Posted on

Sonja Gabriel

Sonja Gabriel works as a professor for media literacy at University Teacher College Vienna/Krems (Austria). Her primary focus of research is on digital game-based learning and using serious games and gamification for teaching different subjects at school and university as well as evaluation of various projects for learning with games and game-design approaches. Another focus of interest is the use of digital games for teaching values to players.

The potential of serious games in training people to become better citizens

FROG 2022 – Talk

Games – especially serious games – have become a vital part of teaching and learning within the last decades. Not only are they used to teach history, geography or maths but more and more to teach values and ethics. In Poland, for example the game This War of Mine was added to the official reading list for schools and should be used in ethics or social studies lessons. The questions that often arise are if ethics and morale can be taught at all and more specially when talking about digital game-based learning in how far are games better qualified to teach young people about freedom and oppression compared to other media. One reason quite often cited that games are a better choice of teaching material is motivation. The Self-Determination Theory by Ryan & Deci mentions three requirements for motivation: competence, autonomy and relatedness. Digital games, however, sometimes also use different means of motivation which are more of a gamified sort (like points, leaderboards) and which might work to keep players inside the game but not very likely to change their point of view or attitudes towards a certain topic. By having a closer look at some serious games dealing with freedom, oppression and anti war themes and contrasting the motivational structures used by game designers with Self-Determination Theory, the contribution wants to show if digital games have the potential to teach (Western society) values and guide players towards a better understanding of the concepts (re)presented in the game.

Posted on

Stephanie Wössner

Stephanie Wössner is innovation team leader at the Landesmedienzentrum Baden-Württemberg. She is also a freelance consultant and speaker for future-oriented learning. Her areas of expertise are Extended Reality (XR), Game-based Learning (GBL) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), as well as design and futures thinking and the Metaverse.

Let‘s play! Future-oriented learning with games

FROG 2022 – Talk

Digital devices have become increasingly popular in classrooms and come with a great potential of transforming learning. Nevertheless, teachers continue to prepare “lessons” and implement them instead of letting Gen Z and Gen Alpha become agents of their own learning and taking on the role of learning partners. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that neither the use of devices per se nor good lesson planning and implementation are a guarantee for “learning success” and learner motivation – or a good future. But how can this be explained?
In a nutshell: future-oriented learning requires us to reconsider everything we take for granted. Therefore, it is time to leave the familiar paths and come up with ideas on how we can support learners in learning the things they will need for their future as responsible (German, European, world) citizens in the digital age and provide them with the skills that will enable them to shape their (and our) future.

Game-based learning is of particular interest in this context because learning opportunities can easily be designed using games. It is of utmost importance that learners actively create and share content in cooperation with their peers.

After a brief look at the world we live in, we will consider a few future-oriented pedagogical approaches anyone can use to design learning experiences and adventures. We will then focus on three concrete examples:

  • Designing a sustainable future with Minetest
  • Making sure democracy will prevail by approaching This War of Mine from different angles (e.g. analysis, game design, creative gaming)
  • Experiencing gender and diversity through the Sims 4
Posted on

Luana Silveri

Luana Silveri PhD., formerly a researcher in ecology with expertise in Freshwater ecology and climate change, now biology and chemistry teacher at the Rosa Bianca – Weisse rose high school and Ph.D. researcher at the Free University of Bozen in Didactic of science and game-based learning. Passionate for games especially board games, outdoor activities lover, and happy teacher.

A science teacher in the game designer shoes – the YouTopia game experience, a journey through ecology concepts, didactic needs, and game design.

FROG 2022 – Poster

Some papers report that many teachers are quite skeptical on the efficacy of games for deep learning in high school students however, there is a consistent set of literature confirming that game-based learning (GBL) can be effective in education, engaging students, and improving life skills and key competencies. In the last years a new GBL perspective is growing, the game development as an effective tool to foster both: teacher consciousness of GBL effectiveness and students STEM competencies and science knowledge.
After the lockdown as science teacher at the high school, some key questions came into my mind: how support students in coming back to school, to the relationships, in deepening scientific topics and in developing system thinking skills and other 21st-century skills. A small team made by 2 teachers, passionate in gaming, together with 10 students decided to develop a board game to support students in dealing with complex ecological concepts, system thinking and future scenario building ability.
This study describes the development process done by the team and are presented the lessons learnt and observations, which may provide insights on how game-based learning can remove barriers to the process of innovating the way we teach and learn.

