This group is for anyone at Temple interested in any aspect of games for research, teaching, or creative purposes, be it playing, studying, designing or making gaming. Our goal is to build a community of practice around this interest, bringing together a diverse transdisciplinary group of faculty, staff and students interested in games. We plan to host events for cooperative gaming, including talks, workshops, and interactive events.
Upcoming Events:
Playing Together: Cooperating to Improve Gaming for Research and Education on Campus
Join us on February 27 from 2 to 4 in the Loretta C. Duckworth Scholars Studio for a chance to meet others on campus interested in using games for research, creative, and pedagogical purposes. We’ll open with a brief discussion about why we are bringing everyone together and the resources available in the LCDSS. With your help, we’ll scope out the short-term future of this group. We will then break to play a variety of cooperative board and video games to get to know each other better and work some play into the meeting.
The LCDSS is on the 3rd floor of the Charles Library. Pizza and some beverages will be provided.
Mission:
There are several members of the Temple community, faculty, students, and staff, that use games for more than just leisure. Video games, tabletop games, roleplaying games and LARPs all see use to teach and learn. However, often people using games on campus find themselves isolated with their methods, without a larger community on campus to discuss what they are doing and discuss or try new ideas with others that have a similar interest in using games.
Now is a good time to try and bring together those on campus who use games for research or pedagogy to come together as a community. The Loretta C Duckworth Scholars studio (LCDSS) in the Charles Library is uniquely situated on campus to provide a hub for such a community to thrive. The LCDSS manages a virtual reality lab for playing games and simulations, it maintains a makerspace that has been used to create games for individuals and classes, and it also runs a small computer lab with access to the Library’s Steam account and other games and has space with large tables for tabletop games. The LCDSS also purchases and maintains video and tabletop games for the library’s collection, and can acquire games that would be used for pedagogical or research purposes to add that collection. The LCDSS has also partnered with TU Press in a trial run for publishing peer reviewed tabletop games.
This call aims to bring Temple’s research and pedagogically focused gaming community together, using the LCDSS as a gathering point. This will allow the Temple community to play, make, and experiment with games together among those who have a shared interest. The exact details of what this will look like need to be figured out with your help, to decide the best way to bring each other together and communicate about how we are using games. Please join us for our first meeting on February 27 from 2-4 at the LCDSS in the Charles Library to meet each other, create a shared short term vision, and play games.