What games CAN be good for, is overcoming akrasia.
How so? For the last 15 years or so games have been one of my major sources of akrasia, or rather the stuff I do instead of what I want. Not that I blame them, but except for inspiring me to “be awesome” occasionally, I don’t see how games could possibly help here.
I believe the idea—which I have seen brought up elsewhere—is that you can use game mechanics to get yourself to do things that you really should be doing. Essentially you build a game around the actual task that needs getting done. Here’s a TED talk about it.
Well there’s that, yes. That’s more like very basic Gamification of dull activities (more specifically this). (1)
But that’s working from a task towards something more game-like. Rather than designing a game experience from the outset. That seems a suboptimal way to do it. And yeah, the current state of education-in-games, there’s only going to be referential tidbits here and there that a few might look into. But if you’re designing a game and have a topic of interest you enjoy, it wouldn’t likely take much extra development time to incorporate it, especially if you really are interested.
Facilitating education is the goal, I guess. Rather than providing an in-depth education of whatever topic.
(1) I am going to reference Extra Credits a lot when discussing games. I can’t recommend it enough. EC and this textbook are my main influences and sources of knowledge on games and game design, aside from the regular expected amount of game-playing.
I believe the idea—which I have seen brought up elsewhere—is that you can use game mechanics to get yourself to do things that you really should be doing. Essentially you build a game around the actual task that needs getting done. Here’s a TED talk about it.
Well there’s that, yes. That’s more like very basic Gamification of dull activities (more specifically this). (1)
But that’s working from a task towards something more game-like. Rather than designing a game experience from the outset. That seems a suboptimal way to do it. And yeah, the current state of education-in-games, there’s only going to be referential tidbits here and there that a few might look into. But if you’re designing a game and have a topic of interest you enjoy, it wouldn’t likely take much extra development time to incorporate it, especially if you really are interested.
Facilitating education is the goal, I guess. Rather than providing an in-depth education of whatever topic.
(1) I am going to reference Extra Credits a lot when discussing games. I can’t recommend it enough. EC and this textbook are my main influences and sources of knowledge on games and game design, aside from the regular expected amount of game-playing.