Tag Archives: game design

Today at the Cooney Center, we are proud and excited to announce that the 2012 National STEM Video Game Challenge is officially open for entries. This nationwide competition invites game makers of every age to show their passion for both playing and making video games, while aiming to motivate children’s interests in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). With four different categories and multiple streams to submit to, there’s something for almost everyone.  The Middle School and High School categories…

Picture for a second the first thing you ever constructed, designed, prototyped, or invented. If you’re like most of us, there’s a pretty good chance that you built your idea using toys like LEGOs, Play-Doh, Lincoln Logs, or perhaps, to your parents’ dismay, a mix of all of the above (good luck getting Play-Doh out of those bricks). Over the years, magazines like MAKE have featured lots of DIY toy projects, but very few talk about designing for Creative Play…

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center and E-Line Media were at the White House today, where  U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the launch of the new Digital Promise Initiative. First established as a non-profit organization created by the President and. Congress through the Department of Education as an effort to promote breakthrough technologies  to transform teaching and learning. The 2011 National STEM Video Game Challenge is one of the new initiatives that the Administration hopes will spur research and…

I always love going to the Games, Learning and Society (GLS) conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Where else are you guaranteed access to a lakeside terrace, local microbrews, and warm Midwestern hospitality? In addition to these welcome amenities, GLS is also a place where games are taken quite seriously, albeit in a playful way. This year was no exception.   I attended the conference to present some of the early findings from my own research. With my collaborator LeAnne Wagner, I…

It’s hard to believe that the National STEM Video Game Challenge has come to a close. The Cooney Center team has just returned from D.C., where we invited the six finalists of the Collegiate and Developer streams of the competition to the Quick-Pitch Competition on Tuesday, March 29. Each team had a total of 20 minutes to present their prototypes and answer questions before a panel of judges at the Pew Center for American Life.   We were thrilled to…

In 2006, The Edge published their picks in an article called 50 Books For Everyone In the Game Industry. What must-have books should be added to this list?