With Grand Theft Education: Literacy in the Age of Video Games gracing the cover of Harper’s September 2006 magazine, video games and education, once the quirky interest of a few rogue educational technologists and literacy scholars, reached broader public awareness. The idea of combining video games and education is not new; twenty years ago, Ronald Reagan praised video games for their potenti...

In recent years much research has explored the potential of using video games in education. This effort has produced many interesting games though it is unclear if “educational video games” have achieved their promise. Similarly, for many years constructionists have engaged children in learning across a variety of contexts, including game design. While these programs have been successful, their...

This article builds upon earlier research (McDaniel & Fiore, 2010) in which the authors presented case studies focused on the design and development of two original ethical learning video games. Through this case study and a review of relevant literature, the authors explored the content creation of, and theoretical rationale for, the design and development of ethics games. Both games were gear...

In the academic research field, attempts to use video games to enhance diverse characteristics of sociality have just started. Therefore it is expected that consumer games would also enhance the sociality. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether any features or devices, which enhance sociality, are included in the commercially circulated video games. We conducted a series of web sur...

Although a great deal of media attention has been given to the negative effects of playing video games, relatively less attention has been paid to the positive effects of engaging in this activity. Video games in health care provide ample examples of innovative ways to use existing commercial games for health improvement or surgical training. Tailor-made games help patients be more adherent to ...

Interactivity is one of the key conceptual apparatuses through which video games have been theorized thus far. As many writers have noted, video games are distinct from other forms of media because player actions seem to have direct, immediate consequences in the world depicted onscreen. But in many ways, this “interactive” feature of video games tends to manifest itself as a relentless series ...

Playing computer games is a predominantly emotional than rational process. Video games with affect-based adaptation measure player’s behavior signals and recognize player’s emotional states in order to adapt specific game features in a dynamic manner and to improve player’s engagement, immersion, excitement, and challenge. The present review deals with models for the presentation of emotions, t...

We conducted a panel study with elementary school students in order to examine the effect of video games on children. We conducted two surveys, and measured the amount of use of video games, exposure to certain types of scenes, and preference for types of games as "video game variables," and also measured the level of aggressive behavior and pro-social behavior as "dependent variables." The res...

This essay focuses on how video games both highlight our traditional assumptions about reading and writing and suggest alternative paradigms that combine the new and the traditional: • Play. Video games reveal how pleasure and desire are inherent to the reading and writing process. This dimension of gaming helps explain why video games can produce resistance in terms of approaches to writing in...

This study examined the relationship between gender and violence in video games on levels of aggression. Participants were college students; ages ranged from 18 to 46 (M = 20.74, SD = 4.82). Both passive and active aggression and attitudes towards violence were measured. Two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) found no significance between gendermatched and gender-unmatched participants, but there...