Games and change
In Lietzkow & Jacobs' (2012) article, the concept of "serious games" is thorougly discussed. What in the world are they, and what are their defining characteristics? According to the authors, it does vary from context to context, depending on designers' goals and expertise. Reading this article, the flexibility of the concept of "gamification" came back to my mind as well. I, then, started to think that all this trouble with definitions also stems from the lack of agreement about what a game is, which is completely understandable, as there are numerous types of games out there and you and I could, maybe, come up with a short list of twenty. For every type of game, the definition could change - and that is the same for serious games.
The association of games with change is the aspect that jumped to my eyes in Lietzkow & Jacobs' (2012) paper, since it brought back important memories from 2015, when I had the pleasure of attending a "Games for Change" conference in São Paulo, Brazil. Among the presenters were video game scholars such as Gilson Schwartz, the main representative of "Games for Change" in Brazil, game project leaders, and independent game designers. The presentations emphasized the power of games to improve educational methodologies, social responsibility, and well-being. For instance, I remember a presentation about a game that was designed to teach children about road rules in a city in the state of São Paulo in Brazil. Another presentation focused on the FazGame platform, which allows students to develop their own educational games with simple drag-and-drop tools. Attending this conference allowed me to see how games can be used to drive social changes beyond the classroom.
In McGonigal's video, her discussion of "epic wins" led me to think of engagement with games. The fact that we are able to immerse in a complete virtual context leads us to strong reactions like the one described by the author and game designer. Personally, I would say that it takes a considerable knowledge about the target audience to create experiences that generate this sense of immersion and flow, and, thinking about my project, nothing would make me more satisfied than getting strong and meaningful reactions from learners/players to a gamified Brazilian literature classic. After all, increased engagement equals more effective learning experiences.
A note about game progress:
I have been experimenting with different game development tools, and TyranoBuilder (http://tyranobuilder.com/) seems the ideal choice for my project at this point. I've only used it for a brief period, but its intuitive interface and the lack of required programming skills won my heart - for now. I will start trying to build something that resembles what I intend to do for this project to test if the software is indeed the best option available.
