The first step towards understanding how video
games can (and we argue, will) transform education
is changing the widely shared perspective that games
are ‘‘mere entertainment.’’ More than a multi-billion
dollar industry, more than a compelling toy for both
children and adults, more than a route to computer
literacy, video games are important because they let
people participate in new worlds. (Shaffer, Squire,
Halverson, and Gee 2005, p. 106)
As simulations, games allow ‘‘just plain folk’’ (Lave
1988) to build situated understandings of important phenomena
(physical laws, for example) that are instantiated in
those worlds amid a culture of intellectual practice that
render those phenomena culturally meaningful (Steinkuehler
2006c). Their affordances for learning have not gone
unnoticed, and the last two years have witnessed a marked
rise in interest across various academies in leveraging game
technologies toward educational ends: the Woodrow Wilson
Foundation’s Serious Games Initiative; the Games, Learning
and Society program at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison; the Education Arcade project at MIT