ENG 225 Rhetoric and Gaming

The purpose of this article was to find whether educational video games could be integrated into a classroom in order to help both the teacher and the students. This article started by discussing the difficulties of introducing games into learning environments which includes having people see games as learning tools and not toys and also developing software that will have educational value. This article talked about the development of a game which was designed to help students become better at solving math problems. This game was then introduced into two classrooms, a total of 39 second graders, in which the teachers were free to incorporate the games however they wanted. One teacher used the game as a warm up activity and the other used it as a reward for students who completed their work early. The game was in the classrooms for nineteen days before the effects of the game were analyzed. After this the average amount of math problems solved per students was found and it showed that s...

The purpose of this article is to discuss the importance of the serious game in learning. This article analyzed the game Virtual University in order to find the uses of the serious game. It was discussed that this type of game can be used by a variety of ages for various purposes. These uses are teaching tools, entertainment, and a technology of information and communication. After listing the uses of this type of game it was shown how these uses show up in Virtual University. It was discussed after this analysis that the serious game has educational values which have been based on learning concepts that were advocated for in several theories. In having these educational values it was stated that this type of game allows for intrinsic motivation, generates cognitive conflicts and provides situated learning. All of these things were shown in Virtual University. This article relates to Assessing Higher Order Thinking in Video Games because these both analyze the educational benefits of g...

The purpose of this article is to determine the educational benefits of allowing children to design games. The article begins by synthesizing fifty-five studies regarding making games and learning. Through this synthesis it was found that most of these studies focused on using game making to teach coding and academic content but there were few studies regarding collaboration and identity in game making. The article then argues for the use of games for collaboration and identity. Making games helps to connect students to each other. It also brings up the issues of diversity and access. This doesn’t really relate much to the other articles because it’s about game making and not about game playing although there are some connections to the article Design of Educational Multiplayer Videogames: A Vision from Collaborative Learning because they both advocate for the enhancement of collaboration through games. The keywords for this article are: constructionist gaming, personal dimensions, soc...

The purpose of this article is to identify games that are beneficial for the classroom in terms of its educational benefits. The beginning of the article is about the lower level learning that takes place in edutainment (games meant for education) products. It examines what learning takes place and what is is not covered by games. The characteristics of highly cognitive virtual interactive environments are identified through examining these types of games. In order to help teachers as well as preservice teachers evaluate the games that they might consider using in their classrooms a rubric as well as an index are provided. These will help them to find how well the game encourages higher order thinking and thus determine how useful it would be in the classroom. At the end of the article an example is given of a social studies simulation that was designed to encourage higher order thinking and this game was evaluated. This compares to the articles Learning by Design: Good Video Games as ...

The purpose of this article was to make collaborative learning techniques simpler with the introduction of educational video games. The researchers also worked to find how the academic guidelines impacted how the video game was developed. The author started through analyzing the use of video games in education and how games can enhance the learning process. It was then stated how this new technology of educational games could become more beneficial through developing games with the purpose of incorporating collaborative learning. There were guidelines for the designs in order to guide this project as it was meant to enhance collaboration in the classroom. These guidelines were about how the games should be designed and used. Through these guidelines the collaborative process was incorporated into the process of developing video games. The effects of these guidelines on the architecture of the video games were then analyzed. In order to test the effectiveness of this technique the aut...

Rachels and Rockinson determine the effectiveness of an Spanish learning game Doulingo. The following is my annotation of their paper. This study seeks to compare a gamification app that provides Spanish language instruction called Duolingo and a traditional classroom environment in order to determine both method’s effectiveness at teaching elementary students spanish. By exposing two different groups of students to the different methods of spanish learning and then comparing the knowledge gained by the students through a test and learning scales, the study found there is no significant difference in the results of both learning processes. This led to the conclusion that Duolingo can be a useful tool in elementary level spanish acquisition, as it is effective as traditional face-to-face instruction. This study was performed at a private school in florida. It randomly assigned 2 third-grade classes and 3 fourth-grade foreign language classes to be taught spanish through duolingo inst...

