Leadership, Technology, and Human Development

This study investigated the effects of precommit-ment on college students' goal setting and academic performance , and students' attitude towards precommitment-related activities. Precommitment refers to a procedure in which students set up learning goals, possibly with a time limit at the beginning of a learning phase, then report the comparison between their goals and actual learning progress to their peers and teachers by the end of the learning phase. This study used a single-group repeated-measures design. 41 students from a large university in the southeastern United States participated in the study. Multivariate analysis of variance indicated that precommitment was significantly effective in optimizing stu-dents' goals and improving their academic performance, but the attitude survey result indicated that students could not fully recognize the value of precommitment-related activities.

By their nature, video games create perspectival relationships between the game space, with its mechanics, characters, etc. and their players. Perspectival mechanics in games like Monument Valley and Fez require one to simultaneously transform the environment, the objects in the environment, and one's egocentric reference frames, illustrating the complex nature intrinsic to video game spaces. The authors seek to investigate the ways perspectival mechanics in video games are both created and experienced using postphenomenological inquiry. This investigation is situated within the indie genre of games in particular, a context where these mechanics are intentionally being explored. In addition, this chapter draws parallels between indie games and indie music, contexts where boundary pushing is the norm. In addition to explicating the phenomenon of perspectival shifts in indie games, the authors review research related to spatial thinking, conjecturing affordances of indie games as geometric gifts, possibly well positioned to support spatial thinking.

As video games grow in popularity, ambition, scope, and technological prowess, they also mature as an art form, shedding old definitions tethered to video games as simple, competitive exercises. Greater technological capabilities, in addition to years of experimentation and maturation, have expanded the ability of games to tell different kinds of stories, offering branching paths. The question of “what makes a game a game?” looms larger than ever in this era of video game storytelling. As plots and characters grow, branch, and develop, so, too, do the boundaries of what a game actually is. In traditional definitions of gaming, a set of rules and a victory condition were essential elements to a game. As game narratives and game mechanics grow in increasingly complex and experimental directions, new player goals have emerged. Now, gamers socialize, customize, nurture, kill, build, destroy, break, glitch, and explore as much as they work to win and accrue points. This chapter surveys the current landscape of video games, highlighting examples and trends that challenge more traditional notions and definitions of what it means to be a “video game.” The broader definition presented here takes into account play, narrative, digital environments, and more, acknowledging the expanse of the video game experience.