From Content to Context: Videogames as Designed Experience

2006/11/01 by Kurt Squire · 1,092 citations
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Civilization #Context (archaeology) #Digital Games and Media #Educational Games and Gamification #Entertainment #Framing (construction) #Game studies #Ideology #Literacy, Media, and Education #Media studies #Political science #Sociology

paper · doi:10.3102/0013189x035008019

published in Educational Researcher 35(8), 19-29 (SAGE Publishing)

openalex publication_date 2006/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

Interactive immersive entertainment, or videogame playing, has emerged as a major entertainment and educational medium. As research and development initiatives proliferate, educational researchers might benefit by developing more grounded theories about them. This article argues for framing game play as a designed experience. Players’ understandings are developed through cycles of performance within the gameworlds, which instantiate particular theories of the world (ideological worlds). Players develop new identities both through game play and through the gaming communities in which these identities are enacted. Thus research that examines game-based learning needs to account for both kinds of interactions within the game-world and in broader social contexts. Examples from curriculum developed for Civilization III and Supercharged! show how games can communicate powerful ideas and open new identity trajectories for learners.

Citations

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