New Journal: The Computer Game Education Review
June 29, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

RIT professor Stephen Jacobs is the editor-in-chief of a new journal, The Computer Game Education Review. Here's the blurb he sent me on the publication: CGER will be a peer-reviewed academic publication addressing issues that concern the teaching of game design and development including, but not limited to, curriculum organization, teaching techniques (e.g., conceptual vs. exemplary), game typology, societal impact, economic and commercial issues, legal aspects, and student evaluation that are of interest to faculty and institutions involved in the education and training of future game developers. Online submissions for the inaugural issue are open until December 1, 2009. ...

You Drive Like an Old Man
June 21, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

Insurance company Liberty Mutual has created Driver Seat, which they bill as "the world's first senior driving simulator." The game strives to recreate the perceptual and reaction limitations of drivers aged 65, 75, or 85 through four scenarios (suburban, wilderness, urban, outskirts) each with several missions. It's a nice idea, and the implementation is attractive, but the problem is that the cars in the game are difficult to control in any circumstance, as is the case in many Flash games of this style. Some of the minigames, e.g. the first-person game that simulates a lack of peripheral vision, work more ...

1066
May 19, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

Wow, another educational game that doesn't suck! Check out 1066, a game produced by Channel 4 in the UK to promote and accompany a television program of the same name, about the Norman conquest. The game is beautiful and quite complex, featuring both single-player and multiplayer battles. If I have a complaint, it's that I wish as much effort had gone into teaching the player to play as went into the awesome narrated intro. I still haven't figured out how to successfully instruct my archers to fire (and yes I read the instructions). Still, go play it. ...

A Pig, a Watercraft, and a Credit Card
April 25, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

mtvU, MTV's college network, has held a contest each of the past three years, inviting college students to submit game designs that address a current social issue. The first of these was Darfur is Dying, about the Sudanese conflict, the second Pos or Not, about HIV. This year, the theme is debt, a most apt choice. mtvU is advancing this campaign on the website Indebted.com Brian Haveri of Milburn, NJ submitted the winning game concept in mtvU's Indebted Digital Challenge, and mtvU contracted with my studio Persuasive Games to complete the design and development. The game, entitled Debt Ski, was ...

The Writing Program Adminstrators Game
April 3, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

The Council of Writing Program Administrators, the professional organization for programs in college composition, has announced that the 2008 WPA Award for Graduate Writing in WPA Studies has been awarded to a board game. The game, titled simply "The WPA Game," was created by six Purdue University students. Unfortunately I can't find any more information about or images of the game, but you can read the WPA's announcement here. (Thanks to Liz Losh) ...

Reascending the Alps
April 2, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

Whew, lots to catch up on! In the meantime, check out the best April Fools item I saw today: Alpine Legend for Xbox 360. Yes! ...

Guitar Hero Camp
February 7, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

Power Chord Academy is a music camp for 12-18 year olds in Los Angeles. This summer, the school has announced a new program, GameROCKERS™. GameROCKERS™ is our exclusive 3-day cutting edge game-musician program for the new age of musicians who play Guitar Hero or Rock Band. Loaded with competitions and prizes, students play in bands, write songs, record songs, and play a final concert and Battle of the Bands! It's ambiguous in the press release they sent me, but I'm assuming that this is not a "you like Rock Band so learn to play for real" sort of thing, but ...

Hula Wii
January 9, 2009 - by Ian Bogost

As usual, things are cooler in Japan. If the hula-hoop minigame in Wii Fit isn't enough for you, why not have a go at Hula Wii, a hula dance trainer "for health and beauty." It features twenty different tunes and supports play with the Wii Balance Board. You can even put your Miis in proper hula garb and make them dance (insert Hitler does the Hula joke here). The website is all in Japanese, but you can watch this promotional video to get a sense of how the game plays. Apparently the game was cooperatively produced by publisher MileStone and ...

Speak & Spell, 30 Years Later
December 28, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Vintage Computing and Gaming has published an interview with Richard Wiggins, one of the developers of Texas Instruments' 1978 electronic toy Speak & Spell. This device was among the first electronic educational games, and for better or worse it may remain among the best. As the author admits, the interview was meant to be fodder for a proper article marking the 30th anniversary of the device last summer, and as an interview it is rough reading. But read through the whole thing; there are a lot of interesting observations, including a discussion of the speech chip and its limitations. (via ...

An MMORPG for Learning Chinese Characters
December 22, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

From South Korean company Eduflo comes Hanjamaru, an MMORPG designed to teach elementary school children Chinese characters. Characters are depicted on the monsters in the game, and the pronunciation and meaning is said aloud to the player as he attacks. There are rewards for collecting different characters, which are chosen to match a popular standardized test for school children in Korea. The website is in Korean, but the company also maintains a blog in English. ...

Missile in the HASTAC
November 19, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

The HASTAC consortium has just announced a forum hosted by their HASTAC Scholars fellows on digital games, entitled Participatory Play: Digital Games From Spacewar! to Virtual Peace to "explore game innovations that surpass violent first-person shooters and military training simulations." Here's a further description: Beginning with notable exemplars of imaginative game designs, such as "Virtual Peace," we will explore the theoretical and pedagogical issues surrounding video games. Among other topics, we'll consider the relationship between game play and game theory, changing trends in gaming culture, scholarly collaborations on game design, pedagogical uses of video games, and the social, political and ...

Click Archaeology
November 6, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

To promote a week of programming about expeditions, from the pyramids to outer space, National Geographic has created an expedition game in which players are tasked to find artifacts which they can exchange for virtual cash. Each night during the week of November 16-23, a different show will air and special codes will be announced to facilitate different adventures. The game has high production value; it features a pretty sophisticated (if slightly awkward) avatar creation tool. From what I can tell, the actual gameplay is mostly hunt-click find the object style, but perhaps that will change as new missions are ...

