Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  Game On: learning about and learning from video games (01 Apr 2002) With games now more popular than ever before, and including an increasing number of adult players, their influence is global and transcends age groups. Though graphical 'realism' may pose a barrier to games as creative, imaginative sites of engagement, and games such as Grand Theft Auto 3 continue to cause moral upset, games designers are beginning to take into account "more realistic content where you do make realistic judgments". New Japanese 'communication games' such as Doko Demo Issyo and Animal Forest, in which players build relationships with characters, make communicative interaction the key focus. Built in to such activity is narrative creation and character development, two crucial areas in which children need to develop understanding in order to interpret their world, and the cultures and the people surrounding them. Games, in many ways, offer possibilities for rich learning experiences. Article URL: http://www.nestafuturelab.org/viewpoint/creat09.htm Read 76 more articles from NESTA Futurelab sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: Guidelines for Keyboard User Interface Design     This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy