Friend and colleague Joey Lee sent me notes on a few sessions from the 5th Games for Change Festival in NYC. Sounds like a lot of good sessions and workshops, but one summary from Jim Gee’s presentation jumped out at me:
Games’ greatest strength is not information delivery; it’s more about experiences and how these experiences make you see the world in a new way. Also, games are not meant to teach you everything you need to know about a subject – rather, to spark interest and fuel the desire to learn more about a subject
This is something I struggle with when explaining the idea of using games for education with faculty. Many faculty have the notion that an educational game should be the complete package; students should be able to load it, play it, and then take some form of assessment. I always point out that this is never the case; you don’t lecture with powerpoint for 16 weeks and expect students to learn all the content, right? You supplement the lectures with labs, problem assignments, in-class activities, papers, tests, etc. Thank you Joey and Gee for putting it so eloquently.
To go along with the quote, Joey pointed me to a game called Ayiti, a Flash game that puts you in the position of managing a Haitian family over 4-years. The game lets you decide your goal for the family (such as happiness, education, or money), then you must allocate the 5 family members to various seasonal activities to achieve your goal. The game does a fantastic job of illustrating how HARD this must be for a Haitian family. I only made it through a couple seasons, trying to get the kids educated, before I ran out of money and had to start working all 5 members of the family in order to put one child to school periodically. A great example of a game providing an experience to help illustrate living conditions in another country.