Video Games Academically Rocked My World

In my quest to ever better myself, I ran across MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW), which is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content... accessible for free! So I took the liberty to peruse the course selections and decided to start with CMS.998 Videogame Theory and Analysis. Since the syllabus was loaded with links to papers ether in html or pdf I downloaded or bookmarked them all and started reading. Of course I skipped over all the ones that required me to buy a book... But the course has been amazingly fascinating.

The course makes the argument expected of how video games involve learning and can be used in the classroom, but the amount of depth in the research was surprising. We are not just talking about how Organ Trail teaches history or other games teach math, but rather the implications of simulation games like Sim City teaching city design and even restaurant simulation games. Its not just about the readings, which were much more academic than I thought possible on the topic, but where the readings led me on my search for more information on some of the topics that really expanded my mind.

One eventual destination was the corporate site of 42 Entertainment, a company that makes alternate reality games (think The Game) but these guys craft them mostly for marketing a forthcoming product. Some of the more famous games, that I had never heard of but hundreds of thousands of other people have, include I Love Bees, a marketing tool for Halo 2, one of the best selling video games of all time and Vanishing Point which was a promo for Microsoft Vista. Someone who was involved in making these games and now is looking to change the world through video games is Jane McGonigal. I would love to create an alternate reality game that relates to political issues or politics itself... but then again, perhaps politics is just a game?

In the meantime check out The Lost Ring, which is promoting the upcoming Olympic Games.