I highly recommend you check out Collette Jackson's blog related to Digital Game Based Learning and our soon to be launched educational site for Aboriginal youth ‘On the Path of the Elders'. Collette recently joined the BlackCherry team as our Content and Marketing Specialist. She provides some fresh insight into the motivations, philosophies and approaches employed to create this unique resource.
Path of the Elders will launch March 24th, 2010. The new version of the site will include video archives of Elder interviews, historic audio recordings and photo archives. The centerpiece of the site is a unique educational role playing game (RPG).
!Xabbu was silent for a long moment. They hung side by side, twin stars floating in an empty black sky, two angels gazing down from heaven at the immensity of humankind’s commercial imagination.
Otherland: The City of the Golden Shadow, Tad Williams
For anyone not familiar with Virtual Worlds, they are massive, online environments where people can meet, interact and play. Any definition is inevitably a simplification of the actual level of development these online worlds represent. People, in virtual worlds are no longer merely playing a game, they are living out a parallel existence where they have relationships, wage epic battles, get married, have virtual children, buy and sell goods such as clothing and real-estate, go to virtual online clubs for entertainment, change their appearance, hold down jobs, create empires, kill and be killed, learn and educate. In essence, if it exists in the real world, it exists in the virtual world. Virtual world inhabitants are living a virtual life driven as much by imagination, hope, vanity, desire, ambition, and sex as is their everyday life in the real world.
Microsoft XBox Project Natal: Using new 3D motion capturing technologies, Microsoft claims it can turn your body into the new style of video game controller. Nevermind those old quickcam games where you just end up flaying your arms around while hoping to hit something. This is TOTAL body immersion. You can now drive a car with an invisible steering wheel, block hundreds of soccerballs with your body and karatekick your way through evil ninjas. VIDEO DEMO
I came across an interesting company this week Foomojo, they are the makers of Foopets. Foopets are virtual pets that you can embed on your webpage, a kind of web-based Tamagochi.
I’ll give a disclaimer right now, I love pets, especially dogs. I have a flesh and blood border collie at home, but I hate these types of service toys/apps (as cute as they may be). By service toys/apps I mean you have to be constantly at their service. If mine appears to be dying or unhealthy please refer to my disclaimer above. I also think I would have found this product much more interesting if I hadn’t given my kids Nintendogs for their DS’s a year or so ago. Foopets seems to be a very similar, although somewhat less developed, version of this popular DS game. There is innovation here though, one that I’m surprised Nintendo didn’t jump on.
I've been thinking about this question for some time now, 'Can a Video Game Change a Life?'
The obvious answer is, of course. There are certainly many examples cited as evidence of the negative impact of video games on the lives of teens. Recent cases of youth addiction have garnered media attention worldwide.
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There are even cases of suicide apparently linked to game play. This kind of negative press seems pretty commonplace now. Not to be left out, scientists and researchers have jumped into the fray with studies that 'conclusively' indicate violent video games desensitize us to violent acts.
So while the answer may appear moot in the minds of many, I think it's worthy of some deeper consideration. It may though, be better to rephrase the question to 'How can a Video Game Change a Life?'
With this blog I'd like to explore both the positive and negative aspects of this question. The answer, while it's unlikely to be a definite one, lies in a somewhat convoluted mix of social dynamics, psychology, learning theory and pop culture. If there is no definite answer, the process of exploring the question looks to be an interest journey.
