Funmurphys: the Blog

If I Kill Diablo, Can I Skip 4th Grade?

So it's official now: the Federation of American Scientists has come out in favor of using video games for education. Who am I to argue with that?

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars christened them "serious games" four years ago, mobilizing a loose-knit collection of game developers, educational foundations, grassroots organizations, human rights advocates, medical professionals, first responders, homeland security consultants, and assorted others around a common cause. Together--the experts provide the facts, the game developers the technological know-how--they've created a nascent industry. Their goal: To convince nonbelievers that games teach just as well as books, film, or any other medium.

"Games let us create representations of how things work in a medium that's built to do exactly that," says Ian Bogost, an assistant professor of digital media at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the author of Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism. "If you want to explain how a nuclear power plant works in a textbook, you have to demonstrate it with a logical written argument. But with games, the player can literally interact with the model of how a system works."

They felt it was imporant enough to hold a Games Summit. No word on their vote for game of the year.