Pedagogical principles and learning outcomes were defined by teachers and students, ecological topics and game mechanics were decided and developed by students as well as graphical elements. The final output of the creative process has been YouTopia – the ecosystem valley, a cooperative board game focused on sustainability, ecosystems, and climate change adaptation strategies.

Luana Silveri PhD., formerly research in ecology with an expertise in Freshwater ecology and climate change, now biology and chemistry teacher at the Rosa Bianca – Weisse rose high school and PhD researcher at Free University of Bozen in Didactic of science and game-based learning. Passionate for games especially board games, outdoor activities lover and happy teacher.

Posted on

Gabrielle Trépanier-Jobin

Gabrielle Trépanier-Jobin is a professor in Game Studies at the School of Media of Université du Québec à Montréal and the Co-Director of the research group Homo Ludens. Her PhD thesis explores the possibility of using parodies as playful means to denaturalize gender stereotypes. During her postdoctoral fellowship at MIT, she pursued her work on gender parody in the field of game studies. She is currently conducting research on players’ immersion, on equality, diversity and inclusion in the video game industry, as well as on the potential of video and board games to raise awareness about social and environmental issues.

Hierarchy, Discrimination and Inequality in the Video Game Industry

FROG 2022 – Keynote

Despite the culture of informality that prevails in the video game industry, its structures remain highly hierarchical. Not all employees can evenly express their opinions, are equally heard, are granted the same creative freedom or are given the same opportunities. This talk will present the results of a survey on equality, diversity and inclusion, conducted among 1700 employees from the Quebec gaming industry, and of 20 semi-structured interviews made with women and racialized minorities who encountered problems in development teams. These results show that even though women, non-cisgender people, sexual and ethnic minorities, as well as people with mental or physical disabilities are generally satisfied by their working conditions in the video game industry, they face more obstacles and experience more problems than white heterosexual men. These obstacles and problems are even more pronounced for women and non-cisgender people. These results will be interpreted in light of concepts such as the glass ceiling, the glass slipper, the impostor syndrome, the stereotype threat, the signaling threat, as well as the ordinary/hostile/benevolent sexism to highlight the power relations at work in the video game industry.

Posted on

Harald Koberg

Harald is a games researcher, media pedagogue and cultural mediator based around Graz, Austria. He works for the Styrian Government as an expert in digital culture. At Ludovico – an NGO focusing on the culture and pedagogics of play – he is responsible for all activities concerning digital play and organizes the annual button Festival of Gaming Culture. He frequently speaks and teaches at the University of Graz and other universities and educational institutions. His first book »Freies Spiel: Digitales Spielen und die Sehnsucht nach Wirkmächtigkeit« was published by Büchner Verlag.

For Play’s Sake: What makes us play and how we can fight it

FROG 2022 – Keynote

It’s not play if you have to. That is one part of a definition of play that most of us might be able to agree on. Foucault probably wouldn’t. Because it is power structures that make us decide. What we want can never be fully separated from what we ought to want. And games offer counter-places and counter-publics to live up to those needs.

To play, at the same time, is to be rebellious. It’s about choosing new sets of rules and testing them. But it’s happening in the in-betweens of the analogue and the digital, reality and fiction, the actual and the virtual, earnestness and fun. And it’s happening on the turfs of huge corporations. So how rebellious can it be?

Based on his qualitative research among players and their social surroundings, Harald understands play as a source of experiences of empowerment. He analyses them against the background of social realities that are increasingly guided by what is being called libertarian paternalism and that invoke in many people a feeling of not being able to reach what they are owed or supposed to achieve.

In this talk he will ask how real this empowerment can be and how it might impact social dynamics. Are games the padded cells of a system that lets us romp and rage for a while, until we are ready to fit in again, into the roles it has in store for us? Or might they also encourage us to rethink the system itself?

Posted on

Simone Kriglstein

Simone Kriglstein is an associate professor at Masaryk University, as well as a scientist at the Austrian Institute of Technology. She specializes in designing and evaluating user interfaces and interaction methods in different fields, including games. Her work has been published in international conference proceedings such as the Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems and journals like Computer & Graphics and Computers in Human Behavior.

