A Five-Year-Old in Debt: Learning with Video Games July 15, 2009

Favorite:

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/06/17/Ian_Bogost_at_X-Media_Lab_Serious_Gaming

Video games as educational tools? Believe it, says game designer and researcher Ian Bogost. Bogost recalls how Nintendo's hit game Animal Crossing taught his young son a valuable lesson about debt.

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Video games are usually viewed as a form of escapism: pure entertainment and shoot-em-up fantasy. But increasingly, games are being recognized as educational tools, or as deliverers of social or political messages.

This evolving medium is taking on complex environments and issues, and providing a platform for people to explore a world or situation in an interactive way. In this talk at the X Media Lab in Sydney, video game theorist and designer Ian Bogost gives an overview of how video games can benefit human existence. - Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Dr. Ian Bogost is a video game designer, critic, and researcher. He is Assistant Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC. His research and writing considers video games as an expressive medium, and his creative practice focuses on games about social and political issues.

Bogost is author of Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism (MIT Press 2006), recently listed among "50 books for everyone in the game industry," and of Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (MIT Press 2007), along with several other books and many other writings. He is a popular speaker and widely considered an influential thinker and doer in the video game industry and research community.