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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.
If serious games aren't fun, people won't play them. It's really that simple. As TFS mentions, games not labelled as serious are learning tools as well; in fact, Raph Koster theorizes that we find games fun because we are learning, and constantly challenged (see his book's website). People in "serious" games (a moniker that I despise) have a lot of work to do before their games will be as widely played as mainstream games. I hope they succeed though; games have such a great potential to teach, and people are more willing to learn than they think.
If the geography of Warcraft was the same as the geography on Earth, there would be no need to teach most teens geography. Better yet, name the flightpaths after real airports. Then we'd have a generation that never got lost.
wtf games have you been playing? Did you never play The Oregon Trail? What about Lemonade Stand? Mathville, for the old Unisys Icons (if you went to school in Canada, that is). Did you think all of the location-based info-dumps in Carmen Sandiago were just for kicks?
UTF-8: There and Back Again
As the gamasutra article says - most 'activist games suck'.
I think the lesson there is that people don't really look to their entertainment media to preach to them - they get enough of that crap from everything else from the media to the government, to the doorknockers of all political stripes and agendas.
I liked the redistricting game, because it really does point out the flaws in the *system* in a neutral way - it's a critique of the system, not of a particular side. If it had shown how EVIL Republicans or Democrats specifically are, then I personally wouldn't have bothered to even try it.
Now, that's not to say that every game with (or without) a message doesn't have an agenda somewhere in it, in the assumptions that go into the game, but that's cool. Show of a raw simulation of physics, I'm not sure bias-free programming is every possible.
The question is: where does ernest belief carry one into the realms of propaganda? What is a reasonable effort to model reality (albeit colored by one's own biases) end, and a deliberate (if well-meant) dissimulation in order to advance a political point begin? It's the same question that's been posed in the film industry for years - was "Fahrenheit 9/11" a documentary, or is it a biased political screed? Is "An Inconvenient Truth" an entry-level exposition on a critical issue facing humanity, or is it a Riefenstahlian exercise in the "big lie"?
Maybe it's the interactivity in games that forces the audience to become engaged that makes them less suitable as a propoganda engine. I know no knowledgeable people on either 'side' of the global warming discussion whose viewpoint was even slightly changed by An Inconvenient Truth. Yet I know many UNinformed people who came out convinced that Global Warming is a serious and imminent issue. In that sense it was successful. Could a game accomplish the same thing?
-Styopa
As the father of a 2 year-old I can assure you that you learned many things from Sesame Street. My boy learns tons of things from Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers. From sharing and telling the truth to letters and manners etc etc etc. He's an absolute sponge. Heck he even learned about getting lost from Finding Nemo. When we go out he does NOT want to get lost like Nemo. And NO of course he doesn't learn those things just from the TV. But the day I scolded him about something and he told me he was mad at me and going to run away to Nana's house I knew for SURE he was learning things on TV. He's freakin 2! Somebody had run away on Mr. Rogers, one of the Make-Believe puppets. Granted, TV is the last resort for things educational, but when it does get turned on, he's learning something.
>I don't remember learning anything from things like Sesame Street
How many things at all can you remember from when you were 2? 3? I don't remember learning to read. Heck I don't remember learning to type either. I remember when I couldn't do either. But the learning part..it happens so insidiously that it's just not a memorable event.
As someone who is working on their PhD you should know that the entire concept of play is based on learning. Just look at animals playing. Now look at kids playing. They are learning everything from refined motor skills to problem solving to empathy, character judgement, following directions, cause & effect, etc etc etc etc.
Learning is the root of all play. Just ask a kitty. Hence, good games are educational whether they mean to be or not.
The important question is this: How can we make good games more educational? Because currently, we suck at it.
An interesting example, one of my gamer buddies lives in Quebec. He spoke no English but now attributes his decent mastery of English to an FPS game! He learned it in game, on the forums, on TeamSpeak, etc etc. He taught himself English to get along in an English Language game. And I was there for most of the process and can vouch for it.
Anybody know a great game with a predominantly Spanish speaking or Mandarin speaking community? I'm in!
Now how can we better promote game learning by design?
Operator, give me the number for 911!