Welcome to the DIT Experimental Gaming Group Wiki.
EGG (the Experimental Gaming Group) is a cross faculty research group for digital games in the DIT. EGG has members from the School of Computing, Digital Media Centre and the Learning Technology Group. Our aim is to develop courses and research on digital games, serious games, robots and toys.
I wonder if I could get an invite to visit there? (They might have a hard time getting me to leave!)
I recently watched a video podcast (via iTunes) from the Learning Games Initiative from the University of Arizona regarding culture and language acquisition through game interactivity. Imagine playing World of Warcraft or The Sims if the language and culture presented was all Turkish or Chinese. It would add context to the ‘roleplay’ situations often presented to students learning languages (as I recall from French, German and Mandarin classes). Students would also be better motivated to discover – though the game has to be enjoyable. I certainly enjoyed playing my Francais versions of Age of Empires and Call of Duty 2 I picked up in Paris one year.
Though I’d not consider my own mis-spent youth to have been particularly educational (too much Manic Miner and Saboteur), I think that games are already educational. Consider that I’d never heard of a Banyan Tree before playing games and look at the Myst games as examples of how an entire culture can be related through a hypercard stack in the form of a game (and consider how this can be tied into Location-based services turning a tourist guide into a game, a challenge and a learning aide).
I have some plans in this regard. Looking for a few good eggs.