ABSTRACT
Several times thus far I have used how people learn when they play video games as an example of good learning. In the last chapter I made an analogy between video games and the sorts of mental simulations through which we humans think and learn. In this chapter I want to treat the issue of learning and video games more directly. Good video games have a great deal to teach us about how to facilitate learning, even in domains outside games, even in school (Gee 2003). Good video games are complex, challenging, and long; they can take 50 or more hours to finish. If a game cannot be learned well, then it will fail to sell well, and the company that makes it is in danger of going broke. Shortening and dumbing games down is not an option, since most avid players don’t want short or easy games. Thus, if only to sell well, good games have to incorporate good learning principles in virtue of which they get themselves well learned. Game designers build on each other’s successes and, in a sort of Darwinian process, good games come to reflect yet better and better learning principles.
