Abstract
Whereas traditionally stories involve an author, a performer, and an audience, much of the power of videogames as media for advancing narrative springs from their affordance for the player to occupy more than one role—and sometimes all three—simultaneously. In the narratively-rich videogames that we design, players have the opportunity to perform actions, experience consequences, and reflect on the underlying social values that these situations were designed to engage. Here, our focus is on the use of these games to engage children in experiencing ideological struggles associated with realizing social commitments. Toward this end, we will present our theoretical argument for the power of games as a contemporary story medium, grounding this discussion in the demonstration of three game design projects and their implementations.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Gee, J.P.: What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York (2003)
Barab, S.A., Dodge, T., Ingram-Goble, A., Volk, C., Peppler, K., Pettyjohn, P., Solomou, M.: Pedagogical Dramas and Transformational Play: Narratively-Rich Games for Learning. To appear in Mind, Culture & Activity (in press)
Barab, S.A., Sadler, T., Heiselt, C., Hickey, D., Zuiker, S.: Relating Narrative, Inquiry, and Inscriptions: A Framework for Socio-Scientific Inquiry. J. Science Educ. And Tech. 16, 59–82 (2007)
Barab, S.A., Zuiker, S., Warren, S., Hickey, D., Ingram-Goble, A., Kwon, E.-J., Kouper, I., Herring, S.C.: Situationally Embodied Curriculum: Relating Formalisms to Contexts. Science Educ. 91, 750–782 (2007)
Gresalfi, M., Barab, S.A., Siyahhan, S., Christensen, T.: Virtual Worlds, Conceptual Understanding, and Me: Designing for Consequential Engagement. On the Horizon 17, 21–34 (2009)
Barab, S., Thomas, M., Dodge, T., Carteaux, R., Tuzun, H.: Making Learning Fun: Quest Atlantis, A Game Without Guns. Educ. Tech. Res. & Dev. 53, 86–107 (2005)
Squire, K.: From Content to Context: Videogames as Designed Experiences. Educ. Res. 35, 19–29 (2006)
Murray, J.: Hamlet on the Holodeck. The Free Press, New York (1997)
Barab, S.A., Dodge, T., Thomas, M., Jackson, C., Tuzun, H.: Our Designs and the Social Agendas They Carry. J. Learning Sciences 16, 263–305 (2007)
Bruner, J.: Life as Narrative. Social Research 54, 11–32 (1987)
Salen, K., Zimmerman, E.: Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. MIT Press, Cambridge (2004)
Sheldon, L.: Character Development and Storytelling for Games. Thomson Course Technology PTR, Boston (2004)
Barab, S.A., Gresalfi, M.S., Ingram-Goble, A.: Transformational Play: Using Games to Position Person, Content, and Context (2009) (manuscript submitted for publication)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Barab, S.A. et al. (2009). Pedagogical Dramas and Transformational Play: Realizing Narrative through Videogames Design. In: Iurgel, I.A., Zagalo, N., Petta, P. (eds) Interactive Storytelling. ICIDS 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5915. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10643-9_42
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10643-9_42
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-10642-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-10643-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)