Gamepedia: Serious Fun

The comics of the future are already here, they're just not widely distributed yet.

Comic books are blowing up in the mainstream consciousness. Many of the biggest action flicks these days are comic adaptations, and comics have earned serious respect as an art form. But like video games and other popular entertainment media, comic books still have a frontier to conquer.

The challenge for entertainment is to go beyond merely telling stories that take us away from it all. The opportunity now exists for art to inspire life and for entertainment to become empowerment. People today are hungry for inspiration to find ways to do something with their lives, and often times it is a story that opens their eyes to a path they want to follow.

Books, movies and games have the power to launch a thousand careers. Movies about pirate radio like Pump Up The Volume have inspired Internet radio movements like Rant Media. Books like 1984 led many to become activists and champions of freedom. Games like America's Army show the ultimate synthesis of entertainment and recruitment by actually simulating a career path and offering players a job.

If America's Army can be a hugely successful recruiting tool convincing youth to try one of the most dangerous and challenging jobs, surely entertainment could inspire young people to try doing something fun and creative with their lives?

I think comic books are up to this challenge. And I'm already seeing two trends in the right direction: Science comics and real heroes that matter.

Science Comics

Who knew there were comics about space exploration, environmentalism and historical biographies!

Tyler: "What did you want to be, Raymond?"

Raymond: "Veterinarian! Animals and stuff!"

Tyler: "If you're not on your way to becoming a vet in 30 days, you will be dead."

—Fight Club

No sooner did I meet a young woman on the bus who was aspiring to become a veterinarian than I came across a new game called My Animal Centre, a veterinarian game for Nintendo Wii and DS.

I'm not the "target demographic" for a pink game about ponies, but I wouldn't let marketing demographics stop me from playing "boy games" if I were a girl and I would certainly give this a try if I had a Wii and was interested in veterinarian medicine.

I'm mostly interested in empowering games that teach real-world skills. Although many games in this emerging category like Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney are more akin to interactive TV drama than cramming aids for law school exams, they are still inspiring ways to have fun while learning about actually viable life paths. For some reason I think young gamers have a better shot at becoming veterinarians than Blood Elf Shamans, no matter how good their Guild connections might be.

My Animal Centre is also developed using the Unity game engine so an iPhone version should be possible as well. I heard about it via an Ars Technica article about Mono being used for iPhone game development using Unity.

ORLANDO, Florida -- The U.S. Army has scores of bases scattered all across the world. Soon, it'll be occupying virtual territory in a bid to win recruits.

"Over the next 30 to 45 days you might, if you’re one of them Second Life avatar dudes, that likes to go populate islands within Second Life, you will find an Army island in Second Life," Gen. William S. Wallace, the commander of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), said during a presentation at the 26th Army Science Conference.

The Army Second Life effort will actually consist of two virtual islands. One of them, will serve as a "welcome center" with an information kiosk and the means to contact a recruiter, the other will offer, says Wallace, "virtual experiences like jumping out of airplanes, and rappelling off of towers and using a weapon, to see if we can get some kind of recruiting benefit out of this social networking."

The Army will even offer virtual tchotchkes to woo recruits.  After the presentation, Wallace told me "if you perform well in the activities you get points and those points can be used to buy virtual T-shirts and baseball caps."

Wallace says he's a realist when it comes to social networking technologies. He admits they've probably been "oversold," but won’t write them off either. The recruiting possibilities are just too alluring.  He notes, " there's about 4 million young people that routinely interface in Second Life. [That's] the age group of the young people who we're trying to encourage to join the military." —Nick Turse

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by Moses Silbiger —http://www.kenwilber.com/blog/show/459

click here to download accompanying poster image.

Learning is at its best when it is goal-oriented, contextual, interesting, challenging, and interactive. These same winning characteristics also define the best computer games … Learning can and should be hard fun!
- Clark N. Quinn, E-learning & video game designer, and author.

We are already the most overinformed, underreflective people in the history of civilization. Is it possible the twenty-first century needs a new kind of learning and a new kind of leader to help us …? Perhaps [we can] begin building not simply an information highway but a transformation highway.
- Robert Kegan, developmental psychologist, professor, and author, Harvard University.

Introduction

As odd or paradoxical as it may seem, I envision video games being increasingly designed to facilitate human development, as virtual reality technologies continue to evolve and integrate with leading edge developmental practices.

Most of us have played a video game at least once in our lives, or at least watched somebody else play, often a close one. Can you remember what you felt when you played a video game for the first time, or watched another player deeply engaged in one? I invite you now to engage in a brief Phenomenological exploration. Try to access how you were feeling, what were your emotions about it? … Who were you at that moment? Can you identify what “self” was playing, or observing somebody else deeply immersed in the game? What were your thoughts about it? Was there something “magical” or “different” about that? Just pause a little moment and close your eyes to really access and embody that memory…

Read more... http://www.kenwilber.com/blog/show/459

thejournal.com — Based on research conducted by the University of Central Florida (UCF), immersive educational video games can improve students' math skills and comprehension and raise scores on district-wide benchmark exams.

Here's something an Empowerment writer contributed that is a work in progress that I want to share because the ideas and the related video is so exciting:

James Carse, in his wonderful book, Finite and Infinite Games, suggests:
There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
The finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play,
...and bringing as many persons as possible into the play.
Finite players play within boundaries;
infinite players play with boundaries.
Welcome to the Game of Empowerment!

You ARE already a Member of the Game!