Values at Play » Curriculum

THE VALUES AT PLAY CURRICULUM

The Values at Play (VAP) project was conceived with the intent of investigating how video game designers consciously and unconsciously embed social values into video games through narratives and game mechanics. This curriculum, a corollary of the research project, will introduce designers to a systematic method for discovering, analyzing, and integrating values into their design work. All of the materials associated with the curriculum are available on this page as downloadable documents.

If you would like further information on trying this Curriculum segment in a course, please contact jonathan[dot]belman[at]gmail[dot]com.

CURRICULUM & TEACHING GUIDE

The guide contains a unit for introducing game designers to the concept of values embedded in games. The unit is divided into four lesson plans and covers the three segments of the Values at Play methodology.
VAP Curriculum

SURVEY LINKS

Pre-class Survey Link
A print version of the pre-class survey is available as a pdf if you are unable to access the SurveyMonkey site.

Post-class Survey Link
A print version of the post-class survey is available as a pdf if you are unable to access the SurveyMonkey site.

DESIGN JOURNALS (accessible to research participants only)

Georgia Tech: http://gtechvap.pbwiki.com
Hunter College: http://huntervap.pbwiki.com
RIT: http://ritvap.pbwiki.com
UC Santa Cruz: http://ucscvap.pbwiki.com
USC: http://uscvap.pbwiki.com
USCD: http://valuesatplayucsd.pbwiki.com/

CLASS READINGS

Belman, J. (2007). Game reviews. game_reviews.pdf

Bogost, I. (2006). Playing Politics: Videogames for Politics, Activism, and Advocacy. First Monday, 11(9), Special Issue #7: Command Lines: The Emergence of Governance in Cyberspace.
http://firstmonday.org/issues/special11_9/bogost/index.html

Flanagan, M. & Nissenbaum, H. (2007). A game design methodology to incorporate social activist themes. Proceedings of CHI 2007. New York: ACM Press, 181–190. vap-chifinal06sub.pdf

Frasca, G. (2004). Videogames of the oppressed.
http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/Boalian

Friedman, B. & Nissenbaum, H. (1996). Bias in computer systems. ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 14(3), 330–347.

Latour, B. (1994). Where are the missing masses? Sociology of a door. In Wiebe Bijker and John Law (Eds.) Shaping technology/Building society: Studies in sociotechnical change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 225–259.
http://www.brunolatour.fr/articles/article/050.html

Mental Health Alliance Blasts Manhunt 2
http://kotaku.com/gaming/bang-your-head/mental-health-allianceblasts-manhunt-2-318129.php

Norman, D.A. (2004). Affordances and design.
http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordances_and.html

Orr, M. (2005). User-centered design.
http://linuxgazette.net/116/orr.html

“Saving the World, One Video Game at a Time” (New York Times, July 23, 2006):
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/23/arts/23thom.html?ex=1185076800&en=2365cab8f8972ab8&ei=5070

Winner, L. (1988). Do artifacts have politics? In L. Winner, The whale and the reactor: A search for limits in an age of high technology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. pp. 19–39.
http://epl.scu.edu:16080/~stsvalues/readings/Winner.pdf

Zimmerman, E. (2003). Play as research: The iterative design process.
http://www.ericzimmerman.com/texts/Iterative_Design.htm

Other Available Readings

Erickson, T. (2000). Lingua francas for design: Sacred places and pattern languages.
http://www.visi.com/~snowfall/LinguaFranca_DIS2000.html

Flanagan, M., Nissenbaum, H., Belman, J., & Diamond, J. (2007). A method for discovering values in digital games. To be presented at the annual conference of the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA), Tokyo, Japan.
method_digra2007.pdf

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