Astera, an Educational Game About the Evolution of Galaxies

Grubenmann, Tobias; Shankar, Francesco

Abstract

The Universe at its largest scales remains still almost a mystery for most of the people not working in this field. With Astera, we present an educational video game that can teach about the cosmos whilst providing a thrilling and fun gaming experience. Astera allows the user to fly through the Universe up to the most distant galaxies, and “build” the Universe by growing and merging galaxies according to the most recent findings in astrophysics. As our results show, games like Astera can have a positive impact on players attitude towards galaxy evolution and science in general, and the player’s willingness to follow up on related activities.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (Published)
• Conference Name: GALA 2023: Games and Learning Alliance
• Start Date: Nov 29, 2023
• End Date: Dec 1, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Nov 29, 2023
• Publication Date: 2024
• Deposit Date: Dec 3, 2023
• Publisher: Springer
• Pages: 402-407
• Series Title: Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series
• Series Number: 14475
• Book Title: Games and Learning Alliance 12th International Conference, GALA 2023, Dublin, Ireland, November 29 – December 1, 2023, Proceedings
• ISBN: 9783031490644
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-49065-1_40
• Keywords: Educational Games, Galaxy Evolution, STEM education
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/3402001
• Related Public URLs: https://conf.seriousgamessociety.org/