PEOPLE
Kids play video games that are both educational and well-designed
Oooh, check this out! I think he's gonna say something...here he is:
"Good morning ladies and gentleman. A major crisis has developed in the Indian Ocean on the island of Sheylan. We're sending in a new team to step up the World Food Program's presence there and help feed millions of hungry people."
That's where I come in. Apparently it's up to me to airdrop food supplies to the starving people of Sheylan.
"I'll take her up to about two-hundred feet, then it's over to you."
Oh did I mention I'm playing a video game? It's called Food Force. It was developed by the United Nations, and it is part of this new trend in educational gaming called "serious games."
Now, the thing that sets these serious games apart from other educational games like Oregon Trail is money. In 2002, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., founded the Serious Games Initiative as a way to push forward the idea that digital games can be both well-designed AND educational. Once that happened, the money for serious games started rolling in...mostly from government agencies, NGOs and educational institutions.
And now, says Brian Winn, serious games look more like Grand Theft Auto than say Mr. Rogers:
"Just like the generation that grew up on television, then we came up with educational content on TV like Sesame Street, games are doing the same thing today."
Winn is a Telecommunications professor at Michigan State University...and an expert on serious game design:
"The categories of serious games include games for learning, which could be games in the traditional education K-12, but it could also be corporate training, it could be games that change people's behavior around medical issues. And so we're trying to harness the power of digital games, infuse learning into them, and use them for educational purposes."
Which is where Brian Magerko comes in. He's a professor at Michigan State University, where he'll be teaching a Masters class on serious game design - the first program of its kind in the country.
"So one of the applications we're looking at right now is firefighter training," explains Magerko. "So using games to provide a realistic experience training for firefighters. You won't learn how to hold a hose correctly or drive a fire truck. But you'll learn how to make the appropriate decisions in order to tackle the fire. So it's very much at this level of problem solving."
Problem solving is a big part of serious gaming. For Suzanne Seggerman, it's what makes serious games so...well...serious. Seggerman is President of the non-profit Games for Change - the public policy arm of the Serious Games Initiative:
"There aren't very many places in the world where you can fail safely. Failing and learning from the failure is a really important part of learning, and games are a really great place to do that."
So great that Seggerman says in two to three years, even the big boys - like Sony and Microsoft - will get in on the serious games scene as well. But video game expert Kyle Orland isn't so sure about that:
"The problem," says Orland, "is that the consumer market still sees games as entertainment. Having a real serious game, thought provoking game that is not primarily about fun but about examining a deeper issue...getting a game like that with mass appeal will be tough."
Tough, but not impossible. All it would take, Orland says, is one break out game...one serious game that becomes more popular than just among the academic crowd. What that game will be or when it will happen, he can't say for sure. I guess in the meantime, there's always Oregon Trail.
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