The Boom and Bust and Boom of Educational Games
The history of computer-based learning games has a story arc that rises dramatically, and then plummets steeply. In the early days of personal computers, creative minds drawn to the new medium explored a variety of approaches to learning games, ranging from behaviorist drill-and-practice exercises,...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Springer-Verlag
2015
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/93079 |
| _version_ | 1826193308152496128 |
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| author | Klopfer, Eric Osterweil, Scot |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning Klopfer, Eric Osterweil, Scot |
| author_sort | Klopfer, Eric |
| collection | MIT |
| description | The history of computer-based learning games has a story arc that rises dramatically, and then plummets steeply. In the early days of personal computers, creative minds drawn to the new medium explored a variety of approaches to learning games, ranging from behaviorist drill-and-practice exercises, to open-ended environments suitable for either exploration or construction. Early practitioners were inventing new forms, and even the fundamentally limited drill-and-practice games were infused with a measure of creative energy and humor. The late 1980s and mid 1990s were a heyday for the CDROM edutainment era. However, this era came to a crashing halt as the Internet dawned and the market for edutainment dried up in the late 1990s. Despite the downfall of the edutainment era there is new energy and perspective behind the idea of learning games. While edutainment of the 1990s style has gone, there is a new take on what learning games can be. In this era, we are finding that “making a game out of learning is most certainly not the way to approach the development of learning games. However, finding the fun in that learning” and devising ways to focus on and enhance that fun as a core game dynamic is a good strategy. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T09:37:14Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/93079 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T09:37:14Z |
| publishDate | 2015 |
| publisher | Springer-Verlag |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/930792022-09-30T15:42:00Z The Boom and Bust and Boom of Educational Games Klopfer, Eric Osterweil, Scot Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning Klopfer, Eric Klopfer, Eric Osterweil, Scot The history of computer-based learning games has a story arc that rises dramatically, and then plummets steeply. In the early days of personal computers, creative minds drawn to the new medium explored a variety of approaches to learning games, ranging from behaviorist drill-and-practice exercises, to open-ended environments suitable for either exploration or construction. Early practitioners were inventing new forms, and even the fundamentally limited drill-and-practice games were infused with a measure of creative energy and humor. The late 1980s and mid 1990s were a heyday for the CDROM edutainment era. However, this era came to a crashing halt as the Internet dawned and the market for edutainment dried up in the late 1990s. Despite the downfall of the edutainment era there is new energy and perspective behind the idea of learning games. While edutainment of the 1990s style has gone, there is a new take on what learning games can be. In this era, we are finding that “making a game out of learning is most certainly not the way to approach the development of learning games. However, finding the fun in that learning” and devising ways to focus on and enhance that fun as a core game dynamic is a good strategy. 2015-01-20T18:56:06Z 2015-01-20T18:56:06Z 2013 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/BookItem 978-3-642-37041-0 978-3-642-37042-7 0302-9743 1611-3349 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/93079 Klopfer, Eric, and Scot Osterweil. “The Boom and Bust and Boom of Educational Games.” Transactions on Edutainment IX (2013): 290–296. en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-37042-7_21 Transactions on Edutainment IX Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Springer-Verlag Klopfer |
| spellingShingle | Klopfer, Eric Osterweil, Scot The Boom and Bust and Boom of Educational Games |
| title | The Boom and Bust and Boom of Educational Games |
| title_full | The Boom and Bust and Boom of Educational Games |
| title_fullStr | The Boom and Bust and Boom of Educational Games |
| title_full_unstemmed | The Boom and Bust and Boom of Educational Games |
| title_short | The Boom and Bust and Boom of Educational Games |
| title_sort | boom and bust and boom of educational games |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/93079 |
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