Hi,
The founder of Valve will be giving a talk at the games for learning conference in June. Would be interesting to see since no big studios have chased up the idea of learning in games yet. Maybe valve will be the first?
Keith
I wouldn’t be surprised, valve’s portal series and to some extent their half-life series had lots of puzzle elements in them. Although that’s not learning, it at least gets you thinking (with portals).
Also, I remember Half-Life 2 won some awards for its advancements in lip-syncing and captioning technology for use with hearing handicapped players, which is somewhat related.
Shame they don’t get a Firaxis speaker on the subject; as a child the first Civ game taught me a fair bit about the civs, cities & wonders throughout history.
The sequels (atleast, upto IV) should have done the same (if not better!) for future generations.
Though I fear the Console CoD generation of today aren’t interested in playing strategy games; as demonstrated by my 11 year old nephew not even having the patience to play the casualized Civ Rev.
Idea for educational game:
“Won’t Get Fooled Again”
Takes people through common rhetorical tricks of the trade (for example, Schopenhauer’s “Art of Controversy” http://coolhaus.de/art-of-controversy/, ah, there’s a wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Being_Right), as well as famous and infamous misrepresentations from various con artists & marketers & political campaigns. The Schopenhauer is a little dry, but reads like a radio-talk-show-host guide for winning every argument. It is really remarkable if you can get past the “dated” aspects. Was written in late 1800’s.
If the title is trademarked, maybe there’s “One Born Every Minute” or somesuch.
It always boggles me that the folks shouting “Won’t get fooled again” turn out to be the most consistent marks. They think they are on their guard. Maybe a good game could help sharpen people up to this sort of thing. (Or help create a new generation of con artists.)
Interesting comments guys.
Me too! I learned most of my geography from Civ2. Not just city names and land formations but even soil fertility, mountain ranges and where the deserts are lol.
That’s some interesting stuff in the schopenhauer link. It’s funny how there’s a whole set of jargon for things that you never knew existed. I should remember some of those tricks for when someone tries them on me next time. Also, that double-page with the translated german on the left and english on the right looks like a fantastic way to learn german.