Vinylgame
September 27, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Vinylgame is another new title from Molleindustria, this one an advergame for a European PVC industry association. The game was commissioned to explain the organization's 10 year commitment to sustainability. The game is apparently more directed at industry insiders than the general public, and players may find it a bit tough to follow without that knowledge. It's a sim game of sorts, although the dynamics feel very dampened compared to other Molleindustria titles; the game might be more of an infographic than a simulation. Of course, it features Molleindustria's characteristic visual style. ...

US Army Invades Schools
September 18, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

The US Army has announced a "partnership" with a group called Project Lead The Way to "to enhance student curriculum by using a variety of Army technologies to promote student interest in the engineering and technical fields." Project Lead The Way is a 501(c)(3) focused on science and engineering education for middle and high school students. From the press release: The platform for the new curriculum is the America's Army PC game, a free online game that provides civilians with a virtual role in the U.S. Army by introducing them to Army technologies, Rules of Engagement, training and missions. Used ...

Where are the educational games on consoles?
September 9, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Over at Kotaku, Brian Crecente notes the re-release of Math Blasters for the DS, and then wonders why more console makers don't introduce at least a few good educational games on their systems in order to win over schools, parents, and other groups who might like both entertainment and education. It's a good point, of course, and reminds me of the way Intellivision positioned themselves against Atari in the early 80s. Brian points out the way Apple muscled into schools during that decade too: much of the software used was educational games. The first-party licensing regime is perhaps mainly to ...

Gimmickry, or How Exergaming Went Mainstream
August 25, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

I've been thinking about exercise games lately, primarily due to an onslaught of new games, devices, and initiatives. For example, we've got Footgaming, a sort of promotional blog for a student fitness program called Generation Fit. The group hopes to support casual and educational play with a peripheral called FootPOWR. Judy Shasek, the program's proponent, argues that physical activity contributes to both fitness and academic success. Then there's Wii Sqweeze (pictured at top right), from Interaction Laboratories. The device promises isometric upper body exercise via shoulder abduction and adduction, wrought via a two-handled pumping interface with attached wiimote. There's reason ...

Suffering under Global Poverty
August 6, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Ack. Check out the Race Against Global Poverty Game. According to its sponsors, the game is supposed give "children living in the UK the chance to learn about the developing world in a fun and stimulating way." I wonder what went wrong here. It's a graphically lush simulated board game with cute, carefully crafted horse-type creatures as tokens, but the game is just trivia, and there's no sound, and its neither fun nor stimulating, but rather insipid. ...

Lockdown: A School Shooting Game
July 17, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Lockdown is a "serious game for incident responses to school shootings." The game was created at the GamePipe Lab at USC Engineering with sponsorship from Sandia National Laboratories. The game looks very polished, but I couldn't help but notice that Lockdown's apparent approach to "incident response" is: "do whatever you'd do in a First-Person Shooter. Oh yeah, and tell people to exit calmly." Watch the video on the page linked above to witness the myriad firearms available to the player's SWAT character, as well as his alarmingly comical, Counter-Strike style final firefight with the perpetrator. (via Liz Losh) ...

Microsoft Imagine Cup 2008 Finals
June 26, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Microsoft holds an annual student competition called Imagine Cup, with its theme chosen from the UN Millennium Goals. The 2008 theme is the environment, and for the first time there is a special game development, with games created in XNA Game Studio Express. I'll be in Paris next week acting as a judge for the 2008 finals. There are six finalist teams, although I'm not yet sure what their games are about. The top three US finalists appear after the jump. ...

Spore among "Best Games For the Classroom"
June 10, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

College@Home has published a list of their pics for the 25 Best Sims and Games For the Classroom. The focus is mostly devoted to commercial games of probably interest to kids, which could also feasibly be used in a classroom setting. The list is almost all comprised good games, for once, so it's actually a better resource than the all-too-familiar article title would lead you to believe. One thing I found particularly interesting was the inclusion of Spore on the list, with this description: "an incredibly powerful tool in the classroom for teaching students about evolution and the behavior of ...

Budget Hero
May 18, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Budget Hero is the new serious game about balancing the federal budget, from American Public Media. I've been out of commission recently, so instead of writing my own thoughts on Budget Hero I want to encourage you to read a thorough review by Georgia Tech Digital Media Ph.D. student Ben Medler. Budget Hero is not the first budget game, but it makes a number of improvements over previous efforts, making the experience of budget choices more deliberate and less arbitrary. The main complaint one could offer is the same one that someone mounted against The Redistricting Game at the GDC ...

Liz Losh on the NASA MMO Fail
May 9, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Recently I made some strong remarks about NASA's decision to pull (or "reconfigure") the funding plan for their long-planned educational MMO. Virtualpolitik tracker Liz Losh has since authored a far more sophisticated analysis of the situation. Go read the whole thing, but in brief Losh attributes three main factors to NASA's decision: profound hierarchy, assumptions about volunteerism, and a sense of strong branding. ...

I am a Gorilla
April 28, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Clark Boyd interviewed me the other day for a piece on BBC's The World radio program which covered a mobile game supporting gorilla conservation. The game, called Silverback, is a cute, involved J2ME title in the platformer-adventure game genre. It turns out the game was actually created back in 2003 by Kiwanja, and this is a re-release for the benefit of Fauna & Flora International. You can download the game free over-the-air, although A £5 donation is requested. Unlike so many advocacy games, Silverback is actually pretty good! The player takes the role of a young gorilla facing challenges from ...

NASA MMO Update: Brains Pulled, not Funding
April 23, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Earlier this week I reported that NASA had pulled the $3m worth of funding previously committed to an educational MMO project. Other reliable sources ran the same story (1, 2, 3). Sean Hollister wrote a new story on the topic, including some interview material from Daniel Laughlin, one of the NASA project managers and recent WCG commenter. Here's the gist of Hollister's piece: Yes, NASA lost the $3m, but they have another $2m. But, they're not going to spend that on game development. Instead they're going to spend it on "education experts" and NASA insiders The non-reimbursable Space Act Agreement ...

