Games Based Geography

I have been exposed to quite a lot of Games Based Learning research and ideas over the years, because of the work of Derek Robertson, Ollie Bray and others...

I have just listened to a podcast from the VerySpatial archive (although at the time of writing it's the most recent podcast.

The feature on Games Based Learning (GBL) began with a quote from the New York Times article linked to here.
There was a quote from Dan Houser, who is the creative leader of Rockstar Games, who produced the new game "Red Dead Redemption".
“Westerns are about place,” he said. “They’re not called outlaw films. They’re not even called cowboys-and-Indians films. They’re called westerns. They’re about geography.”

“We’re talking about a format that is inherently geographical,” Mr. Houser added, “and you’re talking about a medium, video games, the one thing they do unquestionably better than other mediums is represent geography.”

Comments

Anonymous said…
I'm not getting the correlationship between geography and video games. Unless you are talking about RIsk
Alan Parkinson said…
It depends on what you think "geography" is... the mapping angle is only a tiny element of what geography is. The relationship with place, scale, inter-relationships between people and their environment, representations of locations and the physics of the real world would all be part of geography and also the latest video games.
The podcast makes the geography element clear.
Thanks for reading Cultcha...
Ryan said…
There are a few great online geography games I enjoy. Geosense.net, travelpods Travel IQ, Facebook's Geo Challenge.

I think these woul dbe great tools in schools of basics like location, capitals, major cities and flags- critical components to a larger understanding and appreciation of geogrpahy!

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