This has been the worst week ever.
I'm learning - beyond that of my project - what it means to run on empty. This week I've been doing even more of the bare minimum than normal and how to just try to look forward to a new day.
Some new information I came upon this week while prepping my SDA and my future topic for the final project:
- The graduate programs for game design at RPI have only been around since last year (I've been focusing the majority of my research on undergrad but this shows the steps RPI is starting to make with their GSAS curriculum and making it a more integral part of the community).
- When designing games dealing with empathy, you have to think about dispositional vs. induced empathy (preexisting ability versus ability via experimental manipulation) and how far you can push things to target demographics that span all over the empathy spectrum.
- This principle in particular struck me as fascinating:
"Players are likely to empathize only when they make an intentional effort to do so as the game begins. The game may explicitly ask players to empathize, or it may more subtly encourage them to take on a focused empathetic posture. However, without some kind of effective empathy induction at the outset, most people will play 'unempathetically.'"
Basically, we need some sort of factor that leads us to treat the game as more than just that: a game. That's why things like storytelling and graphical realism/stylistic choices can be really important and integral to a game's function and marketability.
- Some of the Cs that we use in EMC are actually really important for other educational platforms! For instance, when using video games (especially with students) to teach skills, creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication are all necessary factors in a game in order to foster SEL (social and emotional learning) skills.