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All Aboard the Nerd Boat
Forbes is running an article detailing a most unusual cruise. 180 Computer Science profs were brought together on a Royal Carribean ship to talk about bringing computer games to the classroom. Despite the topic, there was a lot of serious discussion. From the article: "After Microsoft's Luehmann praised the technical sophistication of three new Xbox 360 games (Mass Effect, Too Human, and Gears of War), a silver-haired professor raised his hand and commented: 'You just showed us three very sophisticated and very violent games, and I'm sure they're good for something--though I don't really know what that is--but what I want to know is, when will you make a videogame that's really useful? When will you make a videogame that's going to teach my students chemistry?'"
Rocky's Boots was updated for the 8088 (I played it when I was a kid), and there was another similar game called Robot Odyssey. Robot Odyssey actually required you to build circuits inside robots to accomplish tasks. The game was phenomenal and, quite frankly, one of the hardest games I ever played as a child. The game was rebuilt in java as DroidQuest: http://droidquest.com/
But there are some people out there trying to learn what makes the fun games fun and apply that knowledge to making the stuff we have to learn a little more fun to learn.
www.seriousgames.org
If they do it well enough, they may even create games that are entertaining enough to play them for fun, even if they teach you something as a side effect.
Like, say, this one:
www.americasarmy.com
or these: www.sheppardsoftware.com
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
America's Army is a great example. After playing that off and on for a few years, I could probably be dropped into the middle of a military action and stand a pretty decent chance of staying alive. Assuming, of course, that I didn't just wet myself, huddle in the fetal position, and cry for my mother. (There's a pretty big difference, still, between games and reality.) But, in any case, America's Army teaches a lot.
So do flight simulators, BTW. At least, not the 'arcade' Crimson Skies type. After virtually landing a P-51 about 500 times, I could probably do a half-decent job of landing one for real. And I'd be less likely to wet myself and cry to boot.
Comment of the year
Sup at least in Japan, all three of Nintendo's educational Brain Training series games have sold over 1 million units since May. Brain Training 2, released 5 weeks ago, has already sold over 1 million units. So...if educational games can work in one area of the world, they might work in others. Maybe not, but still, there's a new and powerful precedent. Not to mention, educational games are exceedingly cheap and quick to develop compared to blockbuster titles. So in terms of a business perspective, it's blatantly obvious that such games have merit.
I know we are supposed to hate MS, but when .NET was released, Terranium provided just that (and still does). You create "creatures" in .NET languages and add them into the Terranium ecosystem to compete to survive with everyone else's creatures.
.NET Framework. Developers can create their own creatures and add them into the game on their own client machine. Teleporters on each client transfer the creatures between clients in the Terrarium peer-to-peer network.
As a creature developer, you can program either herbivores or carnivores. Herbivores are capable of eating plants, of course, while carnivores are capable of eating both herbivores and other carnivores. Once a creature is in the Terrarium ecosystem and competing for resources, this website can be used to compare its vital statistics against those of other creatures. The objective of Terrarium is to develop a creature that out-survives the rest.
Terrarium is also an excellent example of the capabilities of the .NET Framework. It uses Windows Forms and DirectX for a super-rich UI experience. And XML Web Services provide the community infrastructure for the game, enabling peer discovery, reporting, and auto-update of new versions."
From the homepage:
"Terrarium is a multiplayer ecosystem game developed using the