Lately it seems you can play simulation computer games for just about any scenario. Sim games allow players to control factors from populations to pollutants, transport systems to stock trading, theme park attractions to family relationships and football teams. Employers use commercial sims to train their workforces. The Dutch Ministry of the Environment even employs a sim game, NitroGenius, to help understand better the effects of nitrogen on their environment.
Mostly available on PC, sim games do however have a broader reach that has recently seen some become available on handheld computers, as 'fun' websites, and have potential application for mobile phones - plus cross-platform promise. Additionally, many of these sorts of games might be employed to good effect in an educational environment.
One of the simplest simulation games is popEx, a web-based trading game. Registered players collect a virtual £5,000 to spend on shares in their favourite pop bands and artists, monitor performance over daily periods, and trade shares according to the market. The value of shares in popEx depends on the numbers being either bought or sold - but that itself usually depends on the acts' exposure and popularity in the real world. Dividends worth a percentage of the share price are also awarded on a weekly basis, calculated according to bands' and artists' chart performance, public appearances, concerts, newspaper inches and so on.
The popEx interface is simple text and numbers on a black background, with charts and stats to indicate the relative performance of each act across 24 hour periods - the more advanced player can even monitor stat changes and fluctuations in share values almost in real-time. Though popEx is primarily a game (and music news website), it could well form the basis for learning and practising some of the basic tenets of share trading, as well as stimulating maths investigations.
More specifically educational are programs such as LavaMind's triumvirate of business strategy games, Zapitalism, Gazillionaire, and Profitania, plus Interactive Magic's Capitalism and Capitalism Plus. These are classic sim games in the vein of SimCity or Civilisation (or even Monopoly), with players conducting simulated business deals to develop successful trade empires, rather than building cities or pitching armies into battle against each other.
Much has been said of the educational value of games like the SimCity franchise, notably in the TEEM report on the educational use of computer games from 2001. SimCity even forms the basis of the national US young engineers competition FutureCity. However, these are not games that can be played in quick bursts and are certainly not useable applications within a traditional school timetable.
What seems perhaps more important than the actual content of sim games is the extent to which games technology permits users to experience a simulated version of actual workplace practice. Increasingly our children will be entering into employment where issues of working across networks, remote access, and collaboration across locations, using a variety of devices and multimedia resources, will be the norm.
Some projects facilitate these kinds of technologies in work with children already. See for example the VERTEX project at Middlesex University, which is an investigation of children's communication and collaboration using shared 3D worlds. The Motivate initiative introduces video-conferencing between maths classrooms and maths experts to give children an experience of collaboration on maths tasks and of presenting reports of their work to an audience beyond the classroom walls.
But major potential resides elsewhere, and with technologies more immediately in the hands of children. Network-enabled games consoles, which are just around the corner in the UK, will allow players access to the kinds of cooperative and competitive games which have until now been the stronghold of the hardcore PC gaming market, furthering even more the shift in emphasis from the model of the games player as an isolated loner.
Similarly, a new Nintendo item, the GameCube GameBoy Player, which allows you to link your handheld GameBoy to your GameCube, could open up a great opportunity to simulate working practices. Simon White, Senior Technical Consultant with Oxford LEA, reports that using these devices together on certain games allows you as players, 'to enter your tactics on the little screen so your opponent can't see, then watch the result on the big screen together'.
It is a model that White thinks provides a possible bridge into the kinds of sophisticated computer simulations used in many industries; 'this is only a short leap from taking a modern PDA, entering in commands and behaviours, then connecting back [to the simulation] and watching the results on the ecosystem, economy, or political landscape.' In other words, playing becomes a kind of training routine for understanding the ways in which many major industries will be working as they increasingly embrace technology.
Modern PDAs, interconnected GameCubes and GameBoys are, however, far from ubiquitous. More likely to be found in the pockets of children are mobile phones. Major issues, of course, surround the use of phones in education. Many schools, entirely understandably, ban their use by pupils during the school day. Nevertheless, mobile phones in the near future could possess far more useful potential.
Nokia's N-Gage product, unveiled in November 2002, is a hybrid phone and handheld gaming system. It is set apart from Nintendo's GameBoy machines in that its projected games will all make true use of the phone's Bluetooth and cellular network wireless connectivity to enable peer-to-peer gaming both locally and remotely. With SEGA as Nokia's key partner developing games for N-Gage, this could mark a significant departure in the way that players approach games.
While it remains to be seen if either products like this, or indeed the market in mobile phone games more generally, really takes off1, N-Gage and its like could become interesting platforms for playing simulation games that truly model the ways in which adults will work in the future, collaboratively managing scenarios and implementing solutions to the games' problems.
Indeed, it is this thinking which underpins the MIT Games-to-Teach project concept, DreamHaus, an engineering, physics and maths game for connected communities of non-games enthusiasts, which allows players to design and simulate architectural systems. The 'character' within the game even uses a PDA to transmit information in a direct simulation of how that character would work in the real world.
Arguably, in the future of schools with wireless connectivity and portable devices, it will be possible for whole classes to collaboratively contribute to large-scale simulations. By taking field data using a PDA, then feeding it back into the simulation, children could learn valuable lessons about the usefulness of simulation materials in the process of planning projects across many industries or understanding ecological phenomena.
These are concepts which need trialling and testing. In the meantime, collect your virtual five large from popEx, pick your favourite pop, and enjoy your play.
Notes:
1. Market for mobile phone gaming
www.theinquirer.net/?article=7276
Links:
Nitrogenius - www.serc.nl/play2learn/products/nitrogenius/frameset.htm
popEx - www.popex.com
Zapitalism, Gazillionaire & Profitania - www.lavamind.com/
TEEM resources - www.teem.org.uk/howtouse/resources
FutureCity - www.futurecity.org
VERTEX - www.vertex.mdx.ac.uk
Motivate - motivate.maths.org/
Nokia N-Gage - press.nokia.com/PR/200211/880085_5.html
Nintendo GameCube GameBoy Player - www.nintendong.com/cgi/EpFZZkApEZWrLMplVn.php
DreamHaus - cms.mit.edu/games/education/Dreamhaus/Intro.htm
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