All of our programs, projects and experiments are designed with the goal of learning something that will be of value to kids, educators or the community at large. We run the gamut from qualitative ethnographic case studies to quantitative experimental designs. Check out our work so far!
In an article written for THE Journal, we discuss the findings of a survey we gave to professional game developers and students alike to compare their views on the role of game design in the classroom.
Steve Isaacs and Lisa Castaneda worked together to build upon Steve’s work bringing game design and development to his middle school classrooms. After surveying and talking with the students, Lisa and Steve put their findings together in this paper.
In early 2014, we ran a study surveying middle school students enrolled in game design, our own games-focused interns, and professional game makers to find out how students and pros think about the role of game design in learning.
Individuals who have domain-specific knowledge, such as chess players and dancers, have been found to use schemas to organize and anticipate information. We examined whether multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game players use a similar strategy. Participants were presented with a memory task where they recalled the status of game features as displayed on a...
Introduction The commercial game, Portal 2, is a puzzle-based game in which the user solves puzzles presented in a series of “test chambers.” Upon the successful completion of a puzzle the user is allowed to exit that particular chamber and thus makes progress within the game. The associated level design tool, The Puzzle Maker, enables...
Since 2012, we have been studying Dota 2 and its impacts on cognition and other skills. This work has gone across a number of studies, formats and tournaments, and now we are sharing out what we have learned.