At first thought this of course sound reeeeeeally lame, but take a second to imagine it's potential...
*This whole section is basically a preface and can skip to the game idea below if you wish*------
It's no secret that most of us hate doing school work, and this is probably due to (in part at least) the way the material is presented to us. So much of school work is reading material, memorizing it, working problems over and over, or whatever tedious exercises the course may require. However, what if we were to take all the academic material and put it into a form that we all enjoy: a video game!
This has obviously been thought of (ie. the whole edutainment department) and i blame their failures of making it fun because they focus on educating and basically ignore the fun.
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The Idea!--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Starting off i had the idea of making servers dedicated to a specific subject, ie. "*server name* *subject*". The game as a whole would be very similar to WoW: levels, grinding, instances, grouping, etc... I thought it would be cool to have a long term goal to achieve, like an evil entity, to let the players/students have a sense of accomplishment even if the reward of learning isn't enough. The final boss could be like receiving your high school diploma or bachelors degree. Imagine how happy you would be when..... just think about it
The players would start off at the difficulty equal to whatever grade they are in, this way newcomers won't have to grind through 1st grade crap. Quests would be like assignments, but wouldn't be worded as so, the quests could still be a part of the story. Mobs could be problems to solve or facts to memorize. Of course here would require an innovative game mechanic so it would be fun to kill mobs yet still be educative... thats officially a new word in my personal dictionary... (I have some ideas regarding such a mechanic, but would take way too long to explain). Instances could be group assignments/projects/practice-tests and basically any aspect of an MMO one could think of there could be transposed to this format.
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How it could work------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now heres where the EXTREMELY optimistic part comes along (yes even more ambitious than an educational MMO being fun and successful) and that is the market to which it will be sold.
In my perfect world, not only would this game be made, but schools everywhere would embed it into their lesson plans. Quite a bit of work in college these days is over the internet, and computers with internet access are becoming increasingly easier to... access, so why not take advantage of that. It would also allow teachers to assign work that is proven effective with little to no effort.
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This idea may not be perfect, but i only thought of it literally 2-3 hours ago so gimme a break. However, I see this having a LOT of potential, many people learn by doing and what better way to satisfy that than offering a fun interactive way to do so.
PS. if someone steals this idea I'm so gonna kill em!
PPS. vote up above please, I'm curious to what yall think
*Edit*
i just realized this post is very related to Extra Credits' new episode "Gamification". I want the record to show that I posted this 1st, check the date!
Seriously though this idea somewhat stemmed from watching the show and i want to thank them for the food for thought.
*This whole section is basically a preface and can skip to the game idea below if you wish*------
It's no secret that most of us hate doing school work, and this is probably due to (in part at least) the way the material is presented to us. So much of school work is reading material, memorizing it, working problems over and over, or whatever tedious exercises the course may require. However, what if we were to take all the academic material and put it into a form that we all enjoy: a video game!
This has obviously been thought of (ie. the whole edutainment department) and i blame their failures of making it fun because they focus on educating and basically ignore the fun.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Idea!--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Starting off i had the idea of making servers dedicated to a specific subject, ie. "*server name* *subject*". The game as a whole would be very similar to WoW: levels, grinding, instances, grouping, etc... I thought it would be cool to have a long term goal to achieve, like an evil entity, to let the players/students have a sense of accomplishment even if the reward of learning isn't enough. The final boss could be like receiving your high school diploma or bachelors degree. Imagine how happy you would be when..... just think about it
The players would start off at the difficulty equal to whatever grade they are in, this way newcomers won't have to grind through 1st grade crap. Quests would be like assignments, but wouldn't be worded as so, the quests could still be a part of the story. Mobs could be problems to solve or facts to memorize. Of course here would require an innovative game mechanic so it would be fun to kill mobs yet still be educative... thats officially a new word in my personal dictionary... (I have some ideas regarding such a mechanic, but would take way too long to explain). Instances could be group assignments/projects/practice-tests and basically any aspect of an MMO one could think of there could be transposed to this format.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How it could work------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now heres where the EXTREMELY optimistic part comes along (yes even more ambitious than an educational MMO being fun and successful) and that is the market to which it will be sold.
In my perfect world, not only would this game be made, but schools everywhere would embed it into their lesson plans. Quite a bit of work in college these days is over the internet, and computers with internet access are becoming increasingly easier to... access, so why not take advantage of that. It would also allow teachers to assign work that is proven effective with little to no effort.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This idea may not be perfect, but i only thought of it literally 2-3 hours ago so gimme a break. However, I see this having a LOT of potential, many people learn by doing and what better way to satisfy that than offering a fun interactive way to do so.
PS. if someone steals this idea I'm so gonna kill em!
PPS. vote up above please, I'm curious to what yall think
*Edit*
i just realized this post is very related to Extra Credits' new episode "Gamification". I want the record to show that I posted this 1st, check the date!
Seriously though this idea somewhat stemmed from watching the show and i want to thank them for the food for thought.