What I talk about when I talk about gaming

My name is Rafael da Silva - I usually go only by my first name, I think that's more practical - and I'm a Research Masters student at the department of Learning, Design, and Technology at the University of Georgia.

This is going to be my Design Journal for the "Games and Learning" course I am taking in Spring 2017, and hopefully I'll keep on updating this even after course completion. After all, this course has to do exactly with the reason I've applied to the UGA program in the first place: study the educational benefits of playing games, not only the ones tailor-made for educational purposes, but commercial games as well.

My experience with games and learning, in fact, started two years ago in the same University of Georgia, where I conducted a little experiment using games in a number of classes of Portuguese as a Second Language. Having observed how engaged the students were during those classes and how much fun they had, I decided to continue my adventure with games and learning in other ways: first, by doing research on the connection between games and language learning, specifically, which led to the publication of my first solo journal article in my native Brazil, "Video Games as Opportunity for Informal Language Learning: Theoretical Considerations" (2014), as well as my latest article, "English Language Learning and Video Games: the game "Persona 4: Golden" in a Discursive Genre Perspective" (2016), and a few yet unpublished papers. Second, by designing lessons centered around gaming, which led me to a very fulfilling experience at the State University of Londrina, where I taught English Grammar using video games such as "Scribblenauts" and "Elegy for a Dead World".

I believe, however, that I would benefit immensely from learning principles of game development in order to continue my adventure in this field, and the "Games and Learning" course may provide a much needed motivation and a skill set for that. That's why I intend to develop an educational game by the end of this course. It's going to be a fun challenge.

But, wait. Why am I so fixated in games and learning in the first place? Video games have always been part of my life. I grew up playing a variety of role-playing games such as "Final Fantasy", "Breath of Fire" and the "Tales of" series, and that's how I learned English in the first place. I used to play having a dictionary next to me in case I didn't know a word or expression (Internet access was limited to weekends for me at that time, and Google Translator was either horrible or didn't exist back then). My current gaming interests are still related to games with interesting stories and engaging gameplay. I also love independent (or indie) video games and their potential to challenge certain patterns and paradigms in gaming culture.

At the moment I am playing "Final Fantasy XV" and I highly recommend it, though I am obviously biased.