Website Focus: The Escapist

Tony Forster sent me this fantastic web link today, The Escapist at http://www.escapistmagazine.com/

A bit about The Escapist-
The Escapist covers gaming and gamer culture with a progressive editorial style, with articles and columns by the top writers in and outside of the industry. A weekly publication, its magazine-style updates offer content for a mature audience of gamers, entertainment enthusiasts, industry insiders, and other "NetSet" readers.

Published every Tuesday, each issue of The Escapist explores a central theme, addressing head-on the topics relevant to gamers.

Combining print-quality writing and magazine-style aesthetics with the accessibility of the web, The Escapist is available online, via PDF, and through RSS for broad syndication.


A couple of links that jumped out as really interesting reading are-


Even Better Than The Real Thing
In the world of motorsports, autocross is to Formula One as your local soccer league is to the World Cup; there might be a few sponsored players out there who earn a little money, but most everyone buys their own shorts and cleats. Likewise, most autocrossers bring their own cars and tires. Hardcore competitors regularly drop $1,200 a month on tires that might survive a month's worth of abuse, racing after a prize that's often little more than a $5 plastic trophy.

But, for every speed racer blowing the price of a small car each year on tires, wheels, sway-bars, dampers, trailers, lodging, race schools and who knows what else to squeeze a few hundredths of a second off their time, there are dozens more who autocross just for kicks. I fall somewhere in-between, not hardcore enough to spend thousands of dollars on go-fast bits, but competitive enough to want to win. What I needed was an edge. Something to offset the advantage gained by those with the resources to dump wads of cash into their hobby. One winter I found it; the perfect training regimen for cheapskate racers like me: videogames.

Not just any videogame, of course. Real training requires some sort of simulation. In the world of flight training, it's typical for a new pilot's first non-simulated flight in a new jet to occur with passengers in the rear. That seems a little disconcerting, but the benefits of sim training over real-world training are straightforward: A sim can throw a pilot into just about any problematic situation imaginable and do it safely, enabling him to repeat the exercise until he gets it right. All this without having to worry about investing in any farmland.

Read on at http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/59/13


Playing To The Test
Nothing can judge you better than a videogame. You spend hours or tens of hours feeding information into a system that gauges your abilities, tests what you're capable of and rewards your improvement. With the right design, a game not only knows if you're winning or losing, but where you're strong and where you need help.

In education, and especially in the school system, tracking students' improvement is everything. In the U.S., the No Child Left Behind Act requires that students show demonstrable progress in basic learning areas; from grade to grad school, we endure regular standardized tests. And from the dawn of education, teachers have been forced by the people who pay their salaries to prove their students can read and write more words at the end of the year than they could at the beginning. While a great education system matches the particular needs and strengths of each student, you can't get away from keeping score.

Games were made to keep score. So, why are games in the classroom treated as a sideline and a bonus activity instead of an integral aid to the curriculum? Many developers coming out of academia, the "serious games" movement or the educational software business want to see more games in schools. But as they make their case, one of the biggest hurdles they have to cross is assessment: If you can't prove a game's efficacy, and if the work - sorry, play - students enjoy in a game doesn't lead to a number in a grade book, it's hard to add it to the curriculum.

Will games ever find a place next to textbooks and multiplication tables? Can games even measure the kind of performance that counts in school?

Read on at http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/59/8



Learning The Gaming Way
When someone mentions "educational gaming," it used to be the only games we could discuss were games like Mario Teaches Typing or Number Munchers. They were games meant to teach you measurable skills in hard-wired subjects like math, English or - if you were lucky enough to sport a high-end Apple II in your classroom - you could fire up Oregon Trail and learn how to make your entire family die of cholera.

In our enlightened, modern era, it's become more obvious that sometimes the "education" you can receive from games extends beyond adding and subtracting. While many games can teach valuable skills like complex problem solving and how to manage a budget, there are some games that have educational benefits that go beyond what you learn in a classroom.

Oftentimes, the trick lies in identifying exactly what it is you want to learn.

Read on at http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/59/3