Video Gaming Your Way to Knowledge

Posted on March 19, 2009
Filed Under Media | By Jessica Gross

Mary Flanagan, a digital humanities professor at Dartmouth College, and the team at Values at Play create video games designed to foster social awareness. Flanagan and her colleagues’ newest game: “Layoff,” a child of the recession.

“Layoff” features workers, whom the gamer can send to the “unemployment line” in groups of three. But these workers are replaced with employees who can’t be fired. When the gamer scrolls over the original workers, messages about their family lives and dreams appear; when the gamer scrolls over the replacement workers, the messages are “self-justifying platitudes or blithe appraisals of their company’s outlook.” And during the game, a ticker at the bottom of the screen tells of real-life companies behaving badly.

Although she admits that her game vilifies bankers and financiers, Ms. Flanagan insisted that her only agenda was to raise consciousness and encourage people to “take a stand.” It’s up to them to decide what that stand entails, she said.

(Source: Chronicle of Higher Education Wired Campus Blog)

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