It occurred to me today that there's some pretty good potential here. I don't mean minor stuff like NASA's new moon mini-game (which, by the way, has some really bad design decisions), but I mean full-fledged video games. Once you get beyond the Call of Duty 9: Electric Boogaloo! surface of the industry, you can find some interesting stuff. For example...
The most educational video game I've ever played is Microsoft Flight Simulator. This is a video game that strives for, and achieves, excruciating realism and detail. It comes with a full series of video lectures on flying and (in the past at least) a huge manual on everything aviation. You can seriously teach yourself how to fly using Microsoft Flight Simulator, and people have.
That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. Why can't educational teams get in on this? Though they had the backing of one of the biggest corporations in the world it's not like Microsoft Flight Simulator was exceptionally well-funded. You don't even need to do it as a strictly non-profit endeavor -- you could do it sort-of commercially, and then recycle the profits from the previous success into the next series of flops until another success busts out the door. But enough with the nonsense like Moonbase Alpha or any of the countless nonsense 1 hour games meant for 6 year olds. We could be doing stuff as complete and in-depth and good as Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Video games have such enormous educational potential and it seems to me like the only guys who even scratched the surface here are the guys who are making sims.
Why don't government education departments do game design?
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Lago PARANOIA
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I know that the military does use video games whenever possible IAW drills, Surgo.
Of course the problem with this is that for a lot of practical tasks it involves more than sitting at a console and pressing buttons. The trainer we had only worked for the people in my division; for the electricians and mechanics the only way that they could get really practical trainer is by actually doing it for real because it involved a lot of switch and valve manipulations. Since said switches and valves are spread out about the plant you can't really practically turn this into a video game.
Flying an airplane 'works' because the tools you need to control an airplane are pretty close to where the person is expected to work. This is not true for a lot of jobs that require drills/practice. I mean, there's no fucking way you could competently train a carpenter or a firefighter by using video games.
Of course the problem with this is that for a lot of practical tasks it involves more than sitting at a console and pressing buttons. The trainer we had only worked for the people in my division; for the electricians and mechanics the only way that they could get really practical trainer is by actually doing it for real because it involved a lot of switch and valve manipulations. Since said switches and valves are spread out about the plant you can't really practically turn this into a video game.
Flying an airplane 'works' because the tools you need to control an airplane are pretty close to where the person is expected to work. This is not true for a lot of jobs that require drills/practice. I mean, there's no fucking way you could competently train a carpenter or a firefighter by using video games.
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Fri Jul 23, 2010 4:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
I have two responses to that:Clutch9800 wrote:It costs too much.
1) Governments can make big capital investments
2) The sim industry as a whole is pretty good at making a return on investment.
Yeah, I get what you're saying here. But at the same time, while there are a lot of tasks that can't be turned into good video games there are also a lot of tasks that can.Lago wrote: Of course the problem with this is that for a lot of practical tasks it involves more than sitting at a console and pressing buttons. The trainer we had only worked for the people in my division; for the electricians and mechanics the only way that they could get really practical trainer is by actually doing it for real because it involved a lot of switch and valve manipulations. Since said switches and valves are spread out about the plant you can't really practically turn this into a video game.
Well, America's Army is a government ordered game. Not quite designed, but they had lots of input.
But in general, no, you don't want government doing this any more than you want it doing anything else. Although, if it was an either/or (say, getting rid of government education in favor of making games), I'd go for it.
But in general, no, you don't want government doing this any more than you want it doing anything else. Although, if it was an either/or (say, getting rid of government education in favor of making games), I'd go for it.
Kaelik, to Tzor wrote: And you aren't shot in the face?
Frank Trollman wrote:A government is also immortal ...On the plus side, once the United Kingdom is no longer united, the United States of America will be the oldest country in the world. USA!
I worked on a "game-like" program for the army to train people to do logistics. It had a series of scenarios where some forward base would request special supplies, or something would happen to the normal supply chain, and you'd need to reroute supplies to keep everything running. It tracked available supplies, trucks, and crews, showed the length and availability of different routes of travel, enforced rules on convoy composition and capacity, etc. It also paid attention to everything you did, and the order in which you did it, and would give you feedback immediately (in early scenarios) or at the end (in advanced scenarios) if, for example, you forgot to look at the CULT report to make sure you actually had enough trucks available to form the convoy you requested.
