Resources for Games, Fun, and Learning

In February, I spoke at the Ball State University Department of Physics and Astronomy Colloquium Series as their once-a-semester "outside speaker." I used the opportunity to put together a presentation entitled Games, Fun, and Learning, and I provided an introduction to these three topics, their intersection, and why  this line of scholarship is important. The presentation was a big hit, so much so that we had to move to a larger lecture hall before starting. My friends at the Emerging Media Initiative had heard about the presentation but many of them could not make it, and so they arranged for me to give a repeat performance, which I did last Friday. The slides from Friday's talk are available, although they are probably more useful as a refresher to those who attended than to those who are new to the domain.

Much of the talk involved highlights from some of my favorite resources, and during Q&A, I was asked if I had these all together in one place. For your browsing pleasure, here's a list of the works I referenced in the presentation and in the Q&A portion.

• Benjamin Bloom. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Book 1: Cognitive Domain. This is the primary reference for Bloom's Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain, but you can also get a good introduction on Wikipedia.
• Limbo.
• Johan Huizinga. Homo Ludens. Also has a good overview on Wikipedia.
• Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals.
• Quest to Learn, the school based on game design principles at which Katie Salen is Executive Director of Design.
• Bernard Suits. The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia.
• Chris Crawford. Chris Crawford on Game Design. This is Crawford's latest work; the original one that I referenced is The Art of Computer Game Design. See also his Dragon Talk.
• Raph Koster. Theory of Fun for Game Design.
• Mihaly Csikszentmihaly. Flow: The Psychology of the Optimal Experience.
• Electric Field Hockey.
• Tic-Tac-Toe.
• Chess.
• Go.
• Team Fortress 2.
• Sid Meier's Civilization 5.
• Matt Leacock. Pandemic. See also Leacock's Google Tech Talk, Cooperation and Engagement: What Can Board Games Teach Us?
• Mizuko Ito et al. Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media.
• Doug Thomas and John Seely Brown. A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change.
• World of Warcraft.
• Alistair Cockburn. Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game.
• Jane McGonigal. Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World.
• Andy Lester. 14 Ways to Contribute to Open Source without Being a Programming Genius or a Rock Star.
• Robin Hunicke, Mark LeBlanc, and Robert Zubek. MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research.
• Raph Koster. An atomic theory of fun game design.
• Daniel Cook. The Chemistry of Game Design.

Enjoy! Thanks again to the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Emerging Media Initiative for hosting these talks.

EDIT: The EMI talk has been put online. See this blog post for details.