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Now
this may seem like the ramblings of an idealist, or an extremist or
maybe the beginnings of a big-brother state, but this is an idea
that many people have used before. In  fact it’s one of the things
that brought a lot of money into the games industry, but has since
seemed to go underground apart from one very recent release, America’s
Army. This is the idea that a virtual environment can be used to
train people in the real world. Now, at the moment these games, or
training aids, as I shall call them in this article, are mainly
based around the things it’s easy to make a game out of, shooting
and flying. (America’s Army is the first fully utilised, U.S.
Military endorsed, training aid).
Flight
Sims have been around to teach pilots the dangers of flying from the
safety of the ground for a substantial amount of time, and Combat
Sims have been around for almost as long, first utilised by the
American Government so they could let people be shot without them
dying. So why don’t we make other Reality Sims; simulations that
could teach the younger generation actually useful skills for future
life, like a Money Management Sim, a Cooking Sim or maybe even
combine them into an highly interactive Restaurant Entrepreneur Sim.
The
possibilities truly are endless if people would just use a touch of
imagination. The idea doesn’t have to stop with a boring
alternative to games either. Admittedly if you told a fifteen
year-old the object of the game was simply keep this restaurant
running for the next 30 years he’d be anally-probing cows in Destroy
All Humans! again before you’d finished the sentence. But
I have seen the state of the British Education system, having been
through it already, and I know to “complete” school in the best
way possible you have to finish a series of tasks, each getting
progressively harder, then use all the skills you’ve learnt to do
one final assessment; proving your entire competence in the subject.
Now
if you told that 15 year-old that instead of spending five hours
trying to kill the last boss on God Of War he could’ve
completed his Business Studies exam and not have to go to that
lesson again, simply by going through the talks with a massive
multi-national company about selling the restaurant for so much
money that he’ll never have to work again, God Of War
wouldn’t get a look-in. In fact if any child spent the thirty
hours or so a week they spend on videogames on their homework, all
school grades would go through the roof.
I
can understand the fact that videogames may take a little while to
integrate themselves into the education sector, considering the
views on them by many people leading the current system, but there
are many independent Education Authorities like the Open University
where Virtual Training Aids could play a big part in the final exam,
as I’ve said before the American Government is already using
Virtual Training Aids to asses their men’s capabilities, and games
like America’s Army are designed not only to see how well
people complete tasks but also to measure every aspect of their
training. From distance travelled, shots fired and cover used, all
the way to how quickly you follow orders, how long it takes you to
learn things even to how much you talk while doing it. You see games
do offer a fully controlled environment with which to measure every
aspect of behaviour, and being virtual means you can already have
programs in place to watch what you want to keep an eye-on, meaning
at the end of it the examiner could just have a printed sheet with a
grade on it.
I
could be a long time before this idea even sees the light of day but
it’s one that would bring a lot more fairness and true structure
to the education system, and maybe quite a lot of enjoyment to those
in the hands of it. A bit more time and through thought would bring
more options to the table but this is an industry that has more
opportunities to do something new than any I’ve ever seen. Just
remember the possibilities are endless!
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