Learning in Video Games

We revisit Marc Prensky’s paper, Digital Game-Based Learning from the first issue of Computers in Entertainment (2003). Prensky discusses the importance of video and computer games for a new generation of learners.

Prensky writes: “What attracts and glues kids to today’s video and computer games, I believe, is neither the games’ violence, nor even their subject matter, but rather the learning the games provide. Kids like all humans love to learn when it isn’t forced upon them. Modern computer and video games provide learning opportunities every second, or fraction thereof. What kinds of learning? On the surface, game players learn to do things to fly airplanes, to drive fast cars, to be theme park operators, war fighters, civilization builders, and veterinarians. But on deeper levels they learn infinitely more: to take in information from many sources and make decisions quickly; to deduce a game’s rules from playing rather than by being told; to create strategies for overcoming obstacles; to understand complex systems through experimentation. And, increasingly, they learn to collaborate with others. Many adults are not aware that games have long ago passed out of the single-player isolation shell imposed by lack of networking, and have gone back to being the social medium they have always been on a worldwide scale. Massively multiplayer games such as EverQuest and Lineage now have hundreds of thousands of people playing simultaneously, collaborating daily and nightly in clans and guilds.”

Read the full paper here.