The purpose of this article was to analyze the gender differences in games and the ways in which popular games can be beneficial in an educational setting. The author divided this article into five parts in which the relevance of the research was introduced, how video games have changed over time, research on video games in education, approaches that could be used to introduce video games into education, and the problems that might arise in this introduction. It was stated that some games that take place in different eras in history can be useful as they contain information about the time period. The research was not only on computer games but much of what was found applies to computer games. There was little research on video games until the late 1990s. Many viewed video games negatively and it was not considered that they could be used in education. The main increase in research was on the structural aspects of games and the integration of games into schools. Over time many thought t...

Companies have profited over loot boxes , EA sports has been widely successful based on their model of loot boxes and grosses an average of 800 million dollars even though there is no control over who purchases those loot boxes, EA has been widely criticized for allowing players to spend wild queantity of money in order to have a bigger advantage and expand their experience on their sports game and have a pay to win experience. Gambling has been a very talked about subject in the video game world, the reason that loot boxes become so addictive is because the players become eager to widen their advantage with a pay to win model

The Ingredients of Twitch streaming: Affordances of Game Streams This study identifies practices & elements used by the most popular Twitch streamers. Results indicate a convergence of various broadcasting practices among practitioners. Supports previous streaming studies and indicates social affordances as highly important. Revenue affordances are identified as an important branch of affordances in social media. Sjöblom, M., Törhönen, M., Hamari, J., & Macey, J. (2018, October 12). The ingredients of Twitch streaming: Affordances of game streams. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563218304965

Loot boxes are increasing in popularity despite concerns over addictions Spending money on loot boxes , which originated in Japan, has been linked to problem gambling since they involve a high degree of chance and a risk-reward factor, mimicking slot machines and roulette.

A recent ban on Netherlands on videogame loot boxes may kill Fifa Ultimate Team as we know it. These probability-based ‘loot boxes’ have become an increasing feature of all kinds of games over the last decade, both in triple-A titles such as FIFA and as the financial bedrock underpinning free-to-play titles such as Fortnite . However, they’ve often been criticised for introducing young people to what many consider a form of gambling, and today a government committee has recommended restricting the sale of loot boxes to children. Children have been affected because they have no money awareness and sometimes they end up in tremendous debt because of lack of control

Zendle et al explain that excitement and and competitiveness contribute to a player’s desire to purchase loot boxes with real money, which contributes to gambling, based on the fact that the items may be random and may not necessarily enhance player’s enjoyment or enhance performance.  Both when gambling and when buying loot boxes, individuals stake money on the outcome of a future event, whose result is determined at least partially by chance in the hopes of receiving a valuable reward. Gambling has been seen as a big problem by governments and some have moved to get rid of it  especially in Netherlands and Germany

This article claims that game designers make games engaging through incorporating principles of learning that are often not found in schools and it argues that these principles should be integrated but first school needs to change. The author made this argument by stating the learning principle and explaining how it is beneficial in the learning process. He then described how this principle is found in games and how it makes the game more engaging. After describing how it appears in games, examples were provided of specific games that did a good job in incorporating this principle. The last thing he did was state whether or not this principle could be found in schools and how it could be integrated. Some detail was provided in how the integration of this principle would benefit the students as well as what the lack of this principle entails for the learning experience.There were thirteen principles split up under the headings of “Empowered Learners”, “Problem Solving” and “Understandin...

This is an interview with Jamie Dillion, a member of the child's play charity, a charity that acquires video game hardware and software for kids in need. This interview comes from a larger book called Thinking About Video Games: Interviews with the Experts by Heineman. This interview fails to answer any questions or prove anything other than gamers can do good things if they really feel like it and that videogame equipment such as the kinect can help to rehabilitate physical therapy patients. There is no methodology for this piece since no scientific research took place nor any kind of data collection “Technology associated with video games is becoming more useful in a large number of ways. For example, the Microsoft Kinect is now being used to help stroke victims regain movement” (Opening of interview). This article may be helpful for showing how games have gone beyond the basement dwelling stigma associated with them from the past and are now helping real world people. I ...

