October 13, 2005

Learning Games


Tim O'Rielly posted about Using Half Life in Academia.  The Microsoft Research Group and VALVe has released the Half Life 2 SDK that will allow developers to add artificial intelligence that can be run on the Half Life game engine. Basically giving students a state-of-the-art game engine to create their own games, environments, or whatever they want.  Microsoft is actually creating a tool to tie Visual C++ into the released SDK.  You can watch the presentation here. (IE only)  However, it's for colleges only.

Mark Oehlert has blogged about America's Army becoming a platform and the role of games in learning.  Could this another learning 2.0 seed?  It seems so.  Being able to remix Half Life 2 by controlling the objects within the environment using AI controls through an API is just cool.  I would love to dig in and build an adaptive learning environment where objects changed their behavior based upon your performance.  Could we develop problem-based learning scenarios and have the learner/gamer work through them? absolutely.  Could you imagine a leadership course through this?  (disclosure: I haven't played Half Life 2 or the orginal, my son's too young)

If there is a Higher Education Institution out there who wants me to pull together a team of programmers and build a Half Life 2 learning environment, contact me.   



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