Congress Slashes Funding for Peaceful Conflict Resolution Game

In a departure from the usual video game setting a recent educational video game called "Cool School" was designed to teach kids peaceful conflict resolution. Unfortunately Congress has decided to slash the funding of this program that has been receiving rave reviews from the testers at schools in Illinois. "Cool School focuses on taking players through a school where just about everything (desks, books, and other objects) are alive and have their own personality. Over the course of ten levels and over 50 different situations designed by Professor Melanie Killen and then-doctoral student Nancy Margie (both of the University of Maryland). The primary goal of the game is to teach students how to solve social conflict through skills like negotiation and cooperation. During the title's development, Killen and Margie were able to work with some talented members of the video game industry, including independent developer F.J. Lennon and animator Dave Warhol." The game is now available as a free download and will play on both Mac OS X and Windows XP.

Comments

Funding slashed for a finished game

[CogDissident]

So, they're "done" with the game, effectively. What part of their funding do they still need? The "sit on their asses and collect money for work they already did" fund?

Thanks slashdot, for providing no link to the article where the funding is being slashed, just two links to a game and people's reviews of it.

Re:Funding slashed for a finished game

[Otter]

The Ars Technica article does explain it; Congress funded development of the game but not its distribution. Apparently some sort of computer "inter-network" will be required for schools to obtain it, as if such a thing could ever be!

That's also what's holding back Duke Nukem Forever, I suppose.

Re:Funding slashed for a finished game

[eln]

Clearly the only way to settle this is to kick ScuttleMonkey's ass for writing a poor summary.

Re:Funding slashed for a finished game

[Otter]

Although TFA is somewhat vague on the point, it seems the problem is not quite that trivial.

No, the problem is as trivial as he said; it's just that the original plan seems to have been much more grandiose. Come to think of it, if they *had* gotten the funding to send a DVD to every school in the country, wouldn't we be getting a story long the lines of "Congress Doesn't Know Internet Exists!!!", with pages of moronic comments about "tubes"?

I don't get the GGP's complaint about Ars Technica, though. It's not the article's fault that it's not mostly about the one sentence the editor fixated on.

Damn!

[Slicebo]

Let's fight 'em!

I tried it out

[Evets]

I actually have a child in the target group, so I downloaded the game to check it out.

Game-wise, it's nothing special. It's a flash based game with limited user interaction, less than exceptional graphical content, and it plays at 800x600 regardless of your resolution - no full screen capability. In their defense, most games targetting my kids show the same properties.

In the five minutes I played, I was able to click maybe 4 times, with the remainder of the time spent listening to the characters walk me through the game. The general idea they are trying to get across - building conflict resolution skills - is very apparent. I think my child will enjoy this game - although I think she won't choose it very often over other games that she has available such as Dora or Care Bears titles. Frankly, I think the commercial titles offer a much more clear educational experience, but that's not to say I don't like the game at all.

Personally - I think community developed games like those built with Scratch have a much brighter future. Lord knows how many tax dollars were spent on this game, and if you had 5 involved parents working together for a month and a half, you could have something much better and more open to derivative updates.

Scratch is still flash, but at least you have the ability to update games developed with it - and tailor them to your specific needs/target audience.

Question

[cptnapalm]

So which of Congress's enumerated powers did this fall under?