Trying to Answer the Question: "Do Most Educational Games Suck"?

Re-read McLeod's post 'Do Most Educational Games Suck?' after adventuring through World of Warcraft for an hour.

What I came away with was a feeling that we're approaching this whole matter of gaming and education from the wrong direction.

As it stands now, the question seems to be: can we produce educational games that match the quality and engagement of 'gamer games'?

As a longtime educator and gamer, I'm thinking we should go at this from a different angle.

Instead of trying to make better 'educational' games, why not take an educational approach to the classics of gaming and gaming as it exists today?

Think about it: we don't ask authors to write 'educational' books so that we have something to teach in school. Rather, we choose books to read and use in teaching.

Likewise, we should choose games to 'read' and use in teaching.

In the same way that you can learn about American history from reading Huckleberry Finn, you can learn about economics and cooperative activity by 'reading' WoW. In fact, gaming -- especially that of the MMOG variety -- has come so far, we really shouldn't have much of a problem teaching all sorts of logic, learning, and abstract thinking via playing and analyzing games that were never originally meant to be 'eduactional'.

In the same way that Twain and Fitzgerald and the rest of the authors we read in English class never would have foremost considered their work texts meant for high school study, likewise none of the serious game developers would see their work that way. That hardly means that in our classrooms we shouldn't take a look at either Twain and Fitzgerald on the one hand or Civilization and Diablo on the other.

But I think it would help to get away from the idea that 'educational' games have to be something, well..., 'educational'.

Rather, we should take Roland Barthes' old advice that all media is a text and we should teach the skills of critical analysis and higher-level abstract thinking via gaming as it exists.

Raise questions like: What do the goals of the game suggest about the societal viewpoints of the developers? Does the play of the game depend on a gnostic worldview, or are there ambiguities inherent in character and quest formation that relate to contemporary themes? Why is moral ambiguity such a difficult thing to portray in a game? How does the game reflect 21st century culture? Does the violence in the game drive the narrative or is it working on behalf of the narrative? Is the game manipulative or exploitative? How do the tone and mood, the music, colors, environments, fonts, and character attributes contribute towards a reading of the game's greater meaning?

It's not about educational vs. non-educational. Rather, it's all just contemporary 'text' waiting for us to analyze and waiting for us to incorporate into lessons. And our kids can handle this.

Furthermore, especially by middle school, they realize if we are pandering to them via 'educational' gaming. They probably wonder why we can't handle the authentic culture of gaming as it is.

Because at the root of this is the issue of authenticity.

So, in response to Scott's question, I'd say the arch of the problem is revealed if we just drop the word 'educational'.

It's gaming itself that we should be looking at.

That's the authentic item.

And it's authenticity that we're going for, right?