from Tech@State:Serious Games 27-28May2011

1. Abe Stein
Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA

2. What is GAMBIT?

3. What is GAMBIT?
• Game Research Laboratory at MIT

4. What is GAMBIT?
• Game Research Laboratory at MIT
• Collaboration with government of Singapore

5. What is GAMBIT?
• Game Research Laboratory at MIT
• Collaboration with government of Singapore
• Media Development Authority

6. What is GAMBIT?
• Game Research Laboratory at MIT
• Collaboration with government of Singapore
• Media Development Authority
• Train Singaporean and MIT students to make
games

7. What is GAMBIT?
• Game Research Laboratory at MIT
• Collaboration with government of Singapore
• Media Development Authority
• Train Singaporean and MIT students to make
games
• Conduct design research, player studies, game criticism,
theorizing, and study industry best practices

8. We make serious games.

9. Game Studies Today
Should we study games or players?
Game Studies Player Studies
Platform Studies Player Experience
Procedural Rhetoric Transfer
Genre Study Effect
Formalism Game Culture
HCI Literacy
Participatory Culture

10. Game Studies Today
Serious games are largely supported and
developed based on ontological theories
of games, and on research studying the
effects of play.

11. What now?
We must reinvest in studying how
players experience games.
We must problematize current
assumptions about serious games, and
the way players engage them.

12. Thanks
adstein@mit.edu
@abestein
gambit.mit.edu
www.simplercreature.com