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September 09, 2004
Educational Games
So, when Scott handed me the latest issue of GameDeveloper to keep me occupied during work yesterday, I didn't realize the treasure hunt it would lead me on. I hit upon an ad for the Serious Games Summit D. C., which is a conference that looks at how games can be used in areas like "training, policy exploration, analytics, visualization, simulation, education and health and therapy". I'm really interested in educational games, so I went to their site (www.seriousgamessummit.com) and through looking into some of the speakers came across an educational game company called Muzzy Lane. Going in turn to their site, I discovered that they are focusing on games that teach about history. I am super excited about this. As a PBS child, I was really only allowed to play educational computer games like Oregon Trail or the Learning Company games like Operation Neptune and Ancient Empires. I agree with the people at Muzzy Lane that making a game educational does not "suck all of the fun out of it", and I am really interested in their latest effort, Making History, where players take on the roles of political leaders leading up to World War II and have to make military, economic, political, and diplomatic choices which affect the course of history. The point is for kids to see that history is not set in stone, and how many factors can change the course of events. While that's really neat, my main issue with the game is that it seems to be yet another strategy game like Risk or Age of Empires, which I have always found confusing and unengaging. I think that one of the most important things that kids need to be taught about history is the fact that it can be interpreted in so many different ways, that events can be attributed to such a variety of causes that there is never a simple answer. A game that sounds closer to this is called River City, developed at George Mason University and Harvard, where users explore a 19th century midwestern town and play the role of scientists trying to discern the source of an epidemic. This game, however, focuses more on science than history. (The article I got this info from is called "Digital Games Bring Entertainment into Learning Realm" from Education Week: www.edweek.org/ew/newstory.cfm?slug=44Games.h23) I think it would be great to develop a game environment based on a historic event, that could be explored in time and space by different participants. It would be too bad if educational history games got stuck as strategy games.
Anyway, this all seems really cool to me, and I plan to look more into the state of games in other areas of education as well.
Posted by rosenblj at September 9, 2004 09:38 AM
Comments
Hopefully, next year before E3, they (MIT) will hold their educational arcade again. It was quite an interesting and enlightening event with many important industry people there, discussing education in games. I was quite fortunate enough, after volunteering, to have met a variety of people, including Henry Jenkins, Warren Spector, Will Wright, Chris Weaver and a host of other people. I think they may have a website, try googling for Education Arcade with MIT associated...
Posted by: Mike Brinker at September 9, 2004 10:52 AM
Serious game is a hot topic today. MIT has modified microsoft's game: Dungeon Siege as a tool to teaching civil war.
I'm working on a project in Annenberg Communication Center, they are going to make a game teaching Russian Modernism.
Personaly, game is for entertainment, learning experience is also very entertaining. I don't see any reason to refuse a game with serious content like history. But I will refuse to play educational game seriously, which may make the teachers frustrated :p
Posted by: Jenova at September 9, 2004 10:56 AM
Hey, keep me updated on your research. One of the potential directions of my thesis project is to make it about making changes in the past that affect the present. Now, the scope will probably be limited to the life of a single fictional character, but any game that does this with real history is definitely worth researching!
Posted by: Michael Steffen at September 9, 2004 11:11 AM
i'm very interested in this as well. you may know of the following, but in case you don't:
newsgaming.com
educationalsimulations.com
watercoolergames.org
persuasivegames.com
Posted by: susana at September 9, 2004 05:10 PM
yeah, i was sad to see their summit is during the week, otherwise I would have definitely gone. this idea of games achieving higher levels of play is thrilling, and definitely the best thing about independent game companies.
Posted by: kellee at September 9, 2004 07:53 PM
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