Bullying Is NOT a Game – But Games Can Help Preventing It

FROG 2022 – Keynote

Unfortunately, many young people in today’s world are exposed to bullying, posing serious social problem at schools worldwide. Especially around the age of 11 to 12, when children try out different things and search for their identity, bullying arises very often from the fear of the unknown, e.g., the different thinking, looks, or backgrounds. Many of those who are affected have to deal with it on a daily basis with studies already confirming the negative impact of bullying on the psychological and academic development of young people. With the rise of the Internet bullying also shifted from the physical space towards a virtual one. In the past, bullying often took place in classrooms where teachers had the opportunity to intervene and find solutions. Nowadays, however, young people frequently use smartphones and social media which offer an increased degree of anonymity which, in turn, can contribute to bullying and cyberbullying. Therefore, prevention strategies as early as possible — such as workshops in schools – are essential to make children more sensitive to this topic. However, many initiatives against bullying in schools often only focus on theoretical facts. This talk will explore the question how can we give a more playful touch to such prevention efforts to make them more engaging to a young audience, for example, via serious games.

Posted on

Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall

Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall (PhD, Stanford University) is Professor of History at California State University – San Marcos. Her newest book, Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games, was published in 2021 by the University Press of Mississippi and received the Honorable Mention for the Haitian Studies Association biennial Book Prize. Her previous works include The Abbé Grégoire and the French Revolution: The Making of Modern Universalism (UC Press, 2005; paperback, 2021); Haitian History: New Perspectives (Routledge, 2012) and numerous articles on French and Haitian history.

Slave Revolt on Screen: Video Games on Haitian Slave Resistance

FROG 2022 – Keynote

The Haitian Revolution (1791 – 1804) was a momentous occasion in world history, the first successful revolution by enslaved Africans in the Americas. But the Revolution’s memory was long suppressed in the US and Europe, prompted by fears among slaveholders that it would inspire copycat uprisings by enslaved people elsewhere.

One place where the Revolution’s memory has been revived is in video games. How well has this medium handled this sensitive topic, and has it mattered whether the developers were themselves descendants of enslaved people? This talk will introduce the Revolution and compare the ways that slave revolt in Haiti has been depicted in video games such as Assassin’s Creed Freedom Cry and Coktel’s Freedom: Rebels in the Darkness. In what ways, the talk will ask, do games like these help preserve the memory of slavery and of the courage of enslaved people fighting against an oppressive system? In what ways do they distort this history? How have players from different backgrounds responded to these games? What inequalities exist in who has the capital and know-how to make games about Haiti’s history? And how can developers with means to do so work to make more socially responsible games on this history?

Posted on

Sonja Gabriel

Sonja Gabriel works as a professor for media literacy at University Teacher College Vienna/Krems (Austria) where she teaches pre-service and in-service teachers. Her primary focus of research is on digital game-based learning and using serious games for teaching different subjects at school and university as well as evaluation of various projects for learning with games and game-design approaches.

The magic of serious games for learning

FROG 2021 – Talk

When talking about serious games for teaching purposes, magic can be seen in two ways. First of all, magic is quite often used as narrative, to give a background or by equipping the player’s avatar with magic items or skills. The use of magic in storytelling has always been important for humans to explain phenomena which could not be explained in another way. For children, however, magic also is of educational value – although the themes used in stories (and games) might often be unrealistic, there are fundamental elements for children’s development. Many studies which had a look into fairy tales have proven the learning possibilities of these stories. Especially, digital games aiming at children (and also those that have been designed for learning purposes) use magic to engage children and to teach them – talking animals, towns made of candy and sugar or (nice) monsters being some characteristic examples. A second connection to magic and learning games for children can be made with the magic circle. Serious games wanting to teach players facts, change in behavior or attitude need to go beyond the magic circle. In order to make a game immersive, the three identities according to Gee have to be taken into account. However, that does not mean that knowledge or skills acquired within the game, will be taken beyond the game boundaries automatically. To enable transfer beyond the boundaries of the magic circle, additional measures (like classroom teaching) have to be taken. In the first part, the contribution will have a look at some children learning games and the role magic plays, whereas the second part will summarize major findings of studies related to digital game based learning and thus stress the fact that learning from games will show best results when it is accompanied with measures outside the game.