NASA MMO Budget Cut from $3m to $0
April 21, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

(Updated here, 23 April) A while back, NASA started talking about a large-scale, well-funded MMO they wanted to make for educational purposes. The organization published a Request for Information (RFI) that claimed "A high quality synthetic gaming environment is a vital element of Nasa's educational cyberstructure." The goals of the project were to "foster career exploration opportunities in a much deeper way than reading alone would permit and at a fraction of the time and cost of an internship program." The reported budget for the project was a respectable $3 million. Today, the Second Life Herald reports comes news that ...

The UN Shoots an Air Ball
April 14, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

The UN Foundation's Nothing But Nets campaign provides low-cost bed nets in an effort to reduce malaria-related deaths in Africa in particular. As a part of the campaign, they have created a game, Deliver the Net. If you play the game and sign up at the end, the organization will deliver a net to Africa on their behalf. The sentiment is a respectable one. But the game misses the net entirely. The player drives a motorbike in a desolate African setting, stopping at local huts to deliver nets and jumping over occasional obstacles. At the end of the game, the ...

Knowledge is Nothing. Tenure is Everything.
March 21, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Thanks to David Wessman on the IGDA Education SIG mailing list for pointing out Survival of the Witless, a card game about the academic tenure process. The title above was the game's tagline. It’s a brutal game, where the most common card is "ass-kissing" (to simulate the most common action in academia). Three to eight players try to collect enough writing cards and a contract to finish their book, and enough influence with committee members to win a tenure decision. In addition to Ass Kissing, other cards you could play in the game included Seduction, Bold New Theory, Student Boycott, ...

GDC 2008: Out of the Box, EA Fuels New Ideas with Madden and Sims Titles
February 18, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

Presentation by Rob Moore, Steve Seabolt (EA) at the Serious Games Summit, Game Developers Conference 2008. Moore got stuck in bad weather but sent along some materials about A number of EA Sports titles are used by athletes, including by NASCAR drivers to get used to tracks, by pro basketball and football players to memorize. These were just unexpected uses of the ordinary commercial versions of games. More recently, sports training professionals have become interested in using versions of these games for their purposes. One such company went to EA with this idea. The result is Madden Play Action Simulator, ...

Audience Response System for games in schools
January 28, 2008 - by Ian Bogost

The New York Times published an article today about using audience response systems -- those handheld devices used to poll gameshow audiences -- for classroom games. One school district in southern California spent half a million bucks on them, and others have followed suit. In a typical system, the clickers record data from individuals, and transmit that information, through wireless technology, to a computer program. The program can instantly display the results, tally them and present them in elaborate spreadsheets and eye-catching graphics like spaceships or “Jeopardy!”-style boards. It can track the percentage of correct answers received for each question ...

Scholastic Defiles Self, World with Game-Book Tie-ins
December 19, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Scholastic, the textbook publisher Kaiser Permanente paid off to publish their craptastic nutrition game, is back with more cross-media garbage for you and your tween. Now that the Harry Potter series is complete, Scholastic is eager to get a new franchise out. According to a story in the New York Times today, the series, called The 39 Clues will feature 10 books, apparently to be penned by different authors including Gordon Korman and Rick Riordan. But in addition, as the Times reports "many children are now as transfixed by Internet and video games as they are by reading." According to ...

Science Museum Physics Games
November 6, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Remember playing The Incredible Machine? It was one of the only good educational games of the early 90s -- maybe all of the 90s. The UK Science Museum has created a set of online games to support their Launchpad installation of physics topics. The games, dubbed Launchball, play like a more abstract version of The Incredible Machine. You use electricity, wind, magnetism, circuits, and other paraphernalia to lead a ball from start to goal. The production value is very high, although it did take me a while to figure out that I had to mouseover the different colored blocks to ...

Library Games at CMU
October 14, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

The Carnegie Mellon University Libraries have a couple of library games (yes, i said library games) in their new Library Arcade . The first game is Within Range, and it's an LC call number shelving game. Seriously. The second game is I'll Get It, and it's more complex. The player takes the role of a librarian servicing visitor requests. You have to decide what kind of resources are appropriate for each one. It's basically Library Dash. Within Range is cute but a bit forgettable (LC shelving isn't exactly rocket science, and there's not a lot of game wrapped around the ...

Hungarian Freedom Fighters Graphic Novel
October 11, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Lauer Learning has announced a new version of their Freedom Fighter '56 game, a bundle that includes a graphic novel based on the game's story. It's a nice idea, and the production value looks very high. We should see more combined products like this in serious games, games with additional media supporting them. ...

Alternate Reality Games Seminar
September 24, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Despite their interesting features, Alternate Reality Games like The Beast and ilovebees really got their start as marketing campaigns. Since World Without Oil, there has been growing interest in using ARGs for serious purposes. Game community Unfiction is sponsoring a one-day event, Embrace the Chaos, to help people understand how to use these games. The cost is $175 before Sept 30 and $200 thereafter. I think it's a bit unfortunate that the organizers have positioned the event toward marketers ("Alternate Reality Games and online experience marketing when done correctly create a powerful connection between the audience and you"), but I ...

An Instructional Alternate Reality Game
September 1, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Exceptional Software Strategies and Media Edge offer Never Rest Game, a new counter-terrorism ARG in which players must "thwart terrorism by using their own methods against them when they least expect it." The unusual thing about this ARG is that it bills itself as explicitly educational, and even tries to coin a new term for such a subgenre: the Instructional Alternate Reality Game, or I-ARG: An I-ARG applies adult learning theory to the ARG format, creating a flexible framework in which learning is delivered through story and gameplay. With engaging storylines controlled by the instructor, I-ARGs deliver immersive ‘stealth’ learning, ...

