What makes competitions fun to participate?
Yasmin B. Kafai, Quinn Burke, Chad Mote · 2012
Though recent efforts have focused on creating tools and communities for youth game designers, the emergence of online competitions is a recent phenomenon in engaging students in such activities. In this paper we describe and analyze how a class of middle-school students participated in a national STEM video game challenge. Using Scratch, students designed, debugged and submitted their own video games over a three-month period. In analyzing the game designs, we paid particular attention to the role different authentic audiences and what we learned about supporting participation in online competitions.