Canadian History Civ 3 mod

I had a dream last night, of a virtual world in which players earned in-game bux by doing quizzes, and history tests, and menial tasks like cleaning offices or painting walls, or choosing career paths like 'scientist' and then doing science-based quests, all the while learning 'real' things. It was weird, and because it was a dream, completely wonderful. It taught straight-up achievement capitalism a bit much though (as they do), and then my dream went down the Affluenza route, and started teaching players that material goods don't necessarily make you happy; also my loser drug-dealer player-character got shot and killed (also as they do) and there was permadeath, which  woke me up.

Educational play. It's interesting: if you call it edutainment, everybody feels a bit dirty. Call it interactive education, and the feeling is possibly more one of curiosity. Games teach, so what are we teaching?

News today: a Civ 3 mod teaching Canadian History has been released by 2K Games, and donated to schools across Canada:

Produced by international media firm Bitcasters, the mod will be packaged with copies of Civilization III and donated to 100,000 Canadian high school students so that they may explore and learn about their country's past and even alter outcomes of historical events.

Developed over a two year time, the game allows players to take control of one of Canada’s early European or Aboriginal civilizations, making important decisions ranging from planning their settlement and crops, to determining when to wage war or make peace.

Can't find a screenshot anywhere, disappointingly.

Comments

[bob]

If only "The Sims" had been like your dream! ("The Sims" always seemed perverse to me, like a game version of "American Psycho"- all exaggerated consumer culture and grisly, sadistic deaths.)

I really can't imagine any use of Civ 3 that would be educational in any meaningful way. I must admit, I haven't played any of the Civ games in quite a while, but my recollection was that it very much didn't reflect how civilizations develop in the real world, but instead perpetuated very deterministic, euro-centric notions of "civilization." That's fine for an empire-building strategy game, but if it's being used with the assumption that it reflects reality in some way, those who play it will develop warped notions of the real world. Game design has almost nothing to do with reality, and educational games really have to be developed with education as the primary goal, although I suspect they'd end up less game-like and more of a simulation as a result. Using simulation in education is problematic as well, though. Simulations, by their nature, encode the prejudices of the developers, and one has to internalize those assumptions to a certain degree to "play" the simulation. If those assumptions are critically examined, then the simulation might be a way of seeing how a set of presuppositions lead to particular outcomes, or the strengths and flaws of a particular model, but ultimately, creating simulations would be more educational than playing them.

[Bigwig]

Theres something to be said for not over analyzing something thats probably just supposed to generate interest in learning more about canadian history.

[bob]

The increasing use of games/simulations in educational contexts raise important questions, the foremost being: is the material in question at all accurate or educational? One could never justify making the statement about, say, a physics textbook being used in schools that "it's supposed to generate interest in physics, let's not over-analyze whether the 'facts' presented are actually true." I'm sure "God of War" would "generate interest" for some young people in Greek and Roman culture- that doesn't mean it belongs in schools. (And if it were making a claim to historical accuracy, it *really* wouldn't belong there.)

"Not over analyzing" educational material is how we ended up with half the US population believing the earth is only 6000 years old.

[bigwig]

Video games are why the united states has such a strong religious background! why didn't i think of this before!?

Sorry pal, contrary to popular belief, religious people are not retarded.

lighten up.

[bob]

"...religious people are not retarded"
Whoa! I most certainly didn't say that- in fact, my point was nearly the opposite. I used a bad example, but I was simply saying that the educational system fails to disabuse students of some pretty basic misunderstandings about the world, and new educational material, whether it be a "game" or text, shouldn't introduce *added* misunderstandings. (Most Americans don't believe in a young Earth because of religion, per se, but because the evidence has never been properly presented to them. Many believe, thanks to the silence of the educational system, that the scientific evidence supports their views. Most of these people are not so religiously extreme, or if you prefer, "stupid" that they would reject the evidence if it was ever presented to them.) No need to get personal.