Video Game Studies and the Emerging Instructional Revolution by Joel Foreman in a new online education publication Innovate is a short survey of some of the issues around games studies becoming an academic and taught field. He makes these interesting points:
- To study games will take significant funding. Game engines are expensive to make as are effective games.
- He makes the case that serious simulations (games that are serious?) will come when we get a critical mass of students trained and these might be effective instructionally.
- Modding will be important and may the form that game studies happens.
- His main point – about revolution – is that game studies may not be just another program – it could lead to games/simulations becoming a serious form of instruction. Game studies could trigger a revolution thoughout the academy.
Some quotes
The emergence of video game studies would be no more or less significant than any other curricular expansion unless, as many believe, it is the precondition of something far greater: an instructional revolution.
…
Since the Gutenberg era, students have been trained in the productive skill (writing) that is responsible for growing and maintaining the dominant media. Likewise, current and future generations of students trained in video game technologies will advance a computerized, pictorial culture
Bibliographic entry: Foreman, J. 2004. Video game studies and the emerging instructional revolution. Innovate 1 (1). http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=2 (accessed November 21, 2004).
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