Matt Forbeck mentioned Evoke in a comment on my previous post about didacticism, and it occurred to me that we haven’t really talked about it on the site, yet. Aside from the actual website for the game — www.UrgentEvoke.com — most of my opinion on it was formed by an interview with designer Jane McGonical on Wired‘s site:
Games support happiness … by giving us more satisfying work or concrete tasks that we can accomplish…. Studies have shown that playing a short game — having something concrete that you can accomplish — actually gives you the motivation, energy and optimism to go back and tackle real work.
[Read More at Wired ]
It’s a crash course in how to start a venture, a business, that can tackle these problems [of poverty, disease, hunger] at a local level…. By the end of the game you have developed a real-world pitch for a venture [and] have acquired mentors to help you make it real. If you play the game you’re connected to somebody in the real world who has entrepreneurial experience to mentor you; you’ve also developed skills to make you a better problem solver.
[Read More at Wired ]