Controversy over "Borecraft"
Something of an argument is brewing over a recent article on Slate. Justin Peters wrote “World of Borecraft: Never Play a Game that’s Trying to Teach You Something.” His basic point is educational efforts generally tend to sap the fun out of games.
Ian Bogost, famed video game designer, professor, and author, took issue with some of the criticisms leveled by Peters. He outlined his stance in a nice discussion over at Raph Koster’s blog, then left a general summary on the comments section of the Slate article.
Bogost has some well-thought-out comments, particularly when addressing the “boring” aspect of serious games. It boils down to the fact that serious games serve functions besides just having fun. Comparing his games with multi-million dollar edutainment efforts such as the Civilization series is like comparing apples to oranges, Bogost maintains. Peters criticized serious games creators for making products more alluring to people who don’t like video games. Bogost counters, that’s the point.
Read the comments on Koster’s site to see what several prominent people in the field have to say about the whole issue. For a game to be educational, should it be fun, or more focused on the educational outcomes? Should a game be designed as educational from the ground up, or should educational outcomes merely reflect a side benefit from playing a fun game? These are interesting questions that practitioners are tackling.
References
Peters, J. World of Borecraft: Never play a game that’s trying to teach you something. [Online]. Available: http://www.slate.com/id/2169019/fr/rss/
Business Games, Business Lit, Game Discussion, Game Studies, Game Writing, Media, Questions, Research, Serious Games, Slate, Video Game Research, Web 2.0 | John Rice | 
June 30, 2007 9:51 am
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Bogost Defends Serious Games « Educational Games Blog — August 3, 2007 @ 6:47 pm
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By online games, June 30, 2007 @ 8:37 pm
I absolutely agree with Justin. Games must be fun, only for fun. Any educational element makes a game non-natural and always decreases an entertainment value of the game.
By LSS, July 2, 2007 @ 7:06 am
Often times it seems like they are splitting hairs on this debate. Target the particular audience and tailor your approach. We should move away from the one-size fits all in ed. anyway and current tech allows us to accomplish this.