Lisa G Gaming Journal

  Discuss your process for game storming and designing a story for learning. I really enjoyed the ideation process; it helped me to begin throwing out just random ideas to help really get my gears going. After that, I was able to begin focusing on what could really work and what I would be able to use in my profession to make it applicable for myself. The story building exercise helped me to realize that I had a lot of unknowns at this point in time, such as alternatives and the exact conflict I was going to create.  If I had to do this process all over again, what I would change is to focus first on the story outline before worrying too much about how I was going to incorporate the learning. I was so focused on what I wanted the students to learn that I had a hard time picturing the game. After receiving feedback from other class members and the professor, it helped to clarify in my mind, how I was going to make the story line first and then add in the learning objective....

I used the provided Christmas tree template for mapping my branches and my, it was much harder to work through the story than I thought. I kept getting confused on what each part of the tree meant, and all jumbled up to be honest! It was hard, and I hope I completed it correctly. I feel like I am working in the right direction, just hoping the mapping shows my thought process correctly. Since I am trying to teach 8 stages, I spent a lot of time at the top of the tree creating different events, before I got to progress to the third tier where the climax of the story starts and ends with their choice. From there, the story works downhill to a conclusion of the story. Use the link below to see the full map (easier to follow in slides).  Alex's Journey Mapping

Spent This game was very eye-opening and can be a powerful learning tool if used in the classroom properly. Every day I was met with a choice, some were small choices only costing a few dollars and some were big. By day 9, I was barely staying afloat and had to make a choice to ignore a bill because I didn't have enough money in my bank account to pay the bill. This leads to a future of poor credit and having a harder time getting a job. When it came to choices of purchasing anything extra or going to a wedding, I had to decline just to make sure I could hold on to every penny possible. To make it to the end, with the amount of money I had in the bank, I basically had to do as much as possible with as little money as possible when the choices came.  Gods Will Be Watching The first couple of times of playing this game, I did not make it past a day. First time was due to hypothermia from not keeping the fire going (somehow, I never even noticed the fire pit). After the...

At the start of the game storming, writing down the problem I wanted to focus on and answering the questions seemed to be the easiest part of the process. I had a general idea of what I wanted to focus on, then when I moved onto mapping it out using Freytag's Pyramid I felt comfortable with my completion (see my completed Freytag's Pyramid below).    Mapping out the main plot points was helpful as well as I continued to work through my game storming.  Steps 2 and 3 seemed to be the most difficult to me, trying to connect all the dots and add alternatives to the characters. This is still a work in progress as I work through the options in my head and what would work best for the game, creating an internal drive for the players to win.  

 "Playing a Part in a Grand Story" When I took the quantic gamer type quiz my results were Bard. They describe Bard as a team player, who wants to chat and interact with other players in game worlds that are rich in stories, discovery, and customization. For me, the game is a grand story that emerges from a community of players.  This description fits me perfectly, I do not take a lot of time to play games but when I do, I focus on games that have a vivid story line or community play (such as Mario Kart, Super Mario, or The Sims). In my home I have two game enthusiasts, my sons Owen (8) and Emmett (5). We play both board games and video games, so when I do play with them, and I get to choose what game we play I choose Mario Kart (a racing game) or Super Mario. Mario Kart is a racing game with several racetrack options, you can customize your car, and choose which character to play. As you progress through the game it unlocks different racetrack options, characters, a...