Abstract
This chapter reviews the past and looks to the future of the potential for games and gameplay to provide opportunity for engaging in mathematical activity. This review a glimpse into a possible future is conducted with a specific focus on the role of artefacts in gameplay. The chapter is in four sections. The first section considers the range of games; the second section considers artefacts in games and gameplay; the third section addresses games in mathematics education; and the final section looks to future development.
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Notes
- 1.
This distinction between ‘game’ and ‘gameplay’ is, perhaps, an English language distinction as the word ‘jeu’ in French is used for both terms.
- 2.
Decision making in a wide range of games is studied in the mathematical theory of games but this is not a focus in this chapter.
- 3.
- 4.
Froebel also made extensive use of mathematical artefacts: wooden cubes and ‘tables marked with a grid of lines, much like graph paper; each square in the grid was the size of the face of one of the small cubes. Arranging cubes on the grid produced pleasing patterns’ (Kidwell et al., 2008).
- 5.
- 6.
For example, Game Studies: the International Journal of Computer Game Research. See http://gamestudies.org/0902/about
- 7.
This has links to ‘peering under the bonnet, as Maple does’ (Sect. 3.5).
- 8.
‘cubes’ is Costas’ term for the square floor tiles available in The Sims build mode.
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Monaghan, J. (2016). Games: Artefacts in Gameplay. In: Tools and Mathematics. Mathematics Education Library, vol 110. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02396-0_18
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