Videogame Style Guide & Other News

Since I've spent the last few early morning hours awake (thanks to a potty training 2 year old) digging through my RSS feeds, I wanted to point out a few relevant news items.

If you noticed my post from last night, I started treated "video games" as a single word "videogame." This change is due to the publication of The Videogame Style Guide and Reference Manual by David Thomas, Kyle Orland, and Scott Steinberg. As a librarian, or anyone interested or writing about gaming, I see no reason that we should not use the discipline specific terms. And so the style guide, which you can download here, defines the term "videogame" as:

Catch-all term for any type of interactive entertainment software. Always write as one word - p.65
In addition to this useful download, John Rice over at Educational Games Blog discovered a link to download the serious game Revolution created by MIT's Education Arcade. I've mentioned Revolution before when I interviewed one of it's initial creators, Matthew Weise. And Henry Jenkins used it as an example in the ALA GLLS 2007 keynote speech. I have not tried it yet, but since it is a mod, it does require you to have Never Winter Nights installed. I'm looking for to trying it out.

Over at OUseful Info, they posted about looking at course layout and design from a game design strategy. Well designed courses include progression and/or emergence in gameplay (one word, thanks style guide). Our lessons plans tend to follow this same pattern?

Which style, progression or emergence, do your information literacy sessions take?

2 comments:

Spekkio said...

Not everyone seems thrilled or impressed with the style guide. Some feel that said style guide is unnecessary and is superseded by the AP style guide. I'm not saying that I agree or disagree - but I do find the disagreement interesting.

Paul said...

Scott,

Yeah, I've read some of the unnecessary arguments for the style guide. I like the idea of it, if individual disciplines/subject fields can create and use their own style so could this guide. But I'll be interested to see how the use is. If journalists use it or just stick with their existing standards.

Thanks Scott.
Paul