Oh boy! A blog that actually makes sense and has a point! I'm going to start calling this "Wednesday for Thought." Or something clever. Leave me alone, I'm finishing up an article for submission to gamesbeat.com, putting together my first video rant, and trying to keep my cat from going completely mental (I don't think she's had enough catnip this week.) Once more unto the breach. See you tomorrow!
I have a problem, and it’s all TED’s fault. Every time I come across a link to a TED talk, I go down a six-hour-deep rabbit hole of educational videos. When I emerge, I swear I’m an expert in cognitive psychology, astrophysics, or international politics. Someone give me a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, I’m ready for my students. I might think I’m in A Beautiful Mind, but it’s more like the episode of Futurama where Fry thinks he’s a robot.
My most recent adventure to the bowels of TED.com did lead me to something fairly interesting, however.
If you don’t have seventeen minutes to spend watching that video, I’ll give you the gist of it: Cognitive researcher Daphne Bavelier runs down the positive aspects of action video games on the brain, mostly as they relate to vision and multitasking. After espousing the positive aspects of moderate action game use, she goes on to say that she’d like to develop a game that was not only fun to play, but that nested the beneficial qualities she’d just finished covering.
And this got me thinking about games that have not only been improving my ability to track multiple moving objects or bolster my reaction time, but that have really taught me something subconsciously. One experience in particular stood out: Assassin’s Creed II.
During college, I had the good fortune of traveling around Europe for a semester on a literary tour. About a month in to the trip, I found myself in Venice. After getting settled in, I had some time to myself and decided to go for a wander. I didn’t know the city, and wanted to grab a beer at a local joint and soak in the atmosphere, as is my wont when I’m in a new place.
And wander I did. I was completely lost. Compounding my trouble, it was three days before the start of Carnevale di Venezia, and the streets weren’t exactly scant. So I kept turning, down one narrow alley to a dead end, back again and another narrow alley. Lost. That is until I rounded a corner and found myself in Piazza San Marco.
 |
| Purty, ain't it? |
Almost immediately, the entirety of ACII came flooding back, and I knew exactly where I was. Even without the benefit of Ezio’s parkour skills, I managed to find my way from Piazza San Marco to the Rialto Bridge, where I promptly wandered into a smokey bar full of locals, cheap beer, and salmon mousse. Memory synched.
It bothers me that more games haven’t taught me something as valuable as even my basic geographical understanding of Venice. Games rarely teach me much of anything. In some sort of ethereal way I might come to better understand character development or people in general, or I might find something like Bioshock Infinite’s city of Columbia interesting enough that I spend some time studying American exceptionalism, but games rarely teach me anything in the way that Assassin’s Creed II taught me the layout of Venice.
And perhaps that’s what games need. Not to suddenly bear the burden of the classroom, but to own up to a social responsibility inherent in their existence as an artistic medium. If games can improve the lives of those who play them, isn’t it the responsibility of developers to do so? If they already improve the cognitive functions mentioned in Bavelier’s TED talk, why can’t they take it a step further and give the end user not just an experience, but some tangible knowledge as well?
Assassin’s Creed II was far from an “educational video game” in the derogatory sense, but it certainly educated me.
No comments:
Post a Comment