A Comprehensive Case for Games in Learning

Their paper, Moving Games Forward, is a wide pan across the games landscape. It covers the gaming habits of adults as well as children, some potentially surprising numbers concerning who is playing what, and the kinds of things we're all learning organically from commercial, off-the-shelf games. Co-authored by TEA Director Eric Klopfer, Creative Director Scot Osterweil, and Katie Salen of the New School, the piece is also a crash course in the history of educational software, charting the rise and fall and rise of the medium: its initial explosion alongside the personal computer and the CD-ROM format, its apparent end at the hands of freely available web content and a black blizzard of miserably conceptualized edutainment titles, and finally the ways in which the serious games movement has set the stage for a second renaissance of software as a learning tool.

There are plenty of barriers, though, to development and adoption of new games in this seemingly bright future, and these are also discussed, along with potential ways to innovate around them. The paper draws heavily on the types of learning that occur in commercial games, through manipulation and authoring opportunities as much as illustration and simulation, and suggests how these can be integrated, directly or indirectly,  into teaching and learning. The paper's ideas concerning the design of specifically educational games are optimistic but realistic. Among other things, it recognizes the need to develop learning goals and gameplay simultaneously; the only sure way to avoid shooters with math grafted on after-the-fact, or dry factoid presentations masquerading as games via limited point-click interactivity.

Moving Games Forward is easily one of the most comprehensive examinations of learning and the interactive arts to date, and a worthwhile read for anyone involved with or interested in the subject.