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A few weeks ago I spotted a fascinating article in The Economist, which I shall now link for convenience right here.
Quest to Learn is taking a risky road, considering that mainstream media and popular politicians are still more comfortable demonizing video games instead of accepting them. Silencing the people who turn video games as a convenient scapegoat will be a lot easier to do if this project is a success, and I would say that is a worthy goal. Rather than tout Quest to Learn specifically, however, I'd rather ask a hypothetical "How could RPGs be used in this sort of endeavor?" question.
Based on the article, Quest to Learn is already employing games that would fit into the Western strategy genre. So how could a typical RPG be employed to have students learn from it? Keeping the game fun, while nice, is not vital since the students are a captive audience, and thus many of the usual rules in the genre can be thrown out.
Since combat is supposed to make you learn things instead of being fun, it could involve not letting an enemy actually be defeated until the student performs well. Doing well in combat would of course require solving a math problem quickly, or something similar. Puzzles also make up a mammoth part of many RPGs, and tweaking them to teach things like grammar usage or math problems is easily done. Reading comprehension, such as making the students pay close attention to what NPCs are saying, is another easy thing to do.
I can't deny that making an RPG with all this hypothetical content is probably a harder sell than making less complex games that each specialize in a smaller-scale learning experience. Making a game for the government means that the usual rules of development are rendered irrelevant, however. Marketing to the government on behalf of education is completely different than making games look attractive to retailers, and since the taxpayers are footing the bill development would doubtless be completely different. I don't know that I would want to play an RPG made specifically as a teaching instrument on its own, but it could be a really effective means of education. Hopefully this experiment will be a success so we can see more changes in the educational system to reflect the potential of technology to help.
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