World of Borecraft
June 26, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Slate just published an article by Justin Peters about games that teach, cleverly titled World of Borecraft. It's a thoughtful article that basically calls the whole concept of educational games out on the carpet, from Mavis Beacon through Serious Games. Persuasive Games' work is called out along with the others, subject to a number of fair criticisms that Peters summarizes as, "In taking the fun out of video games, companies like Persuasive make them less alluring to people who love games and more alluring to people who don't." We get to bear the dubious label of antihero among this motley ...

Art does not take exit surveys
April 16, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

I should be frank: I'm actually a bit tired of hearing about Super Columbine Massacre RPG. That's not because I don't support the game -- I was one of its earliest supporters, and I remain impressed and intrigued by the way the game attempts to put the player in the disturbing shoes of Harris and Klebold. Rather, I'm tired of seeing conversations sparked by SCMRPG that only advance theories about games in general, instead of making actual critiques of this particular game itself. The latest volley is from Will Interactive CEO Sharon Sloane, who recently wrote an opinion piece about ...

Advertising and Ecology: Planet Green Game
April 10, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Starbucks Coffee and Global Green USA have created Planet Green Game, a game about energy conservation and consumption. The game is set in a hypothetical town called Evergreen. The player chooses a character and transportation mode (foot, skateboard, bicycle, and three types of automobiles, each with different emissions). A variety of energy-related minigames are scattered throughout the town -- a MPG management driving game at the service station, a click-to-fix energy waste game at home, a build a city park game, a quiz at the school and city hall, and energy-efficient shopping memory game at the building supply store. ...

Stop Disasters Game
March 26, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

PlayerThree, creators of Food Force among other great titles, have a new game sponsored by the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. The game is appropriately called Stop Disasters!, and it's a fantastic, simple, rich little strategy game. It's also a rich game, covering five disaster scenarios in great detail. The current scenarios include tsunami, wild fire, flood, hurricane, and earthquake; more may be added over time. In the game, the player must accomplish a series of infrastructure and safety subtasks as they prepare for a pending disaster. The implementation is solid, but I really wish I could have ...

Serious Games book for Japan
February 27, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

Toru Fujimoto let me know that his new book Serious Games: Transforming Education and Society Through Digital Games has just been published by Tokyo Denki University Press. If you don't know Toru already, he's the source for serious games related material in Japan. So it's not surprising that he wrote the book on it! Here's a (bad) Babelfish translation of the book webpage (my favorite mistranslationism is "Dull fool is dyeing"). The book is in Japanese and written for the Japanese market, but Toru also knows everything about what's going on in serious games in Japan. ...

Seymour Papert in a coma after traffic accident
December 20, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Seymour Papert, constructionist learning pioneer and inventor of the Logo programming language is in a coma after being struck by a motorcycle in Hanoi, Vietnam. The Boston Globe has a more detailed story. I'm not sure why I haven't seen broader coverage of this story, but I hadn't seen it before. (via Cindy) ...

Preview Bogost's New Book, Persuasive Games
December 11, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

My new book, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, which will be published in spring 2007, now has an official page up at the MIT Press site. This is the major research project I've been working on for the last couple years, and I'm really excited about getting it out there. The main argument in the book is that videogames exemplify a new form of rhetoric, which I call procedural rhetoric. Then I look at a multitude of examples, from early arcade games to very contemporary games. The book is very readable and should appeal to researchers, developers, and ...

BASIC games on the web
November 22, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

One of the things we're often grousing about in the computing education and games education communities is programming literacy (some people call this procedural literacy, but I reserve that phrase for a more general concept of literacy, more on this another time). Raph Koster points us to Quite Basic, a new tool that offers a lightweight, easily accessible programming environment right inside a web page. And even better, it's the BASIC that we once booted and loved. Quite features a text and canvas output space, a happy text area for typing your code, and a little mini debugger. Slick stuff. ...

Freedom Fighter 56
October 26, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Lauer Learning has announced the availability of Freedom Fighter 56, an interactive graphic novel and game about the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. From the description: Learn through this immersive story as it literally drops you into the streets of Budapest to struggle alongside the heroic characters that fought for Hungary’s freedom, despite the overwhelming odds. Immersed in authentic imagery and actual experiences, players are challenged to make strategic decisions, wrestle with moral dilemmas and gather historically accurate inventory items to use in persuasion scenarios throughout the game The graphic art looks great and I know some very smart people who worked ...

Iran releases state-funded oil disruption game
September 30, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

According to the NY Times, the Iranian government has funded a videogame that illustrates how to disrupt world oil supplies by blowing up a U.S. tanker in strait of Hormuz. This recalls Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's warning that oil exports might be put in jeopardy if the U.S. doesn't back off Iran's nuclear program. The game, called "Counter Strike" (no relation to the Half-Life conversion) was produced by eight people in three months. I had a hard time categorizing this entry. Is this a newsgame? Is it an educational game? Is propagandist, or is it perhaps the first example of a ...

Contest for Yourth Work Games
September 6, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Computer Space 2006 announces a contest for online and mobile games created for youth work. From the announcement: The aim of the proposed games should be to provide modern training tools and examples for youth trainers and organizers of youth events and to provocative exploration of important topics in the youth work like human rights, intercultural learning, youth project management etc. All the produced games will be distributed for free in the youth centers and youth organizations We're a bit late coming to this, so you'll have to act quickly; the deadline is 20 September. ...

Native Dancer - Virtual Powwows for Health
August 28, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Here's a rare example of an game that simultaneously attempts to educate, preserve an at-risk culture, improve health, and tackle an interesting game design problem. The Native Dancer Diabetes Education Game is a project in development at North Dakota State University and supported by the White Earth Reservation Tribal Council. ...

