Back in June, I wrote a post titled Fun First Learning Later, which essentially discussed the need for fun in educational games. Games that are fun are worth playing, and will provide opportunities for both direct and incidental learning. Games which are not fun, or what we call "lamesauce" (that was the royal we mind you) have a much bigger hurdle to overcome when it comes to imparting wisdom on the minds of their players. Its a pretty common sense idea - no one wants to play awful games just because they are games.
But sometimes it seems like that concept is missed on educators seeking to harness the power of the video game. I'm reminded of the Seinfeld sequence between George, Jerry, and NBC. "But why are they watching? Because its on TV! Not yet it isnt."
As it turns out, my crazy talk might just amount to something every once and a while =) And with that I bring you the story of Arden. Arden, if you don't know, is an MMO designed around the world of Shakespeare. The effort to create Arden was headed up by Dr. Edward Castronova of Indiana and its purpose was educational - study virtual economics and teach students Shakespeare in a virtual world environment. Sounds like a good idea, and to be honest it was. There was only one problem. Arden was double glazed in lamesauce and no one wanted to play it. That, dear fellows, is what we call a $250,000 learning experience. Whoops!
A few friends and I were discussing the plight of Arden yesterday, when one of them astutely observed "welcome to the boredom that is Second Life".
I'm sure the moral of the story is self evident, so I won't blather on endlessly like I normally do. I'll just leave you with a well known quote from The Merchant of Venice.
"All that glitters is not gold."
Who knew Shakespeare knew EduGaming too ;-)
But sometimes it seems like that concept is missed on educators seeking to harness the power of the video game. I'm reminded of the Seinfeld sequence between George, Jerry, and NBC. "But why are they watching? Because its on TV! Not yet it isnt."
As it turns out, my crazy talk might just amount to something every once and a while =) And with that I bring you the story of Arden. Arden, if you don't know, is an MMO designed around the world of Shakespeare. The effort to create Arden was headed up by Dr. Edward Castronova of Indiana and its purpose was educational - study virtual economics and teach students Shakespeare in a virtual world environment. Sounds like a good idea, and to be honest it was. There was only one problem. Arden was double glazed in lamesauce and no one wanted to play it. That, dear fellows, is what we call a $250,000 learning experience. Whoops!
A few friends and I were discussing the plight of Arden yesterday, when one of them astutely observed "welcome to the boredom that is Second Life".
I'm sure the moral of the story is self evident, so I won't blather on endlessly like I normally do. I'll just leave you with a well known quote from The Merchant of Venice.
"All that glitters is not gold."
Who knew Shakespeare knew EduGaming too ;-)
I do think there is something to be said about the budget Castronova was working with. Commercial companies have an obscene amount of money to work with. Educators... well... don't =) And obviously that limits some of the things you can do.
But thats sort of the point. Educational institutions will never have the money that companies like Blizzard can throw around. So whenever people like us talk about ways to build educational games, there will always be finite restrictions. I havent experienced Arden for myself, but from what it sounds like, their choice was to invest in education at the expense of the game, as opposed to the other way around (though its possible that most of their budget went into supporting the overhead of an MMO). And I would suspect that most people in Castronova's position would make that choice. Or better still, in order to secure funding, most people would HAVE to make that choice. And if that happens, the failures of Arden are destined to be repeated. And whats worse, the EduGaming field will never realize its potential.
After talking to Bsmith, this wasn't the first attempt at 'game-iffying' shakespeare. From what he recalled, no one has been able to do it successfully.
The sad part here is Castronova KNOWS games. He's the brainchild behind Terranova and has been gaming his whole life. I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt here and assume that the money constrained the vision. $250k sounds like a lot, but when you're talking about developing an MMO that is meant to support hundreds of players at the same time (and provide those players enough content to keep them interested), $250k is pennies.