“Are serious games the classroom tool of the future? Is the future already here? The tablet classroom may have once been the stuff of science fiction, but modern developments in technology and brain science may have come together to create a massive change in the way we think about education.”
Noted game designer and scholar Eric Zimmerman published a manifesto on the future of culture. Keeping in step with the content, the article was published on Kotaku, a videogame blog, rather than an academic journal. The document, “Manifesto: The 21st Century Will Be Defined By Games,” is a preview to his forthcoming book from MIT Press entitled “The Gameful World.” Zimmerman postulates that the 21st century will be defined by games in what he calls the Ludic Century. He indicates that games are as ancient as culture itself, but digital technology gives games a new role in gating the control of information. Whereas the 20th century was marked by increasing access to information, the Ludic Century will be marked by an interactive relationship to information. Digital designers and media mavens will play a new role, inviting users to play with information in an unprecedented way. There will also be a democratization of digital experiences similar to that of other industries. Game design will cross all boundaries of art, science, education, and media. Zimmerman states that games are complex systems that might allow us to understand, synthesize, and digest other more complex systems.
The CUNY Games Network is excited to have Eric Zimmerman participating as a featured panelist at the CUNY Games Fest conference in 2014.
Originally posted at TransformativeGames.org
UPDATE: 2nd Day added to conference! (details below)
Mark your calendars. The first annual CUNY Games Festival will take place on January 17, 2014 at the CUNY Graduate Center. This one-day conference to promote and discuss game-based learning in higher education will bring together faculty, students, game designers, and other domain experts from various disciplines. Open to the public, the conference features an Arcade, where attendees can play learning games and games-in-progress, and sessions to address such questions as:
Apart from engaging college students, what real learning can happen through games?
What relevance does the broader debate about gamification have to higher education?
Should games be read, analyzed, or even replace texts in a course?
The plenary session includes a diverse panel of scholars and game designers: John Black (Teachers College, Columbia University), Robert Duncan (York College, CUNY), Joey Lee (Teachers College, Columbia University), Anastasia Salter (University of Baltimore) and Eric Zimmerman (New York University).
Interested in presenting? Read the guidelines and submit your proposal!
PROPOSAL DEADLINE: OCTOBER 1
We are also adding a special second day to the festival. From 10am to 5pm on Saturday, January 18, we will host a more informal day of playing popular board and card games, and offering feedback to educational games that attendees have created. Feel free to bring games of your design; we will have game designers on hand! During this time we will get to know each other better and hopefully discover opportunities for future collaborations.