Mobile game teaches emergency first aid
July 14, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Spanish developer Exelweiss has created Emergency 112 (or Emergency 911, if you prefer, in English), a mobile game to teach first aid techniques for medical emergencies. The game was apparently created for emergency response company Area de Intervención, but it looks like it's generally available too; a demo is available from the Area de Intervención site. Screenshots and game footage are also available from the developer. The player takes the role of a good samaritan who finds pedestrians in trouble. You must check the victim's condition and choose an appropriate diagnosis and treatment. ...

Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day, but train it for what?
June 16, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Author's note: Nintendo has created a community at Gather.com to facilitate discussion of their "Touch Generations" series of games. I have cross-posted this article there, and readers may want to view the other articles in that series. I know the game isn't new, but we never covered it properly here, and I'm rather glad we waited so we can benefit from a bit of perspective on the unusual yet popular title for Nintendo DS. Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day was released in mid April by Nintendo as the first salvo in the company's new battle to ...

Review of Cyber-Budget, the French Budget Game
June 12, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

I mentioned the French Cyber Budget game a week or so ago, but I couldn't find the actual game until Mark Nelson sent me the link this week. You can play Cyber-Budget online, but keep in mind that it's in French only, and pretty language-heavy. Budgets are comprised of multiple allocations in conflict. They are abstract--numbers on balance sheets--but their effects are concrete. It's hard to personalize them and create empathy around them. This game is an interesting attempt to make budgeting playable. The main strategy is to contextualize the budgeting process in the material world through a map interface ...

SimSchool, a classroom simulator
March 17, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Now available, SimSchool, a "classroom simulation for educators." The game is free to play online. SimSchool puts the player in control of a classroom. The player is challenged to teach the entire class, while taking into account each student's specific learning style and behavioral quirks. I played a prerelease version and it's an interesting attempt to simulate classroom management. The player has to look up each student on a computer to get insights into their past performance and to plan how to address that particular student accordingly. Difficulty increases by adding more students. And the students have some fairly amusing ...

Food Force on Wired
February 15, 2006 - by Gonzalo Frasca

It's been a while since Food Force has been launched but people are still talking about it. Now it's the turn of Wired to discuss the game. I must say that when I first saw the description of the article on the news aggregator "Food Force[...] tops the game download charts on Yahoo -- despite being more "edu" than "tainment." I was annoyed by the "edu" versus "tainment" remark. But actually it looks like the phrase was written by some editor and not the journalist, who did a great job with the article. FYI, as a former journalist, I tend ...

All Things Africa
February 8, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

A few bits of Africa-related videogame news to report. First, you can now play and vote for the four finalists in the MTV crisis in Darfur student game design contest, which we mentioned last year. The contest asked student teams to design a videogame to build awareness about genocide in Darfur, Sudan. The network is offering a $50,000 prize to develop the game, although the students don't get to develop it, but rather a professional agency. The students will be invited to New York to advise and participate. Anyway, you can play the finalist games and vote at www.darfurisdying.com. The ...

LeapFrog Leapster Update: L-Max and Third Party Development
February 6, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

I've been pretty hard on LeapFrog and their Leapster handheld "learning game system." During its and our first year, 2003, I wrote a review of the Leapster, which I followed up a year later. LeapFrog was a major sponsor of Henry Jenkins's first Education Arcade conference, which I covered here as well (1, 2). Back then (mid-2004), they were promoting the "Games for Learning Seal," a kind of validation mark for educational games, which I actively scorned (and which has since been abandoned). And I've been nothing short of incensed at LeapFrog's continued lack of third party development support (1, ...

Divorce, videogame-style
February 1, 2006 - by Gonzalo Frasca

"Earthquake in Zipland" is a PC game for children with divorced parents. It's an adventure game, where the main character is torn between the King and Queen of the island, which split apart after an earthquake. The game will be out soon but meanwhile you can download a demo and watch a Windows Media video that gives you an overview of the project. The game is developed in Israel but all the texts and voiceovers are in English. When I was a kid, there was a collection of Spanish books on "complex" topics for children (where do babies come from, ...

Volvo Drive for Life
November 14, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

The NY Times reports that Volvo and Microsoft have collaborated on a game for Xbox called Volvo Drive for Life, "a showcase for the Volvo nameplate, three Volvo models and the longtime Volvo brand identity as the car designed with safety foremost." Clearly, this won't be a Burnout clone -- players drive on a proving grounds course with and without safety features in the Volvo S40 S60R, and XC90. The player can then drive the car in three real-world courses, Pacific Coast Highway, the Italian Grand Prix, and the road to the ice hotel in Jukkasjarvi. Real-world is relative, I ...

The Fight for Energy
August 29, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Energien.dk is a Danish educational site for junior high kids, specifically about electricity, gas and energy. It was created for use in Danish schools, and appears to have been commissioned by for an association of Danish energy companies and providers.   If you click on the link Kampen om Energien (the Fight for Energy) on that page, you'll find is an RTS style game in which the player manages the use and distribution of electricity during the last 150 years. The player must "build a society" to realize "the challenges faced with when it starts to use electricity, when it ...

Farming, Gender, Narcotics, and other related things
August 2, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Last week Natsume released new versions of Harvest Moon: Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life for GameCube and Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town for GBA. I hesitate to say that I'm a "big fan" of Harvest Moon, but like Animal Crossing it's a game that charms and allures me, both as a player and as a designer. The 3d Playstation and Gamecube varieties felt too complicated, but I've played an embarrassing number of hours of Harvest Moon on GBA, and I've still yet to convince someone to marry my sullen, zucchini-planting avatar. I do still carry my chickens around ...

