Karl Kapp in “Don’t Play Video Games: Make Them” quotes Rafael Fajardo’s “Computer games as liberal arts?” as an example of a constructivist learning tool.
When I was writing my research (before getting a real job) on Learning and Play Styles, one of the things I looked at was: one’s motivation to play a video game. To understand why someone wants to play a video game, you have to understand their personality. What is it about their personality that tells about their reason to play?
In a domino effect persective, the faculties acting introspectively what affects our motivation comes from our Personality.
The chain goes like this:
Personality > Motivation > Preference > Expectation > Player Type (style for game genre and game play) > Enjoyment
What Karl Kapp mentioned in his article about the Scratch (MIT) example is in my opinion a description of his own personal learning experience. Scratch does offer an opportunity for constructive learning. But he had the Motivation and the background knowledge ready to a certain type of video game design experience.
Some friends from Teachers College Columbia University released a wordpress blog called Game Design Concepts that I think it’s worth to take a look at.
