Websites

A loosely organized and evolving list of websites related to our mission. Some are more game-oriented, some more pedagogy-oriented. We have tried to supply some guidance to what to expect, so you can zero in on sites that will be most useful to you.

Blogs

Ian Bogost: Blog of theorist and game designer Ian Bogost.

The Ludologist: Blog of theorist and game designer Jesper Juul.

Greg Costikyan: Blog of game designer Greg Costikyan

Confessions of an Aca-Fan: Blog of game theorist and media critic Henry Jenkins

Terra Nova (Simulation + Society + Play): Wide-ranging and active blog discussing a variety of topics related to games and culture. Examples include gold farming, social networking games, and gamification.

Tiltfactor: Website and blog of the Dartmouth-affliated Tiltfactor Labratory, a group which designs and studies games for social change. Links to many games designed by Tiltfactor, including Grow-A-Game, a game for designing games!

Play the Past: A group-authored blog focusing on the intersection between cultural heritage and games/meaningful play.

Links to and Reviews of Games

Jay Is Games: A popular website for links and reviews of casual games, including both online and downloadable games.

Games for Change: Leading global advocate for social-impact games.  Hosts an annual conference and has links to many serious games.

Gameful: Social networking site for people interested in creating and playing games for social change. Users get a “pet monster” who levels up based on user activity. Play games designed by other users, or hook up with other users to design something new! Active site.

The Play Ethic: Exploring the power and potential of play for influencing popular culture.

Persuasive Games: A digital game company that specializes in serious games.

MolleIndustria: Another digital game company specializing in serious games.

Academic Associations and Sites

DiGRA: An association for academics and professionals who research digital games and associated phenomena. It encourages high-quality research on games, and promotes collaboration and dissemination of work by its members. Organizes a conference and includes articles from proceedings on its website. News page dominated by conference announcements, calls for papers, job postings, and book / journal announcements.

Institute of Play: Nonprofit devoted to GBL through all media, including digital and table games. Game developer. Partner in Quest to Learn, a New York City public school organized around collaborative and explorative education using games and digital media.

Games For Educators: Packed website about GBL. Includes articles for educators and parents, and links to games. Searchable database of educational games is heavily biased towards commercially produced games, and additions by users mean some of the “games” are of questionable value.

IGDA (International Game Development Association): International organization for video game developers. An academic relationships interest group maintains a framework for game development curricula and links to student game developer clubs and organizations. Not a GBL-focused organization.

Advanced Distributed Learning Research Archive: An annotated bibliography of research articles on games and learning prepared by Sigmund Tobias and J.D. Fletcher.

The Pericles Group: A research group at U Conn who specialize in transforming education using games–or what they call “practomimes.”

Miscellany

The HUMlab Streaming Lectures: Swedish university Umeå University sponsors HUMlab, a digital humanities nexus. One of the best resources on this link comes from their stream-available lectures on all things virtual and how they related to learning, higher education, and culture.

University XP: CUNY Games Network member Dave Eng created a free online webinar to serve as an introduction to gamification and game-based learning.

Educators coming together to explore how the principles of games promote learning