Townhall.com by Suzanne Fields - History won't repeat itself in the future so much, it will just rewrite
itself. The young who grow up on computers will inevitably be influenced by the
games they play.
The hottest new electronic games are based on facts of history, and the
players must study the actual events of history to devise winning strategies. I
know, because my young tutor in one such game stopped the barbarians from
invading Rome with stealthy deceptions of bad leaders and wily negotiations with
men easily duped.
This young player insists we can learn from mistakes of history. (Certain
presidents and prime ministers would die for such do-overs.) A player can't do
what the rules of the game don't allow, of course, but the rules of the game I
watched leave ample opportunities to alter the wars of the Roman Empire. Playing
the game sent my tutor to the library for a stack of books on Caesar's campaign
through Gaul, and several interpretations of why certain senators conspired to
kill Caesar. I even managed to talk about Mark Antony's funeral oration as
rendered by Shakespeare, with a discussion of sarcasm and irony in the
description of Brutus as an "honorable man."
If I sound like a passionate convert to the educational value of computer
games, of having more going for them than strengthening skills of hand to eye
coordination, I am.
If I sound like a passionate convert to the educational value of computer
games, of having more going for them than strengthening skills of hand to eye
coordination, I am. 
The young man who taught me the rudiments of the game took
hours away from his computer to think about military and political tactics. He
learned how to ask crucial questions: "If you're asked to do a military
mission," he told me, "it's important to know whether you have the resources to
carry it out and whether you can do it without weakening forces already in other
fields of combat." Hmmmmm. That sounds a lot like news from the front page of
this newspaper.
A game player must learn to defend against riots, rebellion and other kinds
of disorders. Taxes pose a dilemma familiar to every president. Taxpayers don't
like paying taxes and a state must be wary of raising taxes the people may not
accept, punishing those who inflicted them. Tweaking tax rates, such a player
learns, is risky business.
Futurist magazine focuses in its current issue on the popular computer games
known as MMORPG, for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. (The
alphabet soup beloved of bureaucrats spills over to the computer keyboard, too.)
In these games, participants "role play" with a multitude of different
characters in contained fantasy worlds. The limits of reality don't apply.
(Sounds just like Washington, doesn't it?)
Computer games can become an addiction, particularly for compulsive
personalities, and psychologists and sociologists fiercely argue whether such
young people too frequently use them as an escape from their real world. Such
games must be carefully monitored, particularly by parents of young children.
But we're foolish to dismiss their educational promise.
Edward Castronova of Indiana University is working with a team of students to
develop a role-playing game titled "Arden: The World of William Shakespeare."
Young and old students of literature "experience" the historical time of the
Bard and rethink themes in his plays. They may revisit the wiles of Richard III
and how he made it to the throne, studying the War of the Roses and how
Shakespeare manipulated history for the sake of a good story. Young players
might delve into the cultural and psychological backdrop of Macbeth, to consider
the reaction of Queen Elizabeth I to a drama about the murder of a monarch.
"The potential of MMORPGs for pleasure, business, education, and
experimentation is just now beginning to emerge," says Kimberly Harris Fatten of
the Synthetic Worlds Initiative at Indiana University. They may have a major
impact on how we think and conceptualize all kinds of ideas and relate to
specific policies that affect our lives today. I have warned against making
education too much fun as in the dancing numbers on "Sesame Street," because
difficult math cannot be disguised as entertainment and ultimately a child must
grow up to do the hard stuff with dedicated discipline. But fun can also be a
motivator to learn more.
Read the rest of this article....
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"We don't stop playing because we grow old;
we grow old because we stop playing."
