GAMES

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama mentioned in a speech on Father’s Day that kids need to put down the video game controllers and pick up books. His message was clearly that while a book can be educational, playing a game is not. However, at the Games+Learning+Society Conference this week at Monona Terrace, hundreds of people at the intersection of gaming and learning are working to prove not only that games can be educational, but that many already are.

Constance Steinkuehler, an assistant professor in the Education Communication and Technology program at the Univesity of Wisconsin-Madison founded the Games Learning Society (GLS) group with the mission to "foster substantive discussion and collaboration among academics, designers, and educators interested in how videogames -- commercial games and others-- can enhance learning, culture, and education" Group members and others working to enhance education through gaming get together every summer for the conference, which is now in its fourth year.

Coordinator Sean Michael Dargan, dressed in a suit with a "Space Invaders" bow-tie, kicked off the event on Thursday morning with a short introduction of the opening plenary panel that included James Paul Gee. A professor at Arizona State University whose latest book is titled "Why Video Games Are Good For Your Soul," Gee was formerly a faculty member at University of Wisconsin-Madison. He placed videogames within an overall theory of learning and literacy in his talk, not to mention heartily endorsed Metal Gear Solid 4, a stealth action title from master designer Hideo Kojima.

I'm exactly the kind of person this conference appeals to with its formal and informal programming, and in my high school days, I spent as much time in front of a computer writing as I did playing games like Quake and Legend of Zelda.

So I perused a schedule of the panels, presentations, and discussion groups and quickly determined I could easily spend five days here listening to everything despite the fact that the conference only ran two days. And in addition to the numerous speakers, the GLS conference also provided a huge "arcade" with monitors and game systems presenting some of the best the gaming world has to offer today. Certified blockbusters like Grand Theft Auto IV, Wii Sports, and World of Warcraft mingled with cult hits like Psychonauts and Katamari Damacy. Hardcore gamers showed the ropes to novices, and many teachers played the games their students talk about daily for the first time.

I sat in for a time with Alex Quinn and Karen Sideman in a "fireside chat" about their project Games For Change. There with primary school teachers, designers, and students they discussed games used in the classroom to imitate and initiate social activism, and explained how gaming can carry a social message to the masses. Other talks on Thursday morning included those about youth programs and social media networks, one that featured UW-Madison researchers Erica Halverson and Rich Halverson digging in to fantasy baseball, and another about the role of video games in healthcare.

Standing alongside the mainstream games in the arcade was a white-curtained booth set up by Medical Education Technologies, Inc., or METI. Director of surgical programs David Hananel took time to show me one of its simulations. I was given a controller for each hand that had handles not unlike a pair of scissors. Each of these controllers had motion sensing technology -- not unlike the Nintendo Wii -- and I was tasked at using these controls to grab and object on screen and manipulate it in 3D space to match another object on screen. To a veteran like myself, I found the gameplay itself engaging and challenging. As the puzzles progressed, Hananel explained that this system from METI is used in teaching hospitals to train young doctors about the basics of surgery. I was shown that in later points of the game you'd have to actually remove virtual infections and tumors, as well as stitch up patients. The advantage of medical training by using this piece of technology instead of a live patient is immediately apparent.

After taking in a talk with UW-Madison faculty member Kurt Squire on the virtues of rhythm games and collective rhythm immersion, I ran into Dargan in the hallway. He gave me a brief tour of the conference and said they have about 400 people in attendance this year, and will probably get closer to 500 next year as the research field and support for it expand. He encouraged me to take in a few rounds of Rock Band in the arcade (part of a genre Squire refers to as "embarrassment simulators"), and also invited me to take part in an Augmented Reality Game (ARG) they'd set up to give visitors a taste of downtown Madsion via their PDA or wireless laptop.

Looked ahead on the schedule, it was barely noon on the first day and still to come were talks about game mechanics and learning, the social construction of games in first grade classrooms, and the intersection of exercise and gaming with Dance Dance Revolution. After the GLS conference closed, attendees were invited to join in a live-action version of Rock Band with the Madison institution The Gomers with a special edition of Gomeroke. Friday would bring even more panels and roundtables discussions about everything from the lessons on identity imparted by World of Warcraft to the history-teaching value of games like Civilization.

If the Games Learning Society has the kind of impact going forward that it’s projecting, Senator Obama need not fear the massive multiplayer world.