GO, and composed categories of the answers through a thematic analysis....
Toy libraries in the world and Turkey: Samples of Alipa?a and Bergama toy Libraries
There are many factors affecting the personal development throughout a person's life. In particular, games and toys have an important place in childhood. The game is learning many things that the child can not learn through life by creating his/her own experiences. Toys are the driving force behind these experiences....
Review of Player Personality Classifications to Inform Game Design
Studies have been completed which attempt to detect players' sentiment, and intensify game-play immersion. Emotions, while an indicator of experience, have been proposed to be 'reactive predictions' by the player, during interactions in game-play. Designers arrange core game-play mechanics, visuals and audio atmosphere to create mood. This arrangement of content...
