I just spent an hour reading the blog “Alice and Kev” which I found via a link Jason Mittell submitted to diigo gaming in education group.  The author does a very good job of using a game to tell a story.  Usually when people use games to tell a story they capture the video and add their own audio soundtrack.  This is often called machinima.  This blog is a little different.  It uses screenshots from the game “The Sims 3” along with text describing the scene.  The story revolves around a homeless father and daughter.  The “sim” aspect is relevant, since the creator has tried to create a situation that mimics homelessness within the game and then passively follows the characters and describes the events.  It’s surprisingly moving.

We will have “Sims 3” in the Arthur Vining Davis language classroom by the fall.  Although this example is in English, the game itself can be set to other languages as well.

Ravi Purushotma, Steven L. Thorne, and Julian Wheatly had published a white paper, “10 Key Principles for Designing Video Games for Foreign Language Learning“.  Although it’s written with game design in mind, the same principles could easily apply to selecting games for education as well.  Among the key points that are particularly relevant for evaluating games:

• Multiplayer games should allow players to have distinct roles.
• Games should provide some form of tracking for assessment and feedback
• Games should allow player to spend more time in areas of interest
• New concepts should be interspersed with other content and introducted gradually
• Learning content should be task based

Read more… 10 Key Principles for Desiging Video Games for Foreign Language Learning

I’ve just had some games come in from Germany which I hope to have installed in the lab soon.  Games that I’ll try to set to playable in non-English languages include:

• Fallout III
• Mass Effect
• Prince of Persia

Games that will be playable in English:

• Europa Universalis III
• World of Goo

On a related note, the “if:book” blog has a very interesting review of Fallout III.  The if:book is focused on the changing nature of stories and books.  They are also the creators of the software Sophie, a kind of digital book that allows for discussion and insertion of multimedia files into the narrative.

http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2009/04/gamers_anonymous.html

Our students are especially good at showing people how to play games.  🙂  Stop down if you’re interested.

Games can provide a great goal oriented environment for language learning.  We have a fairly wide selection of PC games for students play on their own, including many of the hit titles from the previous year.  However, since the content the games is so wide ranging, it makes their integration into a course fairly difficult.  Another problem is that with single player games, each student is in his or her own little world, which makes it difficult for the professor or other students to offer guidance.

Of course, these single player commercial games are only a subset of games as a whole.  Multiplayer games, whether online or traditional board games, can have a more common and limited vocabulary and offer an envrionment that supports social interaction between students and professors.  For example, the hit German game “Settlers” is now playable online in German and English.  It’s a game that has bargaining and town life as it’s center focus, so it would make for an ideal environment for language usage.  An obvious comparison would be role-playing activities most of us have used in class.  These games could function as an environment for a language exchange as well.  Native german speakers could be invited to play with our students.  The first game could be played in German and the second in English.

Background and review of the game – http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/magazine/17-04/mf_settlers

The online version – http://www.cms.playcatan.com/content/view/5/34/lang,en_US/