Indie Games in Wikipedia: analysis of the references used to frame games with educational possibilities

Resumo

Diversity in the video game industry has led to a vibrant independent scene full of artistic products with great educational possibilities. This work analyzes 36 independent games and their Wikipedia articles focusing on their bibliographic references to understand how are they framed. After confirming that 28 of these games have Wikipedia articles, references were obtained (\begin{equation}n = 2058\end{equation}) and each individual media was identified and classified based on their characteristics. Results show that articles differ in legth, with Life is Strange being the largest (120621 bytes) and the one with more references (185 references). 61,5% of the total references come from magazines and websites focusing on games, while 20,9% correspond to more general media. Data shows that most articles contain sources of dubious quality, which complicates the exploration of the educational possibilities of these games. It is remarkable the absence of books, conference proceedings and academic journals, especially those from the educational field, game studies or game-based learning.

Keywords:
Independent video games; Indie games; Game based learning; Wikipedia