Today's Homework: Make Good Games

Interesting article. Recently, there's been a huge surge in developing the games industry, as the news in Singapore have been telling us.

Something that struck me - initially, I'd been very sceptical about the usefulness of the games industry, bcos to me, it just seemed like another entertainment thing - fun, but in the end, not very useful when you see it from a larger perspective. 'Cos between doing something more "useful", say, helping people learn something educational, as compared to just spending the time playing games... *tsk, tsk*

"Boy, get off that computer! Aren't you ever going to do anything useful besides spending the whole day playing computer games?!"

But after reading the Wired article on games, I had a change of heart.

Serious games are quickly becoming a seriously big business: $60 million a year, by some estimates.

The United Nations got the word out about its food-aid programs with a game called Food Force. Student-resistance leader Ivan Marovic is using games to teach strategies for nonviolent protests.

...

Bringing together so many different disciplines is a challenge. While the power of serious games stems from their ability to reinforce a message or reward a desired behavior, putting together a successful game requires skilled designers and people educated in the science of learning, as well as the specific subject matter. And it's not always easy for them to work together.

I realised that computer games can simply be another medium through which we can transmit stories and messages that we want to communicate to our audiences (well, the more serious games, that is. I haven't managed to unearth any profound storyline in Minesweeper... lemme know if you find any good plot in there!).

In fact, we have to consider that we tend to learn a lot more things e.g. values, skills, knowledge, from the things that we find fun the most... I mean, it's amazing how one can memorise the entire history and squad names and what colour and shoe sizes that a football team from 1997 wore on a particular match and who got red-carded for what... and in the same go, forget the answer to some exam question on the same day. :P hee...

I think that's how our brains tend to work. :) We learn the most things from the things we enjoy most. So I'm thinking of cross-media communications - how can we use games in conjunction with videos, books, etc., to tell stories or messages etc.

Just some thoughts! =)