I spent most of the weekend reflecting on three conversations, with three respected educationalists to write a post’ Education. Games.’ Some of your will have read the post and thought there is merit here, whilst others will have read the post and discarded the use of ‘games’ as a rigorous learning experience.
Let me share with you ‘Platform Wars.‘ a live, web-based simulation, where participants play the role of senior management of a video game hardware platform producer such as Sega, Nintendo, or Microsoft. Built around a companion case study describing the launch of Sony’s PS3, participants learn about the dynamics of competition in multi-sided markets. In such markets success depends not only on a product’s price and features, but on how many people own it (a direct network externality) and on the number of games and applications available – that is, the size of the installed base of complementary products (an indirect network externality). Platform markets are increasingly common in settings besides video games, including computers, the Internet and e-commerce, mobile telecommunications, and many others.
This simulation falls into the ‘game as the teacher’ category and IMHO appears to be a first class learning resource, along with the additional resources posted to support the simulator. If its good enough for MIT….
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