A Five-Year-Old in Debt: Learning with Video Games

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/06/17/Ian_Bogost_at_X-Media_Lab_Serious_Gaming

Video games as educational tools? Believe it, says game designer and researcher Ian Bogost. Bogost recalls how Nintendo's hit game Animal Crossing taught his young son a valuable lesson about debt.

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Video games are usually viewed as a form of escapism: pure entertainment and shoot-em-up fantasy. But increasingly, games are being recognized as educational tools, or as deliverers of social or political messages.

This evolving medium is taking on complex environments and issues, and providing a platform for people to explore a world or situation in an interactive way. In this talk at the X Media Lab in Sydney, video game theorist and designer Ian Bogost gives an overview of how video games can benefit human existence. - Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Dr. Ian Bogost is a video game designer, critic, and researcher. He is Assistant Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC. His research and writing considers video games as an expressive medium, and his creative practice focuses on games about social and political issues.

Bogost is author of Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism (MIT Press 2006), recently listed among "50 books for everyone in the game industry," and of Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (MIT Press 2007), along with several other books and many other writings. He is a popular speaker and widely considered an influential thinker and doer in the video game industry and research community.

Category:

Science & Technology

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• gaming
• game
• teaching
• instructing
• instructions
• teach
• children
• kids
• value
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• debt
• cost
• costs
• money
• personal
• finance
• financial
• wealth
• management
• animal
• crossing
• fora.tv
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[pacquiaovsmarquezcom]

This is exactly what i was looking for. thank you for the informative post and keep up the good work!

[motivationalspeakPH]

Wow. Thankyou for sharing. I certainly did not think about this particular issue in that way before and it opened some serious discussion for me on this topic.

[petermurphy1989]

i subbed! :D



[electricgenerators1]

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[TaxTalkTube]

That is a hair-dont

[mrhouse1842]

My apartment mate in college insisted that all of us have houses in his Animal Crossing game. To get back at him I filled my house with oil barrels and crates.

[majormarkin]

ha ha his first words are, "so animal crossing is a wonderful game because you start by running away from home", parents are sure to pull out there wallets when they hear that.

[Anjimom]

Wow, that's great info.

[TempestWriter]

Continued... I know your going to say that players wont learn hard work or that life has consequences, but I would argue that games are supposed to teach that. And that's ok. Life itself can and will teach people that.

[TempestWriter]

I suppose, but that's the beauty of video games. They allow you act out virtual situations and give you the freedom to make mistakes. When you make mistakes you learn and move on. Let's take strategy games for example, because its just a game, the player is allowed to make tactical choices without having to worry about whether or not people are dying because of their choices. As they are allowed to explore, they can learn what works and what dosn't without having any real consequences.