Serious Gaming

                              

                  Serious Gaming

    Whether I should explain the word serious or Gaming? Because a usual perception about both the words seems to be contradictory as serious means boring or doing something positive while gaming like that of video games  has a view of doing something for the sake of fun or simply a waste of time.

This is what happens with me, when I am playing game. My parents generally ask why I have involved myself in games. They ask me to name out any benefit that I get from it. They say if I read books, novels or something else then at least I may gain some knowledge. After few seconds of thinking I again set up my head phones and start playing games.

It is right?

Why I play games?

Or someday I feel sad. Did I waste up my so much time in virtual space playing?

These are some of the questions I usually have in my mind while playing games.

But games are also being used excessively as a tool for education. 

MIT Boston, USA

Here students are investigating how to make games more effective for education. Students and professors are working in their game labs for serious gaming.

Zachary Sherin, an undergraduate student shares his views.

"Certain types of education, the old one using text books are being shoved aside by new interactive media. Games have an incredible potential to gather people’s interest in topics that they might not otherwise enjoy."

Zach helped develop “A slower speed of light” a video-game which explains the theory of relativity by enabling games to experience it.

He shared his experience, “It’s very hard to understand how the world would change by traveling at the speed of light. The game does a good by letting us see how it may look like.”

 Students and professors believed that, millions and millions of people playing game could be an easy target to teach if they become able to develop attractive educational games.

Virtual space

Usually the virtual space is being used just for accomplishment of individual’s desire by living in the world of fantasies.

                                         

But some people used it as a tool for training their staff then they developed a concept of “Virtual Supermarket”.

They developed a game in which they trained their staff by asking questions about the customer’s queries.

Like, how would they explain that the ripe is good?

Felix Walter, the supermarket Sales Manager says,

“It’s a real incentive that people can develop and have a virtual career pathway during the game. They enjoy playing it and get involved in it and of course, it makes learning fun as well.

I think that an idea can work especially in those countries in which we have large number of people who are working in super markets, super stores or are employed by the other companies because they need workers whose education doesn’t matter.    

Healthcare vs. gaming

We have some games that help us to live a healthy life by guiding us to know about various aspects of healthcare.

 These kinds of games give us a clue that how games can play a vital role in our life.

 Target audience for the games is both the patient and professionals.

On the one hand it helps by providing professionals like physicians, nurses, psychologists, psychiatrists, and many other people relating healthcare fields, a chance to increase their knowledge and to practice in their respective fields.

On the other hand games like

 Bartholomew (2000) created “Watch, Discover, Think and Act”

 “Packy and Marlon”

                       

“Full Spectrum Warrior”

Baranowski (2002) using “Squire’s Quest”,

are designed for educating the people about the common diseases they may encounter. With objective chronic diseases, asthma, diabetes, cardiovascular problems and also related with sexually transmitted diseases.

Besides these few names, there are number of games available online for free that are designed with a concept how a patient can individually get aware of self management and how a professional can do his practice.

Politics vs. games

 Every child at the age of 14 or 15 dreams of becoming a president . Now games are playing a role in completing this wild desire.

Hearts of Iron and Angel five are the kind of games that have their agenda including political, social, and governmental sector to educate in the respective fields and somehow to train participants in these sectors.

 I got a review about “Hearts of iron” from my cousins. They said,

First of all this game helped us in remembering the map of the world, secondly inspired by the Hitler’s strategies they got control over the entire Africa(In game).

So what they got from games is Knowledge of the history, Knowledge of geography and most importantly, they had fun.

So these can be the best example of Edutainment (my favorite word) Education+ Fun.

“Angel Five”, developed by Visual Purple, is a game for training the agents in crisis management. Angel five counter terrorists attack and have to coordinate between federal state and local agencies. This game runs with variations in severity, locations and different strategies.

Similarly we have “Peace Maker” a game which deals with Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a turn-based strategy game.

Player can be the leader of any country, with accepting the social, political, and military situations. This game also develops ethics by reflecting players of their actions.

We will fallow the discusion in the next articule.

Person who helped me...

Fakhar Iqbal 

 Signup_entry@hotmail.com

Hoping for your positive feedback...

thank u.