At the moment there are many franchises and resources that could be used to create games of a more educational nature. There are a few I see that I'll discus here.
Repurposing Resources
With all those resources at their disposal, it makes sense to me to allow indies to experiment with potentially commercial projects. What do I mean by that? Simply put, there are a lot of people who want to learn and a lot of people who want to do. Those people could be offered non-paid positions with access to resources, to make prototypes, work samples and gain experience. These people would also be easy to screen for potential employees. So, it is beneficial for everybody and would likely cost very little for the potential gains to the company.
The important thing to realize here is that there are tons of old resources that pretty much aren't useful to the current commercial products. It's likely there are organizations willing to run some of thee programs. Some of these resources are available on the internet, so why not take that and make it official? It's been done before and has resulted in popular Mods. Some are simpler, but others have been rather impressive stand alone games.
Then there is the potential for educational use of those resources. Done properly, it could be both a plug for the franchises and useful in education. (If anybody reading this has an opening I would be happy to be a part of such a project. Okay, my plug is done. Back to the scheduled blog post.)
Concerned Combat
Star Wars, Halo and other similar franchises can be used for a more realistic resource management game. The idea is to take the FPS (first person shooter) gameplay, RTS (real time strategy) and resource management game mechanics and combine them. Truth is that many franchises could use this idea to do really cool things.
So let's get to the details of the idea. The player is in charge of a military force with a standing order requiring several missions. These missions are not separated like usual. Instead you maintain your resources through till you've achieved your goal, or failed. So if there is a native village, you can help them to gain more support and resources. This isn't a battle game. This isn't a simple combat game. It's a complicated game forcing the player to deal with the aftermath of battle to win the next.
I think it would be a great challenge to those who are masters of the RTS and FPS games. Can you command your troops, make snap decisions and maintain your resources in such a way that you can win the next battle? What do your superiors think of your performance? In the Star Wars franchise I envision the Jedi frowning on harming the villagers and the Sith frowning on wasting opportunities. Whether you are selfish or unselfish, it makes sense to build up your resources and use them responsibly. Considering the times, I think this would not only get gamers excited about the depth of gameplay and challenge, but get accolades from society about games encouraging the player to think about the realities of combat and have such a focus on community organizing.
Hidden Help
Harvest Moon is a game franchise that I've both played and watched people play. In it you maintain a farm and help the village to prosper. To me it would make for a great economy game. By playing as a person sent in to help some small towns become prosperous again, you have the potential to practice business and economy lessons, without the risk to your bank account. Three towns make up my envisioned game, a ranch town, a farm town and a crafting/artisan town.
The potential learning for this game goes far beyond that mentioned above. If you stick to the usual elements of a Harvest Moon game, and add some more, you can give a lot of information in small pieces. However the key to this is NOT taking care of your own farm. Instead you do odd jobs and help out the people in the different towns. With a little business sense you can turn a profit by supplying people with what they need. However, sometimes you should be willing to sacrifice immediate profits for potential future profits. Donating to businesses in trouble, or selling to them at a discount could be what keeps them operating. If it was an animal you owned and it got sick, you'd take care of it. Why, because it's beneficial. There's also the moral views on this, but I'm talking business and economy here.
You might be wondering what's so great about that particular game franchise for this. Well, here are some of the reasons I see. Animal products are obtained through purchasing or ranching. Produce is obtained through purchasing or farming. There is crafting and cooking in the game franchise. Shipping certain kinds of products brings related people into town, like any place known for a certain kind of industry or trade. Befriending people earns you benefits. All in all, it has most of what I see as needed for this idea. Though there is a lot of adjusting to make it work.
While there are more possibilities, I think this is a good place to stop for now. For something a little different, but similar, take a look at "Public Pedagogy through Video Games". It's a good article that was mentioned in OLDaily.
Have fun, spread the word and tell me what you think,
Igen Oukan
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