The Bergengotian

Tegnap este a Discovery új, számítógépes játékokról szóló dokufilmje (Rise of The Video Game, nagyon jó amúgy, [torrent] [slashdot kritika]) kapcsán találtam meg Henry Jenkins blogját (még ha a tizenpár oldalas bejegyzésekkel kicsit feszíti a blogmintműfaj kereteit), aki az MIT Comparative Media Studies programjában kutat számítógépes játékokat. Ajánlott szakállvakargatós olvasmány mindenkinek, én most csak egy bejegyzést emelnék ki.

Egy projektnek a Neverwinter Nights-hoz csináltak egy modot, melyben a pletyka forradalmi hírek terjedését lehet modellezni, átélni a Colonial Williamsburgben. Mindezt osztálytermi oktatóprogramnak szánva:

NWN’s conversation system was well equipped to produce this desired effect. We started by making computer-controlled characters remember what they were told. Then, when they were within a specific range of another character, they would go over to them and share the knowledge they had previously received. A player could pass one piece of information to a non-player character and then watch the news spread virally across town. Once we realized that we could make such a „gossip” system work, we saw all sorts of new pedagogical possibilities. While we originally envisioned a game focused around trades and jobs, much like a visit to Colonial Williamsburg, we began to re-center Revolution around the social and informational mechanisms of the era. In effect, we made Revolution a game about the oral culture of late 18th-century America. Students would need to understand how this oral culture was shaped by the social, political, racial, and gender strata of the time in order to play Revolution effectively.

• Itt a teljes cikk a Revolution c. oktatójátékról