I wrote some time ago about the possibility of failure in attempting to develop serious games to teach academic subjects (Failures in GBL). The FutureLab Flux blog has a comment from Ted Castranova on another key issue – that developing good fun games, whether educational or not, may be several orders of magnitude more expensive than Universities can afford. The context here is his Arden: World of Shakespeare project which had to be scaled back from its original goals. Still a project well worth a look, however.
Sylvia Martinez has written on this topic also (e.g. here), and it’s interesting to see this issue gain prominence – especially as GBL projects are receiving increased amounts of funding, yet nowhere near the level of funding awarded to commercial projects. Taking the Arden lessons to heart, and carefully scoping projects will be vital in the success of any GBL project.
January 11, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Hi Daniel,
Thanks for the link! I really enjoyed going back and re-reading the conversation in the comments of your Failures in GBL post.
Having been in both academic and game developer company environments, I think the problem goes much deeper than who can afford it. There’s an atmosphere that surrounds game development that is hard to explain. It’s like being in a garage-band or an exotic expedition. All else pales in comparison to the mission.
I truly think some of the fun of games comes from being able to feel that love translated through the screen.