Coming soon to your living room: a wild safari in the scorching
African savanna starring you, armed with nothing but your camera.
Afrika is the next step in a generation of video games
that seek to become more than just entertainment and can actually
make you smarter.
Afrika,
the latest game by Rhino Studios, is set to be released in Japan on
the PS3 in late August. You play it from
the perspective of a nature photographer and naturalist armed with
a Nikon stalking realistic wildlife in painstakingly recreated
savannas. The photos you snap are saved like a lexicon, or
Africa-pedia, where you can read up all about the real facts of the
animal. The PS3’s multi-cored cell
processor
is being utilized to is fullest potential to recreate the complex
AI and behavior of the animals in
mirror world fashion, and it’s is just one of many in the
increasing trend of video games that are as educational as they are
made to be entertaining.
Because the game is not about rifles or grenades, it is perfect
for younger children who can learn about Africa’s wildlife in a
fully immersive 3D world rather than a bread-and-butter textbook.
And what a field trip it is without all the expenses and dangers of
being there.
But using video games to teach isn’t a new idea. An all-girls
junior
high school in Japan have already been using Nintendo DS’s to
teach English. The verdict? The students feel right at home with
the new devices. Katie Salen, a game designer and director of the
graduate Design and Technology program at
Parsons School of Design, is leading the way in using video
games as a foundation for education for an accelerating world. Her
goal is to open a school based on gaming literacy.
Besides being an education tool, games have been gradually
blending with “Meatspace” (a term coined in the Oxford English
Dictionary to contrast Cyberspace). In the popular online game
world Second
Life, players assume a virtual representation of themselves and
can socialize, participate in group activities, buy and sell
virtual property with a working economy, practice religion, and
even hold live concerts. Musician Jay-Z had a virtual concert in
Second Life at the same time of his real life performance on the
Jimmy Kimmel show.
Another trend that’s set to get off big time is the rise of
customizable games where user-created content is king.
Counter-Strike is the most popular example of that, created in 1999
by a lone programmer at his home, it still holds the record for the
most popular online action game now. But user content and community
is set to be an even more integral part of upcoming games like
Spore and LittleBigPlanet. I can just
imagine contests held for the most creatively designed creature.
Maybe it can spark a whole generation of young 7-year-old Spore
creature celebrities.
Of course, a common criticism of parents and guardians alike is
that games encourage sedentary behavior and lead to an inactive
life. That is where Nintendo’s Wii fit and Dance Dance Revolution
come in. My aunt was an anti-game crusader back when I was a kid,
but after my overweight cousin lost a significant amount of weight
playing Dance Dance Revolution, her bitter take on video games have
since changed. She liked it so much that she even pulled full-grown
adults away from the backyard barbecue to play.
Nintendo Wii is leading the way for games that involve more than
sitting on the couch, but the technology is also here to add other
tactile ways to interact with computers. In an upcoming post, I
will detail all the innovations, prototypes, and on-the-market
gadgets that would one day make the couch potato and mouse-keyboard
obsolete.
It is not just games, but even applications like Google Earth
are being updated regularly to become more useful and fun. Zoom
down to New York City and you can see fully 3D models of downtown
skyscrapers and embedded videos of a crumbling glacier when you
click on the Alaskan shoreline.
In the talk about Metaverses, I see
great promise in the coming generation of games. Perhaps one day,
Afrika, Second Life, and Google Earth would just be rolled into one
giant virtual reality where you can come back from a wild safari in
Africa and in a millisecond be transported to Buenos Aires where
you can take in the sights and sounds. We would be able to take
vacations at any time, and traveling to picture-perfect places
perhaps impossible in the future with exorbitant gas prices and
pollution.
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Comment Thread (3 Responses)
Great piece, very comprehensive. There’s so much cool stuff about to hit the market that I am getting very excited for XMass.
In the talk about Metaverses, I see great promise in the coming generation of games. Perhaps one day, Afrika, Second Life, and Google Earth would just be rolled into one giant virtual reality where you can come back from a wild safari in Africa and in a millisecond be transported to Buenos Aires where you can take in the sights and sounds.
Indeed, it’s only a matter of time before cruising games gets as fluid as loading web pages. The mash-up possibilities are endless.
Check out multiverse for one example of a company trying to building various game and virtual environments atop a single engine that can then be linked. It’s like a game-focused version of Second Life.
I wonder if this is the view everyone is going to have of Africa in the future. Clean, untouched by man, and full of wildlife. Maybe this will be the only reminder of what it once was.
There’s an interesting independent documentary by VBS.TV (Vice Magazine) about their trip to Sudan, and I highly recommend it to get a more realistic view of Africa.
