Download a Revolution Today

Whilst admiring Nicholas Hunter’s work at MIT, I stumbled across the download directory for Revolution. Revolution is a role playing game that puts students into the heart of the American Revolution at the grassroots level. Students choose to play a townsperson and experience a simulation of revolutionist tendencies at the grass roots level.

Revolution is one of those games I’ve read quite a bit about. Squire and Jenkins have mentioned it in numerous papers, as have others. I am very interested in getting to play the game.

Revolution is a modification of the Neverwinter Nights game engine. In order to run Revolution, a copy of NWN must be installed on your computer. Rather than battling dragons and other baddies, the NWN level editor was used to create the colonial environment in which the action takes place.

Hunter was the lead programmer in this endeavor, thus the links from him to the download directory. He writes on his portfolio page that the Revolution files overwrite some of the key NWN files:

Warning: This will overwrite some critical files for Neverwinter Nights that will require a “Critical Rebuild” patch to restore.  While NWN is still playable in this state, it looks very odd.  The game must be played as one of the seven premade characters that the zip file provides: Robert Carter Nicholas, William Waddill, John Lamb, Cathy Grimes, Dan, Hannah, or Margaret Chadwell.

The file to download is revolution.zip.

C.S. Loh Receives Positive Press

Dr. Christian Sebastian Loh over at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, was the subject of a very positive article today in his local paper, The Southern Illinoisan. Reporter Ashley Wiehle discussed his graduate courses teaching teachers how to use the level editor in Neverwinter Nights to create educationally appropriate gaming environments for middle and high school students.

One of the best quotes from the article:

Participants can create games that illustrate any point they are making in lessons for their students.

“You can find a real lesson plan and convert it into a game,” Loh said.

On a personal note, I got to meet Dr. Loh at a conference a few years back. He is actively involved in the concept of appropriating video games for educational purposes, and a tireless proponent of the cause. It is refreshing to see his local paper take such a positive stance on his work.

References

Wiehle, A. (2007, July 16). Teachers create video games for classroom use. The Southern Illinoisan. [Online]. Available: http://www.southernillinoisan.com/articles/2007/07/16/local/20834712.txt