However, pleasure and learning are deeply intertwined as for each situation that demands action a human’s brain checks whether the action promises pleasure. ![]() Current educational games are still, to a large extent, less motivating and attractive to players than their commercial relatives, despite both depicting real-life topics. Secondly, learning about the views and approaches of entertainment game developers who deal with geographical topics could also be valuable for the educational game industry. Their approach to incorporating the named real-life issues in particular should be investigated, for a variety of reasons. ![]() However, in order to explore the potentials and limitations of the medium for geography education thoroughly to enable meaningful teaching applications, not only the games themselves and their players should be taken into account when studying the medium, but also the developers. Some studies already indicate the effectiveness of using games in educational applications (for a general overview on all kinds of games see ), also specifically in the context of geography education (e.g., ). Consequently, there are a number of reasons to incorporate games into informal and formal geography learning. Additionally, such games hold potential in the areas of motivation, representation of geography-relevant knowledge and the need for its application, contextual learning, and systemic thinking. This widespread engagement with these games illustrates the large influence they may have. 10), and a large proportion of adolescents engage in digital gaming frequently in their free time-around 68% of 12- to 19-year-olds in Germany do so daily or several times a week, with only 8% not engaging with digital games at all. Such games are very popular (see an overview on sales in, p. For example, urban development is at the core of games such as Cities: Skylines and SimCity, climate change affects the game world in Civilization VI, and in political simulation games such as Tropico and Democracy the player governs migration, amongst other things. The results presented in our study may help teachers to prepare reflection on such misrepresentations in class, or designers to become more aware of the educational implications of different forms of game realism.Ĭommercial digital games also address these issues. This approach may lead to the depiction of stereotypes and common misconceptions. We found the most problematic one to be the prioritization of player expectations for the sake of perceived realism. However, we also identified approaches that can result in questionable presentations of real societal issues. ![]() In many cases, the interviewees’ approach to incorporating real-world issues can be regarded as beneficial for their games’ educational potential, and some designers even pursued learning goals. Therefore, we have developed a model of realism in games and conducted 9 interviews with 10 experts from the entertainment game industry about their understanding of and dealing with realism concerning the represented geographical topics. However, in order to be fully able to determine the games’ educational potential and to instruct meaningful reflection on them in class, the designers’ approaches to realism regarding these topics need to be understood. Digital entertainment games frequently address current societal issues that are also dealt with in geography education, such as climate change or sustainable city development, and give various opportunities for learning.
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