Islam games, Christian games, ...
July 28, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

We recently reported on the 4th Christian Game Developers Conference, happening this week in Portland. On a related and unrelated note, I recently came upon this op-ed (thanks to Andrew), by NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Friedman cites a WCJ report that the Iqra Learning Center, a site investigated after the 7/7 London bombings was the sole UK distributor of Islamgames, "a U.S.-based company that makes video games [featuring] apocalyptic battles between defenders of Islam and opponents." The op-ed cites Ummah Defense I, in which "the world is 'finally united under the Banner of Islam' in 2114, until a revolt ...

Urine: The Game
July 5, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

We went to the Grossology exhibit at the local museum this weekend (The Fernbank here in Atlanta). The latest trend in museums seems to be these traveling exhibits. I guess its a way for museums to bank on past visit figures from other venues without spending their own money on exhibition development. It feels a little McMuseum to me, but sometimes the exhibits are good. Anyway, Grossology is all about "The (Impolite) Science of the Human Body," even though the science is pretty thin; it's more like a little tiny theme park or playground. Exhibits included Up Your Nose, a ...

Japanese Finance Games
June 15, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Thanks to Serious Games Japan maven Toru Fujimoto for tipping us off to My Dream and Bank, a Japanese Flash-based advergame intended to teach high school students about the basics of finance and starting a business. The game was produced by the Japanese Bankers Association, and according to Toru 100,000 copies were distributed on CD-ROM to schools and home users, free of charge. From what I can tell about the game, the player can choose one of four characters, each of which has a different personality and business goal -- internet entrepreneur, hair salon owner, coffee shop owner, and fashion ...

Public School FPS
June 6, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

We talk a lot about educational games here. Education and games often raises questions about violence in games, such as the one Richard Bartle posed recently over at Terra Nova "On the one hand, we're saying that no no no, games don't teach people all those bad things, but on the other hand we're saying that yes yes yes, games do teach people all these good things. Can we really sustain both these positions?" For my thoughts on this matter, I'd refer you to my response last year to the Critical Simulation section of Noah and Pat's First Person. A ...

Power Politics free for Educators
June 3, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

WCG regular Randy Chase has just announced that his prexy election sim Power Politics III (on WCG: 1, 2) is now free for use in the classroom. The new version will also have likely '08 candidates. Click through for the full press release. ...

Playtime in the Classroom
June 2, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

The Guardian has a nice article out today about videogames and learning, featuring Jim Gee, Persuasive Games, and this humble website. The article mentions Project:Connect, the educational game suite that Ben Sawyer and I have been working on for Telecom Pioneers for some time. It's releasing publicly this week. ...

DS Brain Training
May 26, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

A few weeks back I wrote about the similarities between Lumines and performance intelligence tests, and then I fell upon some rumors of mental workout applications for Nintendo DS. No sign of them at E3 this year, so I wasn't sure if it was for real. Now comes word of another, different mental workout game, DS Brain Training. Gaming Age forum poster Jonnyram explains that it's based on a book by Ryuta Kawashima, a cognitive neuroscientist. He explains that you play by rotating the DS and writing on the right (or left if you are left handed). His impression? "Overall, ...

E3: The Bible Game
May 19, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

I'm running a bit behind with E3 coverage, but I'm going to try to catch up today. While everyone else covers the predictable stuff, I'm going to try to share my impressions of the more unique games on the floor this year. I knew about The Bible Game from Crave before arriving at the show and was happy to stumble upon it on the floor. There are two flavors, one for GBA and one for PS2. Disappointingly, both are quiz games, although each tries to overcome that creative defect in a different way. ...

E3: Education Arcade, year 2 in brief
May 19, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

E3 is busy this year. It took literally an hour to park even at the very start of the day. I ran a workshop on in-game advertising on Tuesday (which I'll post about later), so I couldn't attend the Education Arcade this year. Last year I covered the conference extensively. Nevertheless, I managed to catch one session, on using Neverwinter Nights for education. Click through for my notes (special thanks to Cyprien Lomas and Mark Wagner for letting me in on their SubEthaEdit notetaking session). ...

Ride an esuvee
April 18, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

The Attorney General and Consumer Protection Agencies have created Esuvee Challenge Course, a game that teaches players about key factors in SUV rollovers. The game has high production value and great complexity, and it's funny too: the "Esuvee" is a sort of wooly monster beast. You can also watch the TV spot. (thanks to Gamersnitch) ...

Food Force
April 15, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

Finally! An educational game that rocks! Informative, well produced and very enjoyable to play with. Go United Nations! Food Force was just launched and it is definitively worth the 200 meg download (full versions available for free for Windows and Mac). The game consists of several different missions, with animated and video cutscenes in between. Unlike what happens in many videogames, the cutscenes are not there to show off graphics but rather to give valuable information. And what it is best, the designers were able to overcome the most common trap of educational games: they keep a good balance between ...

Mental Exercise with Nintendo DS
April 1, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

Wow, talk about timing. Following on the heels of my musings about Lumines on PSP and performance intelligence, Spong News reports that Nintendo has announced a set of non-gaming applications for DS, including "a mental workout application featuring mathematical and linguistic problems, a logic-driven selection of puzzles and perhaps most tellingly of all, a complete electronic dictionary." I wonder if these follow on the heels of the WarioWare Touched bonus items... things like a calculator and pet chameleon that you can unlock by playing individual character games. Anyway, click on the screenshots at right for a bigger version; these apps ...

PSP and Performance Intelligence
March 27, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

So, I admit it, I bought a PSP. I hadn't planned to, but there were tons at Target yesterday, and I figured it was either now or later so might as well make it now. I had and continue to have doubts about the device. Again and again Sony tries their hand at this notion of an integrated mobile device. Five years ago they made an investment in Palm and started rolling out Clié devices with the same promise of integrated music, productivity, movies, etc. They never seem to get it quite right. It's not an easy task to be ...

