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Serious Games - World of Borecraft?
Slate has up a piece right now talking, in a somewhat frustrated tone, about the mixed message that serious or education games can pass on. The article recognizes that serious games have a great deal of power, and can be useful ... but do they have to be boring? "The basic issue here is that it's easier to make a fun game educational than it is to inject fun into an educational game. In his 2005 book, Everything Bad Is Good for You, Steven Johnson argues that games like The Sims and Grand Theft Auto make us smarter by training the mind in adaptive behavior and problem-solving. Most overtly educational software, though, ignores the complexities that make games riveting and enriching. The serious-gaming types think they can create educational software from whole cloth. In reality, they have a lot to learn from Grand Theft Auto." Coincidentally, Gamasutra is running an article entitled Who Says Videogames Have to be Fun?, which looks at the same issue from a slightly different point of view.
There was a game like this. "Typing of the Dead" I think was the title. Basically, every time you typed a word correctly, you would kill a zombie. They would come at you faster and faster, so you would have to type the words faster. Mistakes had to be fixed or the shot didn't count.
There was another that was a knockoff of Space Invaders, in the same vein. Words were falling and you had to type them correctly to kill them. The words got longer and longer, and a 10-letter word you missed could take out most of your defenses.