That is an actual quote from one of the many interactive museum games I looked at in class today. Some are very well done (if not a little odd) like the ones at the Virtual Museum of Canada. Others, however are little more than typical boring old games appropriated for the museum websites (like dinosaur "Memory").
However, I found that even on the good interactive games, I could not get over the fact that I was essentially being forced to learn something, which is not really a good feeling. I play a lot of video games, and I think a hallmark of good game design is having the user perform tasks and learn things without them realizing that they are doing. In many games, you may be basically reduced to being a messenger or deliveryperson, but in good ones, you do not realize that you are doing it. This is the difference between say a Legend of Zelda and a bargain basement RPG. The good game is so immersive that you do not realize that you're performing mundane tasks, or even learning.
Another good recent example is Guitar Hero. This game teaches people the rudiments of rhythm and music, and they don't even realize it. They're just having fun pretending to be rock stars. Yet, after they play, everyone has a better understanding of rhythm and tempo, and many other rudimentary musical concepts. It doesn't do this outright. Rather it is an intuitive, piece of the game.
For educational games, I feel their sense of good game design reached its apex in the very early 90's: with Oregon Trail. Everyone remembers this. We all had fun trying to get to Oregon, and teasing our friends when the party members we named after them died of dysentery. And for the most part, no one thought they were learning about the inherent hardships and travails that a small family would encounter caravanning across the American West. Nope. We were hunting deer, and fording streams, and hoping our Wagon Leads didn't break their legs and die of gangrene. But though all that we all got the message: travelling across the old west was really, really hard. And many, many people died trying to do it. Well, if you could bottle whatever it was Oregon Trail had, and give it to nearly all of these museums, I think we'd all be in a better educational boat.
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2 comments:
Oh, Oregon Trail. I think you're totally correct--I enjoyed some of the games, but there was that nagging feeling of "This is educational" (or in some cases, like the one where you're an ankylosaur clubbing predators with your tail, "What's educational about this?!").
I really liked Amazon Trail, also by the company that produced Oregon Trail. They had some other games that didn't work so well for me (like one about bicycling--Tour de France? Or across Africa? I forget, but it was almost impossible to win). And SimLife, primitive as it was, also fits in that category of learning without knowing it. (The Myst games manage occasionally in terms of logic and problem-solving, but not always.)
I agree with you and M about Oregon Trail, a game I also remember. I also like the idea of educational multimedia making the educational part more an undercurrent that pulls people along versus something that is "front and center" in game construction. No one wants to be "talked at" or forced to learn. It is so much better when learning is an outcome of the process not the main focus itself - the fun task should be the focus.
To me this is might be a challenge not just for interactives but for museums more generally.
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