NYTimes on games with agendas
February 5, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

I am glad to see more mainstream interest in games that go beyond entertainment. Seriously, I am. But this NY Times article leaves me a bit puzzled. Partly in the right way, because it makes me think of the very thin line separating propaganda, advertising and educational games (the author calls them educational in general and, that is not technically wrong, since education is persuasion after all). However, some quotes are, welll, surprising. Like the one from the kid that says that the message of an anti-smoke game doesn't appeal to him since, well, he doesn't smoke. In addition to ...

SimGenocide
January 20, 2005 - by Gonzalo Frasca

A few years ago I wondered, following Adorno, if it was barbaric to design games after Auschwitz (pdf). I still believe that the answer is no. And I mean games, videogames, with pixelated or 3D graphics, preferably controlled with gamepads. We should make games about anything and everything, including the more unspeakable acts. Playing with fire is good, even if we get badly burned. The BBC reports (thanks Vanda!) about Pax Warrior, a simulation about the Rwandan genocide (the BBC has some game footage). You have to love the journalist disclaimer ("it sounds wrong to call it a computer game ...

Studieren une langue étrangère con The Sims
January 4, 2005 - by Ian Bogost

The Journal of Language Learning and Technology has published an article in this month's issue about learning a foreign language through a modded version of The Sims, written by MIT Comparative Media masters student Ravi Purushotma. (via Slashdot) ...

Education Arcade Conference 2.0
December 16, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

The MIT Comparative Media Program and the ESA have announced that a second Games in Education conference will be held at next year's E3. The event will be held May 15th to 17th prior to the E3 expo in Los Angeles, CA, and will be open to the pre-registered public. More information and details about speaker nomination and pre-registration can be found here. Last year's Education Arcade conference was very much worthwhile; you can also read my extensive coverage of it. ...

The LeapFrog Leapster, one year later
December 1, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

A year ago I wrote a review of the Leapster, LeapFrog's handheld educational/gaming device for kids 4 - 8. Given that many readers may consider Leapster as a gift this holiday season, I wanted to follow up on the review and update it. The review has proven an immensely popular read here at WCG. In the last year, almost a hundred people have offered their comments about the device, the vast majority looking for insights on common screen calibration defects. I've been in touch with Leapfrog since last May, and they do confirm that a portion of their initial manufacturing ...

Live from the Serious Games Summit DC
October 18, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

I am back from our London show opening (pictures soon) and here in DC for the Serious Games Summit. The conference has a very "official" feel, thanks to CMP, which is an important step. Oddly, no badge lanyards tho, only pins. Aren't lanyards the sign of officialness? Anyway, I'll do my best to cover the conference here, but it's multiple track and I'm doing a talk and a panel, so you'll get my view of the event rather than a general view. Update: coverage continues below as it happens, so to speak, from the back of the room. As usual, ...

Hyrule Music School now open
September 10, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

I'm now officially the world's biggest geek. I just got my Ocarina of Time from Songbird Ocarinas. If you had a Nintendo 64, you probably remember it from The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Those of you who were under a ROCK back in 1998 - 2000, there is a great Zelda Collector's Edition for Gamecube that contains those two plus the first two NES Zelda games. Anyway, I've already learned to play Saria's Song and The Song of Time pretty well. My wife thinks I'm crazy, but I'm pretty sure ...

Military game teaches Arabic
July 7, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

The NY Times reports on a game developed by my alma matter, the University of Southern California, specifically their Center for Research in Technology for Education, in conjunction with the Army's Special Operations Command, intended to teach Arabic language and customs to soldiers. The interesting thing about the game is that it appears to simulate situations rather than pure linguistic patterns, including non-verbal interaction, gestures, and conversational behavior. ...

IT Manager Game, now featuring Women!
June 1, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Well, the ruckus about Intel's failure to include women in their first go at the IT Management game seems to have inspired them to correct the problem! The new version of the game features female IT managers, staff, and other employees. Welcome to the 20th century. Since I finally got to play, I can say something about the game. It's quite a clever idea, but I think it should be categorized as a hybrid advergame/training game. The way the mechanics work, you pretty much have to upgrade your systems to the best Intel products you can afford. It took me ...

The Truth about Third Party Development on the LeapFrog Leapster
May 25, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Back in December, I wrote a review of the Leapster, LeapFrog's handheld device for interactive books and games. It's become a popular read, consistently ranking in the top few links in applicable Google searches. In that article, the main critique I offer is LeapFrog's failure to offer third party development for the device. Here's what I said: I hope LeapFrog reconsiders its decision not to open the platform to third party developers. I can imagine a productive and mutually beneficial collaboration between LeapFrog's research arm and independent game developers, but taking into account LeapFrog's 2002 public offering, I fear they ...

International Debt Relief Game
May 22, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Baltimore agency The Berndt Group created Bridging the Divide, a game meant to teach players about International debt relief, for an unnamed international institution. Here's the blurb from their website: We designed this interactive, educational Flash 5 game for an international institutional client to serve as a teaching tool for children from ages 8-13. "Bridging the Divide: Understanding International Debt Relief" is designed to educate and raise awareness about debt problems in other nations and how to build strategies to aid and assist those in need. The game asks players questions about debt relief. A number of random events and ...

The 'Games for Learning Seal': L is for LeapFrog?
May 19, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

One of the controversies uncovered at the E3 Education Arcade (summarized here and here) was the so-called "Games for Learning Seal." it's a big "L" that looks a lot like an ESRB Rating, intended to be applied to the packaging of educational games. Henry Jenkins's Comparative Media Program at MIT had been working on the idea of this seal, along with one of their corporate sponsors, LeapFrog. News of the seal hit the press hard, including coverage in CNN, USA Today, CBS News, MSNBC, and others. The purported goal of the seal is to "help consumers identify titles that teach ...

Gaming lemurs not so dumb after all
May 13, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

I have no idea what to make of this. A new study shows that lemurs, previously thought to be "cute but basically stupid" are actually quite bright when they are allowed to play videogames. ...

