Six Ideas in Search of a Discipline

Abstract

Okay, so there are really far more than six ideas in what we are now calling the field of digital game-based learning (DGBL), but with apologies to playwright Luigi Pirandello (1925), I made it six so the title would work. The title of his original play, Six Characters in Search of an Author, revolved around six characters in a play that had not yet been written. As an egregious example of placing the cart before the horse, this play also captures the essence of where I see the field of DGBL right now--more a collection of coherent but loosely organized ideas in search of a discipline. In this chapter, I propose to discuss ten critical tasks that can help define the field of DGBL, but of course this list is not exhaustive and many may disagree with the relative importance of each. Although this list reflects the ideas that seem most relevant to me, my purpose in outlining these ideas is to start, rather than end, a conversation. In my opinion, DGBL is at a crossroads, and the choices we make right now will determine whether we become a field or fade away as just another "flavor of the day " in education and instructional technology. When we first began discussing

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