This was just something I was thinking about.  The way that young animals (and young humans) learn the skills they need for later life is often by playing.  Kittens pounce on each other, most prey animals run around…

On the other hand, human children (if they are lucky) often sit in an overcrowded classroom and listen to someone talking about a subject they are only half interested in and only a small number of them will use in many cases.  I mean, I have used trigonometry a few times and even calculus once (working out the distance travelled by a space-ship with constant acceleration in a videogame, which had to be accurate regardless of frame-rate), but the only time I have ever really been called on to discuss the Russian revolution or the causes of World War II are when I am talking to people who have had a few drinks.

The simple thing is that we learn best when we are interested and we are most interested when we being entertained rather than being talked at.  The details might not be accurate, but 300 probably did more to get people interested in Sparta and the Battle of Thermopylae than any Classical-Civilisations course.  Schindler’s List probably helped the average school-child care about the Holocaust than a page of statistics and the accounts of the first allied soldiers to actually see Auschwitz.

We can do better, so why don’t we?  I mean, you have ‘Darfur is dying’, but that game is bleak and not very well-known. For example…

We have the opportunity to immerse people in Shakespeare’s world, talking to Hamlet and to Othello.  We can show them Shylock and the awful conditions Venetian Jews endured in the Ghettos.  We can give context to his plays by letting the player walk out of the main scenes and see how Verona’s nobility lived for instance, why Capulet and Montague were at each other’s throats. 

The Assassin’s Creed games are set in some fascinating (and still culturally-relevant) periods of history, with political nuances that are actually quite fascinating.  What could we teach if we pushed it a little more toward the real events of the time and the real world?

I am not sure we could ever teach quantum-physics in a videogame (actually, I have some ideas on how), but why not play to our strengths?  I am sure there’s profit in it too…