Learning about Learning from Video Games

Academic correspondent, and close virtual friend Bryan Alexander directed my attention to four papers that were presented during the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Reed College Technology Advisory Council. Apparently, there are those wandering the halls of academe who not only like to play games, but understand and appreciate the depth of the art.

James Paul Gee of the University of Wisconsin-Madison is one such. He writes about "LEARNING ABOUT LEARNING FROM A VIDEO GAME: RISE OF NATIONS." His observations and conclusions touch the very joystick of my heart. I quote: "computer and video games have a great deal to teach us about how to facilitate learning, even in domains outside games. Good computer and video games are complex, challenging, and long; they can take 50 or more hours to finish. If a game cannot be learned well, then it will fail to sell well, and the company that makes is in danger of going broke. Shortening and dumbing games down is not an option, since most avid players don't want short or easy games. Thus, if only to sell well, good games have to incorporate good learning principles in virtue of which they get themselves well learned. Game designers build on each other's successes and, in a sort of Darwinian process, good games come to reflect yet better and better learning principles."

It's heady stuff. It has to be in order to be recognized by the community it needs to reach. But it's well worth the read, as are the other three papers in this collection - a taste of the promise of play and hope for the future of learning.