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Thursday, May 2, 2013

About Those Games I've Been Working On...

You probably won't be going to the Games for Change conference -- it's a convention that brings together video games and positive social change -- but if you are, some of my posse will be making appearances and talking about some of the video games I've been writing. Here's part of the write-up for our presentation:
As a major part of its effort to reinvent elementary and secondary school curriculum, Amplify Learning is producing an ambitious portfolio of digital games. For the first time, these designers, from across the United States and the United Kingdom, are gathering at a public event to discuss this work and share what they have done so far. 
And here is what they're saying about the games. It's the most anyone has said (meaning, more than anything I've been allowed to say) about what they are.
Micro-Presentations from Game Developers:
  • Jesse Schell (Schell Games) – Lexica, an ELA Game World focused on getting students to read more. Mukashi Mukashi, a syntax and story-telling game based on Japanese folklore.
  • Phil Stuart (Preloaded) – Storycards, a collectible card game featuring authors and characters from classic and modern literature. TyrAnt, a real-time strategy game of competing ant colonies.
  • Britt Meyers & Eli Weissman (High Line Games) – Education version ofW.E.L.D.E.R. (top selling iOS spelling game).
  • Ira Fay (Fay Games) – Tomes, a choose-your-own-adventure series featuring characters (and vocabulary) from classic literature.
  • Zach Barth (Zachtronics) – Metaboism, a pinball-style game about how plants and people get energy. Habitactics, a puzzle ecosystem game.
  • John Krajewski (Strange Loop) – SimCell, a game which enables sustained exploration of a human muscle cell.
 I've written anywhere from little tiny bits of some of these games to the entirety of others. Feel free to guess which are which. Not that I'll be able to tell you, but I want to know what you're thinking.

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