Christopher John Ferguson analyzes several articles about violent video games for both negative and positive effects. Ferguson found that violent video games have no correlation with increased aggression but instead found that games do have a positive correlation with increased visuospatial cognition. “Results from the current analysis supported the conclusion that violent video game exposure is associated with increased visuospatial cognition. However, results of the current meta-analysis did not support a relationship between violent video game exposure and aggressive behavior” (Conclusion). The articles analyzed were gathered from PsycINFO and the articles were written from 1995 to april 2007. The articles were analyzed for both positive and negative results to the human psyche. Articles that discussed violent video games had to have discussed the difference between violent and non violent video games or else they were omitted from the meta analysis. I would use this resear...

Andrew Przybylski and Netta Weinsteins’ study shows that violent video games have a null effect on aggressive behavior in adolescents. The study was done in 2019 and was authorized by University of Oxford. Although Przyblski and Weinstein initially predicted that adolescents who played violent video games would be more aggressive. The data collected from the psychological form used showed that aggression increases were null. “Despite the null findings identified in the present study, history gives us reason to suspect the idea that violent video games drives aggressive behaviour will remain an unsettled question for parents, pundits and policy-makers. Although our results do have implications for these stakeholders, the present work holds special significance for those studying technology effects, in general, and video games, in particular.” (Conclusion). This study used 1000 adolescents (500 male and 500 female) as the study group. This group would then play video games that ei...

Konjin and company argue that violent video games lead to boys exhibiting more aggressive behavior. Through extensive testing, they found that in most cases, when playing a violent videogame, the subject would display more aggressive behavior (administering a violent, loud sound to another that did them non wrong) than they would before they played the game. Should the boy playing violent video games also relate to the main character of said game, then they would display further aggressive behavior. “Boys in our study who identified strongly with violent characters were willing to administer noise loud enough to permanently damage the ears of another boy who had done nothing to anger them” (Discussion/conclusion). The testing involved selecting 122 boys from the Dutch education system (roughly aged 15) and having them either play a violent videogame (either a realistic depiction of violence or a fantasy) or a non violent video game (either realistic or fantasy). After which, two...

Gray, K. L. (2011). Deviant bodies, stigmatized identities, and racist acts: examining the experiences of African-American gamers in Xbox Live This article claims that minority gamers, mainly male African-American, are labeled deviant within the gaming community of Xbox Live arguing the stigma of blackness through profiling and identifying the process that leads to racisms. The author examined the process that leads to African-American gamers as being labeled deviant within Xbox Live. The researcher found it useful to the experiment to interact as an observer and participant in the community which allowed for “open-ended format of interviewing where the participants could tell their stories as well as provide direct evidence when the labeling, stigma, and deviance process”, to occur. Interviews with a semi-structured schedule allowing for conversational dialogue and observations took place over a period of 8 months. The participants were selected through snowball sampling, due to Xbox ...

The purpose of this article was to explore whether using games in library instruction helps students to become more motivated to participate and retain more information. This article proved that using games in library instruction can be helpful through exploring what Millennials expect having grown up with technology: good customer service, fast results, being able to interact, and working in groups. The article then looked into the ways in which video games can meet these needs. While the author of this article didn’t conduct any research of their own they did compare the research that has been done by academics and the results that they found. It was stated that it has been agreed that the traditional lecture does not meet the needs of tech-savvy students but information still has to be taught to the class. Through incorporating games in the lesson students become more engaged because these are active learning rather than passive listening. In being more active in the learning proce...

Thesis/Purpose: Greitmeyer and Osswald analyze how empathy might increase by playing video games and decrease the pleasure for someone else’s misfortunes, as well as testing the idea that the more exposure to prosocial video games someone has the more their “schadenfreude” will decrease. Methods: There were 56 students that participated in this study. There were 28 men and 28 women exactly. Each was randomly assigned to play either a prosocial or neutral video game. The participants were all tested individually as opposed to testing together. Each participant was a part of two different studies in order to get the best results to analyze whether the purpose of the study is affective. One of the studies was about the “enjoyment of classical computer games” and the other was about “impression formation.” The participants either played Lemmings which went under the category of a prosocial video game or they played Tetris which fell under the neutral game. They were told to play the g...