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Tag Archives: #game design

  • One Christmas when I was a little bonehead in 1st or 2nd grade, I got a chemistry set.  It came in a triptych-like case that unfolded with rows [...]

    Adding time travel to a teacher’s bag of tricks

    April 29, 2013
  • Angry Birds.  Undoubtedly one of the most addictive time-sink video games ever produced.  If you haven’t played, you should.  Aside from [...]

    F = ma, Angry Physics

    April 15, 2013
  • In the prior post, I talked about how actions can map onto cognitive learning.  In this post, I’ll extend this and look at tool use in [...]

    Tool use in video games: extending cognition

    April 5, 2013
  • I took a trip to the app store and window-shopped educational apps.  There’s good news and bad news.  You know this educational gap [...]

    A trip to the app store: in search of pathways of discovery

    March 5, 2013
  • In several previous posts, I talk about the idea of creating motivation (here, here and here).  If a player comes to a game expecting to like [...]

    Inducing habit and fabricating motivation: from Farmville to algebra

    February 28, 2013
  • We are surrounded by stimuli.  Whenever we are awake and conscious, a constant stream of information is pouring into our brains.  From this, we [...]

    Basal Ganglia II: Reward is not Motivation

    April 7, 2012
  • The basal ganglia are is a group of structures nestled under the cerebral cortex.  What exactly the basal ganglia do remains controversial and [...]

    Meet the basal ganglia. . . a substrate for motivational scaffolding

    January 16, 2012
  • With games like Farmvile, Mafia Wars and Cityville, Zynga has helped expand the traditional game market and captured an absurd number of monthly [...]

    Is Fun really a good design principle?

    December 19, 2011
  • It’s natural for video game designers to think of their competition as other video games.  But video games, especially among people who are [...]

    CityVille Genius: A narrative account of the first 15 minutes

    December 5, 2011
  • No one can question the success of Zynga, but the value of its contribution to the video game industry seems highly controversial.  On one hand, [...]

    Zynga: sinner or saint?

    December 4, 2011

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