Media Convergence and Game-Based Learning: Developing a Hypothesis of Film Education for the Post-Media Age

Atzori's paper argues that film education should adopt a broad, inclusive understanding of "film" that encompasses video games and participatory media, treating these forms as spaces for experimentation rather than peripheral objects of study. Drawing on James Paul Gee's concept of semiotic domains and Eugeni's account of a "post-media condition," the author contends that media convergence demands a pedagogy suited to hybrid, interactive forms of moving-image culture. The central thesis is that video games, and particularly machinima, offer a strong foundation for active, situated, and creative learning that bridges formal and informal education.

The paper situates this argument within European policy developments, notably the British Film Institute's Screening Literacy (2012) and its 2015 Framework for Film Education. It traces Italy's national film education plans, from the 1999 initiative through the 2015 Buona Scuola reform, which was extended in 2022 to include videogames and animation. The author identifies in these policies a meaningful shift from teacher-centred to student-centred learning, with the Italian framework serving as a case of how institutional structures are beginning to accommodate interactive media.

Machinima, defined as films produced by recording gameplay within game engines, receives sustained attention as both a game design phenomenon and an animation practice. The author frames it as "transformative play," which moves players into the role of creators, and connects it to cinema's early tradition of the "impossible image" from Méliès. Machinima is presented as a constructionist, practice-based alternative to conventional film education that links critical analysis with filmmaking. The principal evidence is the 2002–2003 Casablanca Interactive Performance Experiment at the University of Cambridge, in which students recreated a scene from Casablanca in the Unreal engine, which the paper identifies as a founding example of machinima as a pedagogical method.