At NCTE, I gave a presentation about short-form writing (Twitter, social updating, etc.), and one of the projects I showed was a video that my son had created which was one second long and was posted on Youtube, and how many hits it had gotten.
That got a lot of laughs from the audience. But as my sixth graders begin to dive into game design with Gamestar Mechanic and play around with the site, I’ve come across five games from my students already that have a similar format. A game that is over in seconds. I’m not sure why that is. I’ve never had that trend in the past, so I am wondering if it some cultural idea — the short short thing — and if it means anything (other than short attention span, or maybe a play off our perceptions of short attention spans?)
Here is an example from a student (notice how, really, the game is about admiring the artistic design he did with the blocks, and not the actual game itself.)
Peace (in the play),
Kevin