Posted on

Ivo Antunic

Ivo Antunic is a designer and publisher of the board game World Control (www.world-control.net). He received BSc in Architecture from the Technical University of Vienna and has become a student of Game Studies at Danube University Krems in 2021. World Control was introduced to him during an exchange year in the US by his host father, Michael Lee Cregger. After sailing the carribbean seas, the name of his boat – imago – lived on for his publishing venture when he crowdfunded WorldControl on Kickstarter in 2016 during the  rise of the Trump-Phenomenon. Focusing on deeper, analog immersion, and themes that bridge over to current events with a Twitter-Bot, additional crowdfundings on StarNext took kept WorldControl a constant Work-In-Progress. The blurring of the real & the gaming world is what he calls „Playerism“.

Playerism – A broken Magic Circle, when the whole world is a game.

FROG 2021 – Talk

My entry into Game Studies stems from crowdfunding the board game “WorldControl” in 2016. It had been pieced together as a mashup of the board game classics “Risk” and “Monopoly” by Michael Lee Cregger in 1991, but remained unpublished. As an exchange student at the Cregger family in 2005 I got to know and love this forgotten game. Its story “in the future all governments have failed & a billionaire elite with corporate armies now plays for the world’s total ownership” seemed gloomy but visionary. So when a billionaire gameshow host started running for the highest office of the world’s most powerful army under a premise of “winning again”, it seemed the game of WorldControl was about to get real. The simple mixture of “Fight or Pay”, adding strategic elements to counter pure chance, gave the game a highly immersive gameplay compared to the known classics, while offering a familiar layout. But there was something about the original prototype that gave it that magic. A submerged central dice-rolling arena provided a feeling as if surrounded by James-Bond villains at Casino Royal. As a student of architecture I had always been fascinated by physical manifestations of these magic circles in the form of theaters, arenas and stadiums. It was not merely about the game, it was about making it bigger than life & immersing all of society into it. With permission to make something out of WorldControl, I poured all my love for design into carving an opulent board. Within 3 weeks a prototype and a campaign was set up without any advertisement, but since every friend called me crazy to believe that anyone would pay up to €230+ or more for a board game, I offered multiple versions. An overwhelming +75% of the backing eventually came from the design-editions. It was successfully funded on election-day 2016. The gameshow-host, trying to brake the rules of reality at every moment, became president & I was confronted with actually having to realize my modern Jumanji, with its immersive effect of braking into reality. The magic circle as a barrier seemed broken. This fusion of the real world and the simulated play world, is what I now call “Playerism”.

Posted on

Tamer Aslan

Tamer Aslan is a creative technologist and founder of City Games Vienna. He received BSc in Electronics Engineering from Sabancı University Istanbul and MA in Interaction Design from Domus Academy Milan. After working as a creative engineer and researcher in Ars Electronics Futurelab, he moved to Vienna to realise his vision of Playful City through City Games Vienna. He has received funding from aws, Vienna Business Agency and FFG, and produced games for Austrian Ministry of Tourism, UNODC, and BOKU. City Games Vienna currently has three Monster Hunts in local market and is developing a digital version to go international.

Blurring the Borders of Magic Circle: Urban Games as a Method for Fusing Game Worlds with the Real World

FROG 2021 – Talk

Urban games are an emerging form of play that derives from street games, location-based games, theatre performances and artistic happenings. They can be defined as pervasive games that are designed for urban context. They differentiate from other games in the sense that (1.) they are built upon cultural and technological heritage that can only be found in cities and (2.) they use real-life situations and locations as their magic circle. Two aspects form the base of the methodology in the design of the urban games: The Impact and the Container. The Impact is the aimed effect to be triggered in players participating in the games. The Container is the employed form housing the urban game. Three use cases will be explained within this structure, where urban games are used to blur the borders of the magic circle so that the skills acquired during gameplay can be translated and transferred into real life. Monster Hunts: Impact: Trigger awareness about the history and culture of Vienna. Form: Hybrid Card Game Using a city map, scratch-off riddle cards and web stories, players go around Vienna and catch “Monsters” with the help of Georgina II the Monster Huntress. The Monsters are sculptures or architectural elements that can be found in the city. CATRINA: Impact: inform and empower players on civil courage Form: Phone Game Players go to a public location and call a phone number where they listen through a scenario and decide on actions using keypad entries, to prevent the world from being destroyed by aliens. The actions provide handling options, so they can learn how to approach such situations in real life. Römerland Carnuntum 2040: Impact: Increase awareness of residents about the development of the region Form: Board Game Players role play four teenagers in an adventure game that takes place in Römerland Carnuntum. Trying to help a kid from the future, they go around the region and collect items. Depending on the items selected, the game ends with a different future scenario.