Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Serious gaming

MSU has created a Masters program, I kid you not, in "serious game design." (via The Chronicle of Higher Education, which appears to have become my new Arts & Letters Daily.)

From the Serious Game Design—best URL ever—program web site:
Serious Games are games with a purpose beyond entertainment, including but not limited to games for learning, games for health, and games for policy and social change.

Now me, I thought Shadow of the Colossus was a serious game. But what do I know?

1 comment:

Robin Sloan said...

Dude, serious gaming is awesome! It's the small, still-diffuse movement to use the techniques of video games for useful ends -- education, public discourse, etc.

Most are still pretty low-budget and not very much fun, but the movement is picking up steam.

I enjoyed this game over at the BBC site -- again, it's no Halo 2 -- but still, it was fun and I learned something:

BBC Climate Challenge