The article by Bloom beings with the explanation that games involving Shakespeare, in any way, are becoming more and more popular. They are used to increase the buying rate, but also the reverse, these games increase the popularity of theaters. The paper’s main idea is to explain why certain games “struggle more than others to translate … theater into gaming.” There are theater-making, drama-making, and “scholar”-making games that all have different central pathways, some more immersive than others. She is working on creating a physically interactive game through Kinect that has to do with Shakespearean theater. These types of games offer many educational opportunities and she references many of this sort, ranging from placing the player as a director, dress manager, playwright and even more, which familiarize them with decision-making and the actual parts of theater. Bloom is creating her own game, Play the Knave, in order to curate a setting where simple clicking of buttons to act as real gestures isn’t enough, the player actually has to do what they want so it feels realer. She explains how her game works with the sensor and player, and the player actually is apart of the play as an actor or any other possible role. This recorded performance can be shared and watchers can choose where they view it from. She finally explains that she isn’t sure if the game willl become commerically popular or not, it depends on the audience and time it is released.
I ended up reading essentially the tutorial after this paper, and it has a very straightforward summary with pictures of what exactly it does. It explains a kinect sensor is need and the player has to recite the script through the game. Following this is the types of curriculum this game can be used in. Elementary school students can use it to learn Shakespearean language through mini games, and high schoolers can use it to understand certain plays being studied in class at the time. The advanced form of enrichment allows in-depth analysis of specific decisions while playing, which leads to a greater understanding of being in a play like these. There are some tips she offers at the end, like the fact that these games are for entertainment and enrichment not as a lesson in themselves.
I thought her creation of this game based off of research is extremely interesting, especially since i know I could never pull something like this off. I wonder if she would consider using VR instead of kinect/motion sensors for a game like this. She does a great job of explaining how it works and also what the impact of it is. I would be extremely interested in playing a game like this in the future, since what I know about Shakespeare is only from high school. I believe a game like this would’ve made learning about Shakespeare much much more intruiging.
Would you have enjoyed using a game like this in high school? Do you think everyone would’ve participated/enjoyed it?
EDU 185: Gigi's Blog 
I definitely would have enjoyed using a video game like this in high school. My school was fairly traditional and didn’t use any technology to supplement our learning. If we had a game like this, people would have been engaged and been excited about participating in a video game in school. Also, some of my favorite projects in high school were ones where we had to perform something so this would have incorporated that aspect of high school that excited me too. I think that everyone would have participated in the game, but not everyone would have enjoyed the performance aspect of the game.
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I don’t know if I personally would have enjoyed playing the game in highschool. Enjoyment of a game depends on what you do in the game. This game heavily involves acting, which I personally don’t like too much, so I probably wouldn’t enjoy the game. I think enjoyment of games like these really depend on the personality of the person playing it. If a class played this game, I suppose outgoing, talkative people would enjoy this game and have a lot of fun with it, while others who really don’t like this kind of stuff would be more reluctant to play it. This could result in different degrees of learning depending on the person.
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Hey Gigi! I agree with your summary of the two assigned readings for this week! I think it’s super interesting how you brought up the possibility of using VR instead of kinect for the game. I wonder how the rules and the game results would be different if she used VR instead of Kinect. I think this would be really interesting to look further into. To answer your question, I personally think that I would have really enjoyed using a game like this in high school. As Bloom mentioned in her article, “Play the Knave” can be used in high school for students to practice Romeo’s final monologue and to help students understand Romeo’s feelings and emotions. In high school, I also had to act out scenes from Romeo and Juliet for my English lit class. I think having access to this game would have made that experience way more interesting. It also would have been a great resource for us to practice our scenes before having to present it to the entire class. I’m pretty sure that it’s not only my high school that made students act out scenes from Romeo and Juliet, so I think that generally all students would have appreciated having access to this game and would really enjoy using it.
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I would have loved to play something like Play the Knave in high school! Shakespeare was probably one of the most boring phases I’ve gone through in my entire K-12 education, and I think an interactive video game would have made it much better. And I do think others will enjoy it too because, at least among the people I knew, many did not find Shakespeare very interesting at all.
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I think I would have enjoyed a game like this in high school. I’ve never played with a Kinect before, but from the demonstration that we saw the other class, it looks very interactive and the players get to move around. However, I do not think that everyone would have enjoyed this game because many students I know do not really enjoy Shakespeare in general. On the other hand, if presented in a situation where the students had to pick between reading about Shakespeare or playing the game, I would believe that most students would prefer to play the game because it’s more fun and interactive.
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