eLearning Game; have you produced or used one?

Following on from the presentation I attended last week with Angel Adrian (Education Enhancement Conference; Interactive Games), I thought I’d ask a question … have any of you created a game?

Any kind of game, whether it’s simple text-based or fully interactive and immersive (flash?) doesn’t matter, I’d be really grateful to hear from anyone – please reply to this post.

I am working with Angel to see if we can make the subject of Contract Law more interesting by using an immersive ‘game’ simulation. From the Learning Technologies exhibition in London earlier this year, and from this video/post about Caspian Learning; Game Based Learning 2009 we are in discussion to see if their technology will be appropriate for us;

• to be able to generate the game and scene/interactions ourselves,
• to link to external library and audio/video resources,
• to be simple and effective enough for all types of users to play and learn, and
• to be reusable.

According to the Thinking Worlds website the answer is a clear yes. The technical spec is very encouraging, publishing the game is easy and can be done for many different mediums (CD, SCORM, etc).

Why not play one of their demos, created with the very software that is available at a very good price (for academic uses) online; Rome in Danger.

While the students who will using the first version of the game(s) are not the typical 18-20 Generation Y students (it is being targeted at the mature students on the fully online International Business & Management degree) that does not mean it will be any easier. Far from it. If anything it will be more of a challenge as we will need to spend more time scene-setting and producing instructions and guides on what they need to do and how they do it.

Please let me know what experiences you have with games in education (using, playing, creating, storyboarding, etc) or with using the Thinking Worlds system from Caspian.