Education Arcade Summaries
May 13, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

This is just a meta-entry to point to my summaries of the Education Arcade conference at this year's E3. I figured it would be useful to let this rise to the top of our content for a few days at least. Education Arcade, day 1 Education Arcade, day 2 Update: my coverage has now been Slashdotted. Welcome Slashdot readers. Update 2: also appearing in The Adrenaline Vault (by Serious Games Initiative's Ben Sawyer), the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal, and Wired News. ...

Education Arcade, day 2
May 11, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Today the Education Arcade conference continued. As I did yesterday, I'll try to summarize the day as best I can. Once again, I am only going to cover the presentations here; I will offer my own comments on the conference and the issues it raised later. Today's session ended with a great conversation between Will Wright and Henry Jenkins, so even if you don't read the rest of my summary, you should read that. ...

Education Arcade, day 1
May 10, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Today witnessed Day 1 of the Education Arcade, organized by Henry Jenkins and the cool cats from MIT Comparative Media Studies. A couple hundred people filled the upstairs theater at the LA Convention Center. It's great to see so many people from many backgrounds -- including academics, teachers, administrators, game designers, journalists, TV producers, and others. Here's my rather lengthy summary of the panels from today. These are my best attempts at accurate notes from the presentations, but keep in mind that I am assuredly not properly representing the speakers in these summaries. Update: read my report on Education Arcade, ...

Interactive Design & Children Conference
April 21, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

The 3rd Annual International Conference for Interaction Design and Children (whew, call it IDC) takes place June 1 - 3 at the University of Maryland. Keynote rockstars include: Marvin Minsky (MIT), Alan Kay (HP), Seymour Papert (MIT/U. of Maine), Alice Cahn (Cartoon Network), Henry Jenkins (MIT), and Alice Wilder (Blue's Clues). (via miscellany is the largest category) ...

Real Life 2004
April 14, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Educational Simulations has released Real Life 2004, "the life simulation that gives you the opportunity to learn how people really live in other countries." From the USA Today review: This software creates a powerful learning opportunity for teens to experience other cultures. By allowing them to live another's life, the software makes learning personal. While photos and graphics would make this simulation more intriguing, it is nonetheless fascinating to play. ...

Leapster: Third Party Development after all?
April 13, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

I've complained before on WCG (1, 2) about the fact that LeapFrog hasn't opened the Leapster platform to third party developers. Instead, LF apparently develops the titles in-house. But I just discovered that game studio The Diversion Group out of California appears to have created the Math Baseball Leapster title (playable demo here). What's strange is that the studio just announced its opening this month, but their website dates the release of the Math Baseball title to March 21, 2003, over a year ago. Anyway, my suspicion is that LeapFrog hired Diversion Group to create this title as work-for-hire rather ...

CreditSafe, the Credit Card Management Game
February 26, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

The State of Illinois has developed a game called CreditSafe to teach kids how to manage credit cards. You choose or create a player, pick one or more credit cards, and then do "credit-safe shopping." The latter entails taking on projects like building a darkroom, setting up a home theater, and buying a car. You choose between taking funds out of your bank account or using your credit card (mine is from Rock Star Bank, har har). Your player gets paid every week and you have to manage the payments against your account balances, credit card balances, late charges, etc. ...

Some Notes on Educational Games
February 18, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

Middle-school kids in Boston have been playing an educational multi-user virtual environment developed by Harvard under a nice $760,000 NSF grant. This article about the game conveys a lot of the common ideas about kids being more engaged in games, but here is an appealing takeaway: But video games and the River City course differ in important respects. If video games are ultimately about entertainment and fantasy - "Slay the dragon and rescue the princess," as Dede put it - River City is rooted in real science. The curriculum conveys specific, academically targeted content related to biology and ecology. Its ...

Serious Games, Rhetorical Speech
January 3, 2004 - by Ian Bogost

There's a nice article in the Baltimore Sun about Serious Games, specifically focusing on Maryland's many local game studios and their work on games for military training. Registration is required to read the article. I am encouraged by and highly respectful of the idea of games for training and education. This is one of the major tenet's of the highly valuable Serious Games Project. However, I think we should be careful that we don't allow "seriousness" in games to be synonymous with training, and especially military training. I've been writing about simulations lately, and I may talk about this in ...

A Review of the Leapster
December 1, 2003 - by Ian Bogost

I finally got a chance to play a Leapster today. As I mentioned before, I think the product is positioned in the marketplace like no other -- a handheld educational/game device for kids 4 - 8. Update (12/1/2004): After you read this review, read my updated comments one year later. It's bigger than I expected, easily 10 inches across. This is necessary to accomodate the large LCD display (perhaps 4 inches diagonal?), but it may be slightly unwieldy in the hands of a 4 year old. The case is grey plastic, with a control pad on the left, two gamepad-style ...

Hacking the Leapster, plus Squeak and procedural literacy
November 24, 2003 - by Ian Bogost

From the Design Experience, Some interesting and helpful news on LeapFrog's new educational handheld, the Leapster. First, and most interesting to me, the device apparently runs on Macromedia Flash. I don't know why I found this surprising, but I did. Flash is becoming more and more popular in embedded devices in general. Second, and sadly, when Dave Bauer over at the Design Experience asked about 3rd party development, LeapFrog sent a quick NO in reply, explaining that all development is done in-house. Personally, I think this is foolish, but I'm sure LeapFrog is deadly neurotic about controlling the content on ...

Leapster, the educational handheld gaming device
November 1, 2003 - by Ian Bogost

Educational electronics manufacturer LeapFrog announced the availability of their new Leapster educational gaming handheld, calling it an alternative to Nintendo's GameBoy system, offering "educational alternative for portable game playing." Slashdot also reports on a LeapFrog spokesperson's comments on the launch: ...