Labyrinth: Keeping the Play in Learning Games

Speakers: Dan Roy, Kristina Drzaic

Track: SGS: Game Design

Format: Lecture

Experience Level: Intermediate

Description: LABYRINTH is currently being developed collaboratively by MIT's Education Arcade, Fablevision, Maryland Public Television (MPT) and Johns Hopkins Universtiy. LABYRINTH is a multi-player puzzle adventure game, promoting math and literacy skills, and targeting middle-school students. The game will explore new approaches to storytelling, player collaboration, and pedagogy. Delivered both online and on handheld devices, it will also represent a new distribution model. Unlike many learning games that attempt to recycle classroom activities in interactive form, Labyrinth seeks to engage students in authentic play, and to help them build intellectual scaffolding that will benefit their formal academic learning.