1 - Introduction to Section I

Summary

This section, “Games as Designed Experience,” is the result of years of conversation among game developers, educators, media theorists, and indeed most of the authors (at times all three) at venues such as the Games+Learning+Society (GLS) Conference. This section features game developers theorizing about their practice and the social changes suggested by it. Much of this work is motivated by game developers trying to understand their practice in real time. As designers, these authors are mostly outside mainstream educational research discourse. However, they all do educational activities, including teaching university courses on game design, leading workshops for game developers, or just training team members informally on the job.

Many of the essays that make up these chapters have appeared in other venues ranging from Game Developer magazine to academic journals on digital media and learning. As such, their primary audiences include professional game designers, educators, and media theorists. Rather than revamp the pieces for this audience, we chose to leave them relatively intact, hopefully providing a window into the language and value systems that each author brings to his or her work.