Reply to k's Comment

While games may lead to enhancement of intellectual capabilities, I am skeptical of developing them to be used as a method for teaching a concept. The first thing this article mentions about the alterations of the games isn't to make them for mentally engaging or challenging, but to make them less violent. Not that violence is necessary for fun to occur, but the game is already going to be shifted into something that is less "fun" and more "academic," thus reducing its ability to be separated from other forms of instruction. I am sure some games would lend themselves well to non-violent forms of instruction, but tell me, how can a game with the name "war" in it not be violent? All of a sudden, what was once a game just becomes a silly scheme by educators.

Not that the article necessarily suggested this, but it should be noted that using games to instruct should not replace traditional instruction, but should instead seek to subsidize it. Someone who commented on this article criticized the use of games to teach by saying, "I am pretty sure you can learn more in one week of a statistics or science class, then you ever will playing WOW. You cut out so much of your daily activities playing the game, that any benefit it has is countered by what you could have been doing." See comment on my first post. Just because WoW may not be seen as the "most" effecient use of one's time doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Sure, I could take a stats class and learn more math than I would playing WoW. But am I going to come home from class after having spent my entire day on campus working and studying, then decide that I want to go take a course and stats in the evening in order to rest? I think not. But guess what. I would play WoW. It is key to realize that even though learning through WoW might be relatively small, it is learning that is a gain over any number of mindless activities. Education through games shouldn't be competing with taking classes, it should be competing with things such as spending hours on end watching television or 'facebooking' (just my opinion). You have to consider the learning from the game as being somehtng which would otherwise be impossible, not something which should replace that which is already done. If 6 hours playing WoW is worth 30 minutes of Stats class, but if I spend 18 hours a week playing WoW (which has 'stats value') instead of doing some mindless activity, then that is 90 minutes a week of 'stats' that I didn't have before. I hope I have made this point clear, if I haven't please let me know ;)

I would also just like to note that there are some really nice comments to this article that reach beyond the intellectual relevance of WoW and mmorpgs. Expect to see some of these ideas addressed in this blog in the near future.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=14356