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And if video games were an excellent media journalism? That's bold proposal Bogosta Ian, Simon and Bobby Ferrari Schweizer, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-authors of the book
Newsgames: Journalism at Play (MIT Press
, untranslated French). They have several including computer game that can decrypt the news while interacting with information, or recreating the events.
We are in 2110 and the rate of methane in the atmosphere has reached a critical threshold. You can choose between several decisions: to accept the risk of a global catastrophe and continue the extraction of this gas to meet the energy needs of a growing population; establish the principle of one child per home to reduce future demands for energy or finance a research project for a period of ten years to find technical solutions. These options to policy on climate change are central to
Fate of the World, a computer game released in October
. Through a
"alarming range of scenarios of global warming" , players will explore geo-engineering, alternative energy sources and other solutions that protect the planet over the next two hundred years. During the past decade, evidence that playing on a computer can help student learning have multiplied.
studies and educational assessments, conducted by the British Ministry of Education and an association of software publishers and published in 2006 in a summary report entitled "Learning Unlimited", showed that students whose lessons included interactive games become more involved in course content and showed better conceptual understanding than those who did not benefit This method not fun. When computer games were used as a carrier, there was a better test scores. Many organizations are then examined learning based on computer use. Thus were born in the United Kingdom,
Futurelab Bristol and
Serious Games Institute at Coventry University.
If computer games are able to interest students at this point is particularly because of how they are designed. Jane McGonigal
, researcher and developer of games at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif., and Ralph Koster, author of
A Theory of Fun for Game Design (Paraglyph Press, 2004), describe both systems which, in games, promote learning. These systems include rewards options for the player to navigate between obstacles in a personal way, opportunities to test various hypotheses and fail in a safe space, the iterative step based on previous decisions and challenges consecutive occur in a logical order. These rules remind many features of scientific inquiry. The public
potential for such games is huge: two-thirds of American households play computer games or computer games, and a third of people in the United Kingdom consider themselves gamers. Yet few educational games that earn serious profits - most depend on funding from official agencies, media organizations or charities that promote science.
Increasing the attractiveness and effectiveness of educational games require better products and targeted marketing. Experience fun to be immersive, coherent and credible. The games must not treat the player with condescension or go faster than him. They must overcome "the problem of clown dancing" in which students are dazzled by the digital versions of questionnaires impromptu, but does not retain the knowledge that the answers provided.
A growing number of computer games now reach the desired balance. One could cite as an example
World Without Oil of
McGonigal, designed in collaboration with Ken Eklund, a game described as effective and funny by educators and the community of players. First presented as an interactive experience online for several weeks in 2007, he appealed to realistic predictions about our planet and asked users to collaborate on solutions and describe the experiences of future life based on their predictions regarding the scarcity of fuel and energy shortages. Another example is the PC game
Climate Challenge (released in 2007 by Red Redemption), which were also included scenarios based on scientific research. This title has attracted more than one million players and paved the way for
Fate of the World from the same publisher.
The multiplicity of the media can further improve the mechanical fun. The community of alternate reality games captivates his audience by acting beyond the boundaries of the game itself, sending players to emails, instant messages or text messages. Its members invest the physical environment of an entire city through poster campaigns, live events and advertisements in newspapers and magazines. They create
blogs, video journals and websites to further accentuate the feeling of immersion experienced by players.
This multimedia approach was used in roads, Oil Productions, which, from January to March 2009, explored the genetic means of videos, stories and traditional online games. The initiative was crowned with a prize. After recording more than 500,000 visitors and 4 million games played during the three month period where the game was shown live (675 000 spectators and 21 million players frequent the website dedicated to it since) Its formula Success has been taken over by its sponsors,
Channel 4 Education and Wellcome Trust, for other public service campaigns aimed at teenagers. One of them uses Ada, a game of puzzles and exploration still in development, somewhat reminiscent of Tomb Raider
that encourages girls to choose careers in science and SuperMe, a game released in July that aims at strengthening the confidence of young people.
