[MUD-Dev] Re: Diamond Age (ex story telling in MMORPG)

[Mathieu Castelli]

"Matt Mihaly" wrote Thursday, September 26, 2002
> On Wed, 25 Sep 2002, Mathieu Castelli wrote:

>> Funny. For me that book [Diamond Age] is the best asset for the
>> "learning with games" case.  All three girls who get the primer
>> turn out to be fanstastically brilliant.  And more than that, non
>> fail: apart from Nel (your successful one ?) one let her dreamy
>> part get the the better of her to become an artist, and the other
>> (the original girl the primer was designed for, the one of noble
>> heritage) joined the Drummer no ? (Damn my memory.)

> I don't think behavior in a fictional book is evidence of anything
> but the worldview of the writer. How the girls turned out has
> nothing to do with what the effectiveness of a tool would be in
> the physical world, as the characters turned out like that because
> of the author's decisions, not because of any cause-and-effect
> with the primer.

I agree. My statement "the girls turn out brilliant" was in answer
to the previous post saying that this book, in its fictionous
environment, seemed to say: no it doesn't work completely. Which is
didn't fit my understand of the piece.

And I wrote "this book is a major convincer" not because of
this. But because when you read the actual interactions of the girl
with the game-book, and imagine yourself in her place, it's very
convincing and you actually instinctly feel you would learn a lot
through that way. And those descriptions take a good chunk of the
book itself.

Could one get a valuable opinion of the computer interface used in
"minority reports" just watching the movies' sequence showing it
over and over ?

On a more personal note, I don't think games are such a good
pedagogical tool (can you say that in english ?) they could be a
fantastic motivational tool though. When I was playing Dungeon
Master/ Chaos strikes, and crashing my studies (was 14 at the time)
I always thought how it would be like if combats were solved by
having to solve equations. I'm still convinced that to go further
into that maze I would have borrowed books of knowledge way above
the program of my class. Motivation then.

--matto


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