In Scientia Veritas

This article is interesting. Constance Steinkuehler, game academic at the University of Wisconsin, thinks that computer games induce their players to scientific thinking. She spends many hours a day playing online games like Lineage and World of Warcraft as a part of a study on learning environments. She and her colleages, after examining 1,984 posts in 85 threads in a discussion board for players of World of Warcraft, have fount out that in order to defeat the bosses the gamers engage in discussions that have everything in common with the scientific method.

Follow up:

One gamer presents an hypothesis on how to defeat the boss, the next one presents some “data” based on experience, which the next ones refute or support. After a theory is ready, some of them having been modeled mathematically using Excel spreadsheets, they engage in battle and the effectiveness of the theory is tested. If they fail at defeating the boss, a new discussion ensues, pointing out the errors in the theory and refining it with the data gathered form the new experience. This process repeats itself, until they come up with a theory that finally gives the victory. This is the scientific method. Clive Thompson writes:

After all, what is science? It’s a technique for uncovering the hidden rules that govern the world. And video games are simulated worlds that kids are constantly trying to master. Lineage and World of Warcraft aren’t “real” world, of course, but they are consistent – the behavior of the environment and the creatures in it are governed by hidden and generally unchanging rules, encoded by the game designers. In the process of learning a game, gamers try to deduce those rules. This leads them, without them even realizing it, to the scientific method.

I have never played WoW, but I realized that in playing Age of Empires II (a long time ago…) I also did some “science", actually the equivalent to numerical simulations. In order to determine which were the fines soldiers, I used to go to the map creator, select two nations, let’s say, the English and the French, and give them each equal numbers of equivalent soldiers, knights vs. knights, archers vs. archers… I usually made them fight 20 vs. 20, repeat the experiment lots of times –statistics!– and based of how many times the one nation would defeat the other, pick the best one. That’s how I find out that the French cavalry is the best one in the game!

Back to Steinkuehler, she believes that in a nation where science literacy drops every year, games could be used “not as a substitute for teachers and classrooms, but as an alternative to textbooks and science labs.” More research is needed to know how to use this “potential of games for fostering scientific habits of mind” and apply it correctly to society. I want to encourage all gamers out there to contact Constance Steinkuehler and participate in the research.

Via: www.wired.com.