The program won an award, and I believe it's now being distributed along with BCS3, the software the army uses for actually doing the stuff simulated in the training software.
It wasn't especially entertaining as a game, though. Mostly looking at reports and doing math. Probably more entertaining than a lot of training methods, but you wouldn't play it for fun.
The program won an award, and I believe it's now being distributed along with BCS3, the software the army uses for actually doing the stuff simulated in the training software.
It wasn't especially entertaining as a game, though. Mostly looking at reports and doing math. Probably more entertaining than a lot of training methods, but you wouldn't play it for fun.
The military does this a lot - it's a natural outgrowth of the training simulations they run, and they also use stuff like Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin as actual training material.
However, the biggest problem is that games made for fun tend not to be realistic, with the exception being wargaming. Deloitte Consulting made a 'manage a professional services firm' simulation, but it's hard going and not really distributable.
This makes the commercial angle very hard to leverage, so once we jettison that..
Lots of simulations are actually developed by training providers as an adjunct, or to be used during instructor lead training.
This is very hard to make generic enough for mass distribution, and often big chunks of it (like the professional services firm simulation, above) rely on umpire intervention. Once you've got a guy in a classroom with an instructor, you do things a bit differently.
Where games are highly useful is if your target audience meets these thre criteria
A) Low skill - some guy selling phones at a phone kisok
B) Lots of the above
C) Young
D) High turnover.
So for delivering that sort of thing, at that point, yeah, maybe the government could develop something to deliver training, but most government departments I;ve worked for that are large scale DO develop this sort of content.
However, the biggest problem is that games made for fun tend not to be realistic, with the exception being wargaming. Deloitte Consulting made a 'manage a professional services firm' simulation, but it's hard going and not really distributable.
This makes the commercial angle very hard to leverage, so once we jettison that..
Lots of simulations are actually developed by training providers as an adjunct, or to be used during instructor lead training.
This is very hard to make generic enough for mass distribution, and often big chunks of it (like the professional services firm simulation, above) rely on umpire intervention. Once you've got a guy in a classroom with an instructor, you do things a bit differently.
Where games are highly useful is if your target audience meets these thre criteria
A) Low skill - some guy selling phones at a phone kisok
B) Lots of the above
C) Young
D) High turnover.
So for delivering that sort of thing, at that point, yeah, maybe the government could develop something to deliver training, but most government departments I;ve worked for that are large scale DO develop this sort of content.
Last edited by cthulhu on Sat Jul 24, 2010 5:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Supposedly an online game for swedish armed forces training.
http://team.forsvarsmakten.se/english/
That's an online game that requires exactly 4 players to play. Basically doing stupid human tricks but if you succeed you give bonus time to a teammate, and if you fail then that teammate fails as their time runs out and then the whole team fails as it cascades.
http://team.forsvarsmakten.se/english/
That's an online game that requires exactly 4 players to play. Basically doing stupid human tricks but if you succeed you give bonus time to a teammate, and if you fail then that teammate fails as their time runs out and then the whole team fails as it cascades.
http://www.gse.harvard.edu/academics/masters/tie/
They ARE doing this. Government funding is the primary source for educational software, and most of the current research is indicating that "games as education" is the way to go.
They ARE doing this. Government funding is the primary source for educational software, and most of the current research is indicating that "games as education" is the way to go.
I'm talking about educational software on the scale and quality of Microsoft Flight Simulator, though. What has the government produced for public consumption that even approaches that?mean_liar wrote:http://www.gse.harvard.edu/academics/masters/tie/
They ARE doing this. Government funding is the primary source for educational software, and most of the current research is indicating that "games as education" is the way to go.
There are a few successful ones, but they're privately developed with government grant money.
http://virtonomics.com/
http://gcompris.net/-en-
http://biologica.concord.org/
Really, you're comparing the best flight sim in a developed industry produced over 20+ years by the largest commercial software development company in the world with not every other game (which it beats), but just governmentally-sponsored games. They're going to come up short.
http://virtonomics.com/
http://gcompris.net/-en-
http://biologica.concord.org/
Really, you're comparing the best flight sim in a developed industry produced over 20+ years by the largest commercial software development company in the world with not every other game (which it beats), but just governmentally-sponsored games. They're going to come up short.