Time:
- Plan: 5 min
- Implementation: 45 min
Type(s) of Essential:
Social & Emotional Growth
Critical Review
Prerequisite
Overview
Learners gain an understanding of categories game developers use when reviewing games, identify additional categories from peers, and apply this knowledge to evaluating games.
Our Essentials in this Activity
Learners utilize the knowledge and skills they developed from playing, discussing, and examining their gameplay experiences to identify specific aspects of games that are important to them. In understanding that games are developed by people, they become aware that games contain values, point of views, and possible errors and can be improved through critique. Learners individually and collectively generate new categories, asking each other clarifying questions in the process. Each learner applies their knowledge, experiences, and preferences to creating an approach to reviewing games that is unique to them. Then they review a game based on their categories. By reflecting on their gameplay experiences and generating categories for game evaluation, learners enhance their self-awareness, critical thinking, and meta-cognition. Learning peers’ categories enhances learners’ social awareness, such as taking on others’ perspectives.
Goals and Outcomes
Goal: Learners enhance their knowledge of ways to review games and identify what they value as players.
Outcomes: Learners develop their understanding of what they and different people value when reviewing games and digital media, and how to create a criteria for reviewing games.
Materials
Creating Your Game Review Criteria sheet; Shareable crowdsourcing tool either online (e.g., Padlet, Google Doc, etc.) or in-person (e.g., blank dry erase board, etc.); Presentation tool (e.g., Keynote, Power Point, iMovie, etc.).
Preparation
Complete prerequisites. Create printed or digital copies of the Game Review Criteria sheet, enough for each learner..
Organize the crowdsourcing tool so it is ready for responses. Whether using an online crowdsourcing tool or a whiteboard, at the top, state a question asking about what they would like in games. For example, “What is important to you when reviewing a game? What else do you care about when playing and reviewing games? List them here.” Make sure the question(s) is easy for learners to understand and respond to.
Implementation and Completion
Remind learners that reviews are made by people. Inform learners they will build on the Game Evaluation activity and explore different ways people review games. Distribute the “Creating Your Game Review Criteria Sheet”.
Learners will start this activity brainstorming using the crowdsourcing tool.
Part One
For part one, learners will work together to brainstorm what points they care about when playing games. Provide examples of additional categories you and other educators use to evaluate games, not already listed, and place them on the online document or whiteboard.
Some categories identified by the Learning Games Lab educators include:
- Are characters with different body types and abilities featured as main characters?
- Can the player understand what to do?
- Does my character have a mission or a problem to solve?
Then ask learners for categories they would like to add using a tool to crowdsource. For the online document, ask learners to add their categories on the document. For the whiteboard, learners write what is important to them when playing on post-its and place those post-its on the whiteboard. Educators can help learners with articulating and writing their ideas as needed.
Discuss the responses either as the learners add them or after all are added. Then work with them to make statements into short phrases or words that can be perceived as categories. If there are similar words or phrases used, work with learners to reduce them into one
Once this process is completed, tell learners they will review a game (different from a game reviewed for the Game Evaluation activity) using four of the new categories and four categories developers use to review games.