Since 2024, Drew Davidson has been conducting an exploratory qualitative study, Stories of/by/for the Fields of Play, with Emily Matheny and many others. Through questionnaires, 175 in-depth interviews, and community participation, he has been engaging with stories around the fields of play; like games, mixed reality, theatre, sports, music, child psychology, etc. The concept of play is rather broad and diverse; from social studies, to health and enjoyment, to education and learning, to ga...

Since 2024, Drew Davidson has been conducting an exploratory qualitative study, Stories of/by/for the Fields of Play, with Emily Matheny and many others. Through questionnaires, 175 in-depth interviews, and community participation, he has been engaging with stories around the fields of play; like games, mixed reality, theatre, sports, music, child psychology, etc. The concept of play is rather broad and diverse; from social studies, to health and enjoyment, to education and learning, to ga...

In the spring of 2005, an experimental game was prototyped in seven days. This little experiment was Tower of Goo, and it was the seed that led to the development of the independent video game, World of Goo, which was released in the fall of 2008. Shortly thereafter, Drew Davidson wrote a piece on the game that was published in 2009 as part of the book, Well Played 1.0. In this piece, Davidson engaged in a close in-depth reading of World of Goo to help parse out the various meanings he fou...

Creative Chaos describes the dynamic process of collaborative design and development within interdisciplinary teams as they work to create something together. Creativity is wonderfully complex and chaotic, and at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center we often describe what we do as “creative chaos” in that it’s not necessarily a process within which you ever have complete control. To articulate what this means, this short book provides an overview of the ETC and our ...

This is a unique text exploring the interplay between stories and media. The discussion focuses around the Myst narrative as it moves across media from games to books to comics to games. Along the way, the text also discusses the Sandman comics, and the hypermedia of Ultima Online and MitterNachtSpiel. This text was created hypertextually to exist online as a website with an inter-related book.

This text is an introduction to the future of mass media and mass communications – cross-media communications. Cross-media is explained through the presentation and analysis of contemporary examples and project-based tutorials in cross-media development. The text introduces fundamental terms and concepts, and provides a solid overview of cross-media communications, one that builds from a general introduction to a specific examination of media and genres to a discussion of the concepts invo...

Creative Chaos describes the dynamic process of collaborative design and development within interdisciplinary teams as they work to create something together. Creativity is wonderfully complex and chaotic, and at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center, we often describe what we do as “creative chaos” in that it’s not necessarily a process within which you ever have complete control. To articulate what this means, this short book provides an overview of the ETC, our re...

Creative Chaos describes the dynamic process of collaborative design and development within interdisciplinary teams as they work to create something together. Creativity is wonderfully complex and chaotic, and at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center we often describe what we do as “creative chaos” in that it’s not necessarily a process within which you ever have complete control. To articulate what this means, this short book provides an overview of the ETC and our ...

Following on Well Played 1.0, this book is full of in-depth close readings of video games that parse out the various meanings to be found in the experience of playing a game. Contributors analyze sequences in a game in detail in order to illustrate and interpret how the various components of a game can come together to create a fulfilling playing experience unique to this medium. Contributors are again looking at video games in order to provide a variety of perspectives on the value of gam...

This book focuses on strategies for applying games, simulations and interactive experiences in learning contexts. The contributors orchestrated this collection together, reading and writing as a whole so that concepts resonate across articles. Throughout, the promises and problems of implementing games and media in learning experiences are explored. The articles have been authored by Clark Aldrich, Ian Bogost, Mia Consalvo, William Crosbie, Drew Davidson, Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Melinda J...

In this volume, people of diverse backgrounds — tabletop game designers, digital game designers, and game studies academics — talk about tabletop games, game culture, and the intersection of games with learning, theater, and other forms. Even as the digital revolution has progressed apace, tabletop games — board and card, roleplaying and miniatures — have grown and attracted many new fans. Indeed, in tabletop gaming there is far more diversity and design innovation than in digital games, a...

Following on Well Played 1.0 and 2.0, this book is full of in-depth close readings of video games that parse out the various meanings to be found in the experience of playing a game. Contributors analyze sequences in a game in detail in order to illustrate and interpret how the various components of a game can come together to create fulfilling a playing experience unique to this medium. Contributors again look at video games, some that were covered in Well Played 1.0 and 2.0 as well as ne...