Taking Perspectives with Game Design: Teachers wanted for pilot!

The participants of the Playing Perspectives workshop at the Onderwijsfestival at Utrecht University are fully engaged in conversation. The striking photo on the table is what they’re talking about. Because what do you see in this photo? What stands out and what is your interpretation? This turns out to be quite different for each participant.

dr. Jasper van Vught
12-03-2025 // Events, Insights, News // Games Beyond Entertainment

Redesigning Monopoly to Foster Climate Resilience

On March 6th, 2025, as part of the annual Onderwijsfestival at Utrecht University, Flora Roberts, Larike Bronkhorst and Stefan Werning organized a workshop on how co-designing iconic (board) games like Monopoly can facilitate imagining sustainable futures and help mitigate negative and cultivate positive climate emotions.

Editorial Team
09-03-2025 // Events // Games and Sustainability

Fostering an Open Mind – First Test of WP2

On June 7th 2024, the Fostering an open mind and open attitude in higher education using games and art-based educational activities (Open Mind) project ran an initial play test of the first two components of Work Packet 2 (WP2), a toolbox to aid students in building games that deal with often complex and polarizing topics in an approachable manner.

Editorial Team
12-06-2024 // Insights, Longread, News // Games Beyond Entertainment

Playing the Hidden Curriculum

Playing the Hidden Curriculum: Exposing, materializing and questioning the unwritten rules of higher education is a research project that aims to adress the unwritten social and cultural rules in education, so that the UU will foster its education in a more social and inclusive way.

Editorial Team
31-05-2024 // Education, Insights, News // Games Beyond Entertainment, Multi theme, Social Games and Play

Fostering an open mind and open attitude in higher education using games and art-based educational activities 

With the use of art and media tools such as dialogical art, game play, and game development, this project aims to foster a space wherein it is possible to discuss complex topics, and for students with diverging opinions to be able to civilly discuss while learning from one another and developing a greater understanding of those whose opinions may differ from their own.

Editorial Team
28-06-2023 // Insights, Longread, News // Games Beyond Entertainment, Multi theme

Spationomy 2.0

The Spationomy 2.0 project was started in October of 2019, and concluded with a final conference held in November of 2022. The project was funded by the Erasmus+ program of the European Union.

Editorial Team
22-11-2022 // Events, Insights // Criticism and Analysis, Games Beyond Entertainment, Social Games and Play

Playable Personas: Using Games and Play to Expand the Repertoire of Learner Personas

This article explores how playing and co-creating games in higher education contexts contributes to expanding learner personas and facilitating a multimodal learning experience. Working from the interdisciplinary perspectives of media/games studies, pedagogy, and linguistic anthropology, Stefan Werning, Deborah Cole, and Andrea Maragliano conceptualize in-class learning as the making and playing of games, reporting on game experiments and playful practices targeted at learning key theoretical concepts in our disciplines.

Editorial Team
16-03-2021 // Insights // Criticism and Analysis, Games Beyond Entertainment

Game Research Magazine

In 2017, a special issue titled Game Research – Games that Change your Mind was published about the research projects of the Utrecht Center for Game Research.

Editorial Team
17-10-2017 // Publications // Criticism and Analysis, Games and Sustainability, Games Beyond Entertainment, Games for Health