Games+Learning+Society 10 Conference

Obligatory Games: The Impact of Social and Political-Economic Contexts on Games in US Classrooms
Casey O'Donnell, Louisa Rosenheck, Mark Chen, Peter Stidwill

Games designed and developed to be both "good fun" and educational is no longer novel. Increasingly, games are being developed to meet the needs of both teachers and students. However, the various organizations developing these games find themselves enmeshed in a complex ecology of interests placing a variety of demands on those making these games.

Perhaps most importantly, questions surrounding the relationship between games and the U.S. educational system loom large in the minds of both academics and developers. Does something "required" remain a game? To what extent do games in the classroom have a chance to change the total classroom ecology towards affording the learning conditions we associate with well-designed games – interest-driven learning, exploratory probing, an orientation towards mastery not performance, etc.? To what extent do they become coopted by the surrounding institutionalizations as yet another form of analytics and surveillance of students, teachers, and learning outcomes?