The term “serious games” has been coined to describe games that have an educational purpose and non- entertainment goals. Educators are taking a hard look at one type of serious game, massively multiplayer educational games, and finding strong potential for teaching and learning. These games are still time- consuming and often expensive to produce, but practical examples can easily be found. Interest is high and developments in the open-source arena are bringing them closer to mainstream adoption year by year.
The interest and trend of educational gaming has accelerated considerably in the last year. Discussion and research has continued, identifying games that are goal-oriented and those that are more social in nature; games that are easy to construct and play, and those that are more complex and time-consuming; and games developed expressly for education versus commercial games that are appropriated for educational use. One genre that offers interesting potential for education is massively multiplayer online (MMO) games, which bring many players together in activities that are sometimes collaborative and sometimes competitive, generally goal-oriented, and often tied to a storyline or theme.
Like other kinds of games, educational MMOs combine a carefully crafted setting with specific educational objectives. What makes these games especially compelling and effective is their multiplayer nature—students can work in small or large groups, or can pursue goals solo, all in the context of a larger community of player-learners. Role-playing is a possible, but not essential, component. Other possible interactions include mentoring of newer players by more experienced ones, competitive team activities, and collaborative world-building.
Although it is common to picture these games in the setting of a 3D virtual world—and indeed some of them take place in such spaces—that is not a requirement, and many popular MMOs are text-based or built on simple graphical interfaces. Experiments with educational massively multiplayer games date back ten or more years to MOOs and MUDs (text-based multiplayer environments); educational examples encouraged learners to describe and build parts of the real world, or immersed them in descriptions and interactions in other languages.
We are now seeing a resurgence of interest in educational MMOs. For example, the Synthetic Worlds Initiative at Indiana University is creating an MMO, set in a 3D virtual world, about the life and times of William Shakespeare, in which students are transported to Shakespeare’s world and learn about the customs, language, and events of the time. In general, these games are still relatively rare, due to the difficulty and cost of producing them. Cost will become less of a factor as open-source MMO gaming engines are further developed, and within a few years it is likely that educational MMO games will be commonplace in a variety of disciplines. Open- source efforts like WorldForge (www.worldforge.org), and low-cost engines like Multiverse (www.multiverse.net) may be successful in lowering the barrier to development of these complex games.
It seems clear that games can be effectively applied in many learning contexts. They can engage learners in ways other tools and approaches cannot, and their value for learning has been established through decades of research. MMOs in the entertainment sector have been seen to attract and retain players; as of July 2006, there were over thirteen million active subscriptions to MMOs worldwide (see www.mmogchart.com).
Increasingly, we know more about how games work and how to apply them to teaching and learning. Over the past year, awareness and interest in educational gaming has grown, research has continued, and further forays into bringing games into the classroom have advanced our understanding and led to a more widespread acceptance of this trend. As work progresses on open- source MMO engines, it will eventually become more common to see MMOs that offer immersive, engaging experiences in a variety of disciplines. It will still require effort and thought to create appropriate spaces and design compelling problems, but the very nature of MMOs lends itself to use by many people, spreading the benefits to many students.
Another aspect of MMOs that is of value to the educational community is the types of activities they make possible. These games offer opportunities for both discovery-based and goal-oriented learning, and can be very effective ways to develop team- building skills. It is possible to design activities that cannot be completed by a single player; a group must work together to strategize, develop a solution, maximize the various talents of the team members, and execute their plan in concert to succeed. The game teaches much more than just the controls required to move through the world.
A sampling of massively multiplaye reducational gaming applications across disciplines includes the following:
The following links provide examples of applications for massively multiplayer educational gaming.
The following articles and resources are recommended for those who wish to learn more about massively multiplayer educational gaming.