Games + Learning + Society

This is the first volume of the annual proceedings for the Games+Learning+Society (GLS). The GLS conference is a premier event for those from both academia and industry interested in videogames and learning.

The GLS conference is one of the few destinations where the people who create high-quality digital learning media can gather for a serious think about what is happening in the field and how the field can serve the public interest. The conference offers an opportunity for in-depth conversation and social networking across diverse disciplines including game studies, education research, learning sciences, industry, government, educational practice, media design, and business.

The GLS conference offers a host of session types from traditional presentations and symposia to unique session formats like the Fireside Chat, where the audience can engage in an informal discussion with the speaker, or the Micropresentation, which is 20 slides at 20 seconds per slide based on the Pecha Kucha style talk.

This year we introduced several new session formats, which included Hall of Failure, a session type devoted to discussing what went wrong and where things broke; and Big Debates, which offer a chance for discussion on key issues in the field. Two other session types, which were added last year, deserve special mention: the Well Played session, created by Drew Davidson from Carnegie Mellon University, based on his Well Played book series, with papers from the Well Played sessions GLS 7.0 being featured in the first issue of the new Well Played journal. The second session type is the Games and Art Exhibition which features art that offers new interpretations on games and play.

In the following proceedings papers, many of these session types are represented, offering a strong sampling of some of the best work on games and learning that’s happening right now.

We would like to thank the conference sponsors for their support in helping to make the conference a success. They include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, SCE, Pragmatic, Pearson, Filament Games, and PDS. We would also like to thank the presenters for their submissions to this first volume. Finally, we would like to thank Drew Davidson and ETC Press for publishing the proceedings.