6 reasons for everybody to play Dungeons and Dragons

The corridor is dark, and in the torchlight you can barely see up to 10 meters. The air is damp, and if you reach out on the walls you can feel moss under your fingers – or something else, cold and slimy. You shiver from the cold, or maybe in disgust. Behind you, you can […]

My top book list on Games and Gamification

Hello! On this lazy Sunday morning (a rarity) I was doing some cleaning in the library, and after about 10 minutes it got really boring I got the inspiration for a new post. Sometimes after a presentation or a during a training course people ask me “hey, this was really cool, can you recommend me […]

“Star Wars: Battlefront II”: where is the line between gambling and gaming?

(versione italiana di tutto il post qui, sul blog del grande Michele Di Paola, coautore di questo articolo) This is a good story that shows how bad guys don’t always win. And when Star Wars is involved, this is particularly true. A couple of weeks ago, the publishing colossus Electronic Arts (which owns other immensely […]

5 reasons why Mass Effect made the history of videogames, and not only

Mass Effect: Andromeda is the latest videogame from Bioware’s ultra-successful Mass Effect franchise, released on March 21st (23rd for Europe, I still don’t know why). In a future post I will talk about Andromeda in detail (it’s very, very controversial), but now it is finally time to discuss the original trilogy, why I think it changed […]

Civilization VI – my experience after one day

The legendary, first “Civilization” game was published in 1991. And it was the equivalent of an atomic bomb on the very idea of “videogame”: things that people didn’t imagine possible, just became so. It looked like this, but it didn’t matter: it was a brave, ambitious and epic concept, that challenged players to think in […]

X-Com, the franchise

This is the story of the videogame franchise that taught me me everything I know about aliens, and space. Ok, not really. But close enough. UFO: Enemy Unknown (known in America as X-COM: UFO Defense to attract fans of 1993’s tv series “The X-Files“) was released in 1994 by MicroProse for DOS and Amiga (ahhh, sweet […]

My top 5 Videogames that are better than school

Hello everyone! Following the discussion on Gamification (which takes place mostly in my head, but it’s still a discussion), here is a top 5 list of the videogames that I consider memorable learning experiences. It’s not an overstatement: through years (and years, and years) of gaming I have learned a lot of real-life skills and competences that I apply in […]

Gamification

Think about your favourite game, of any kind. What is it? When was the last time you played it? Were you alone, or with other people? Did you win? Did you even care, to win? These are common questions related to the topic of “games”. Is it easy for you to answer to them? And why? […]