Explaining With Games

Explaining With Games

Using games to explain things

About the Book

Games can be designed to teach and facilitate learning processes. This book is focused on teaching you on how to contribute creating such games.

In this book I present several real world cases where games have been applied as teaching tools, and through those cases I introduce concepts of game design used in applied games. My hope is that it can be a handbook for people that want to try to apply ludic techniques to a non trivial subject to make it more accessible. How can people with different skills contribute? How can the field experts and the game developers somehow work together?

The bulk of the book proceeds by example. We will always be designing or analysing a specific applied game. We will also provide several working game examples.

This book is for three kinds of readers:

1. Field experts that want to learn and explore the world of games / interactive tools and use them for their field communication. For example I worked on applied games with operators and researchers in the health, social sciences, education, urban planning, art curation and museums sectors.

2. Game designers that are interested in applied game design as a profession; they may be software developers, game designers, graphic designers, all professions on the boundary with this field.

3. Teachers, instructors that would like to use games and interactive tools in classrooms, workshop and courses.

About the Author

Pietro Polsinelli
Pietro Polsinelli (texts) and Pino Panzarella (illustrator)

I am a software designer and game designer (web applications, games, in particular applied / serious games), developer (Java, C#, web apps, Unity3d), entrepreneur (started one company and created several products).

I have been working on games for learning since 2010, as both game designer and developer. I also teach game design and development in workshops. See my full profile here.

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