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Games Are Better Educators Than We Think
Thanks to the IGDA for their new Culture Clash column, which discusses how education can work through gaming, and suggests that "mainstream, top-shelf games - especially story-driven games" are already letting us "learn volumes from our game experiences." As an example, it's argued that "Any one of us who played through Morrowind could easily ace a quiz on Vvardenfell geography, religion, politics, flora, whatever", although there's one major snag to those wanting all their classes playable: "Corporations and schools interested in educating through games look at the price tag, project length, and lack of scalability in a Fallout or Morrowind and cringe."
I'm not sure how much benefit Morrowind has in of itself, but Fallout was a trove of cultural information... then again, it was an M rated game, so the kids shouldn't be playing it (tho there's nothing explicit...)
Games like Medieval Total War make excellent history lessons. I probably learned more about the 1300-1400s playing that game than I did in a history class where several weeks were devoted to that era... kinda scary (the classes were also very Euro-centric).
Sure, I've played a lot of Morrowind. But given the 100+ hour scope of the game, could I have learned just as much by cracking a book and studying Morrowind culture, geography, etc for 10 hours.
I think games can be a great transparent way of learning, but the absorption ratio is very low compared to the time you play. In order to get that transparency, the game has to be the focus over education, and in that case, it will always lose out to activities where learning is the primary task (and by this I don't mean it isn't fun, just that reading a history book can be both informative and entertaining, but simply prefers informing first, then entertaining.)
Outcast
Now if only they'd go about it the right way.
The typical approach of education through gaming works like this: "Let's make education fun! We'll make a game-like program, only instead of having an exciting game-like theme, it'll be educational! Kids will learn and have fun!"
The result: Edutainment. Be honest, given the choice between an edutainment title (any edutainment title) and a good non-educational game, which would you play?
The approach they should be using is this: "Kids are playing a lot of this game. What concepts does it convey, and how could those be applied to learning?" Almost everything is educational in some way, so all you really need to do is figure out how you're learning from the things you enjoy.
Resource management relates directly to economics. Tech/Research trees relate directly to the fundamentals of Sociology (which, when you understand them, make History easier to understand). Most any luck-based game has an observable level of probability and statistics. Lots of card games (Pokemon, Magic: The Gathering, MagiNation) have algebra in them. There's high-school level material in Monopoly, but any 10-year-old can play and understand it.
Someone really ought to take all the education checkpoints for K-12 (that's Kindergarten through High School in the US) and cross reference them to popular "non-educational" board, card, and video games. As an educational resource, that would be gold.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
I was sitting in 6th grade class and my teacher was talking about pirates during the Spanish empire. Someone asked why they didn't use large warships like galleons and instead preferred smaller vessels. I raised my hand and answered that larger vessels are often at the mercy of the wind. Smaller vessels, like Sloops, typically had oars. Even if the wind weren't going your way, it was possible to board a ship.
The teacher asked where I learned that, and I felt kind've embaressed. I couldn't really say a Nintendo game could I?
Anyway, the article begs one question: with so much history, why must we often make fictional battles and fictional plots in otherwise realistic games?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
This article is forgetting about another major snag. The material we learn in video games is easy to learn simply cause it is fun material. The politics of Morrowind had all kinds of rival houses fighting for control, and stuff like that - I'm sure if our party system was a little more dramatic and violent, we'd all be paying more attention. The fauna in Morrowind was worth knowing because you could use the ingredients to make magic spells - but real world herbology is not quite so interesting.
In general, all of the existing commercial video games have had the convenience of designing the material to be as fun and engaging as possible (you may point at historical games as a counterexample, but notice that historical games are only based on the interesting moments in history). Games designed for education would not have this convenience.
& I wish I knew the password to your heart . . . &
I find it interesting that the article fails to mention the research that is going into seeing if this is entirely feasable at all. Not only the work at MIT, but also a host of othe colleges all around like UTA and some others.
t ml
http://cms.mit.edu/games/education/
http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,59855,00.h
", but they don't/can't/won't replace the learning experience you get from researching a paper or listening to an interesting lecture. "
I don't think the suggestion was to replace education with them. I think the point of this article is to say "your kids are not necessarily wasting time playing that thing."
I know that's true in my case. I wanted to know how games worked, so often I played them while making observations about how I'd accomplish that in programming. Also, I've paid careful attention to how a game lets you know what's happening. I'm a 3D artist now. My interest in programming has made me effective in using the scriping and expression features of my 3d app, and my attention to UI has gotten me a promotion at work. They have me test the software and suggest changes/additions to the UI to make it easier to use.
I don't know if other kids have gotten this from gaming or not (though I'm sure a lot of programmers today have, it's all about interest level) but I can say that if my parents were Dr. Lauara'esque in keeping me away from games, I'd probably still be in retail.
"Derp de derp."
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