Blueprints 
What’s Wrong with NPCs?—One of Numerous Questions Austin Walker Nails Perfectly
In most video games most of the time, non-player characters are the meat in the player character’s power fantasy sandwich.
It’s All in Your Head: How Do We Get People to Understand Programming, Math, Literature?
Game-based learning should be designed in such a way that a) you can walk up to it and start playing and b) you can walk up to it and start learning.
Zum Bachelor in vier unschwierigen Schritten
Das von mir angebotene und erwartete Procedere bei Bachelor-Erstbetreuungen — unabhängig von Thema, Jahrgang, Fachbereich oder Hochschule.
A Game-Based Learning Reading List
Five recommendations for critical readings on games and learning from ProfHacker.
“Let’s Make Earnest Games, Not ‘Serious’ Games”
“Maybe what we want are not ‘serious’ games, but earnest games. Games that aren’t just instrumental or opportunistic in their intentions.”
Don’t Let Your Simulation Game Become a Shit Sandwich
Common knowledge, and often among the main rationales for developing simulation games, is that wrapping entertainment around course material will boost motivation.
A Design Paradigm for Serious Games
While Gunter et al.’s paper is not a rigorously written research study, we can still extract its basic idea and expand on it.
The Trouble with Game-Based Learning Research
With their often defensively positioned arguments and study designs, game-based learning proponents paint themselves into a corner.
GLIT GLORT BLEEBLE DURP: Die Onomatopoetika des Don Martin
Wer gleich zu den ausgesuchten onomatopoetischen Meisterwerken des Don Martin fortschreiten will: ein Stück weit herunterscrollen!
Learning “Trust” With Co-op Games
When “Trust” as an educational objective has to take dynamically changing contexts into account, most serious game mechanics are not even close to being useful.
A Huge Potential with a Capital “B”
At the Joburg Serious Games Conference, Ernest W. Adams mentioned “stealth learning” as a very effective way to convey a specific message in a serious game.
Can Somebody Draw a Videogame Metaphor Cartoon Just Like This One, Only With Cats?
Just kiddin’. Another great cartoon about gaming, a few months old already, that’s too good to not being reposted on my blog!
Where Our Treasured Writers Go
Good literary criticism, after all, does what every good scientific endeavor does: it builds models and checks how well they stack up against the evidence.
“Have you read all these books?”
From their digital shelves on my harddisk, those books look at me no less menacingly.
German »Tatort«: Learn the Elements of Dramatic Structure in Less Than Three Minutes!
I just love everything meta-.
Spiegel Online: Pflanzkübel und Bodenwellen
Bindestriche und Doppelpunkte: die Pflanzkübel und Bodenwellen des Online-Journalismus.
I Write Like… / Ich schreibe wie …
Orwell and Freud, according to statistical analysis. Are these algorithms our Digital Age’s new Über-Ich, filtering out everything deemed unsuitable and socially disruptive?