Video games to be put on academic level at Utah State

Every kid has said they want to grow up to play video games at one point or another in his or her life. Few kids have found a way to make video games their life’s work.

However, University of Arizona professor Ken McAllister and Utah State University professor Ryan Moeller have discovered a way to bring video games to the forefront of many people’s minds. With the commencement of Learning Games Initiative (LGI) at USU, this is becoming a very real issue for some USU students and faculty.

“The point of LGI is to study computer games at an academic sort of university level,” Moeller said. “[It] is dedicated to researching computer games for their cultural and teaching importance.”

“There are three focuses for LGI: studying, teaching and building,” Mcallister said.

Mcallister began LGI out of the University of Arizona, but he said today it has become a very world-wide operation with researchers from places like England, France and China contributing to LGI. And it’s growing.

“The largest concentration (of LGI members) is in Arizona,” Mcallister said, “but Utah is certainly going to give it a run for its money pretty quick here.”

Both Moeller and Mcallister said they are working with educators at other educational institutions, rather than just universities.

“We are working with elementary and high school teachers,” Mcallister said. “They’re starting to realize the importance of the game medium.”

Next semester, Moeller said LGI is going to be working on a project to design a game for elementary students. It will be called Aristotle’s Assassins.

Mcallister said the basic story behind the game is about a young prodigal musician in ancient Greece that is called to play before Aristotle.

He said the motive behind designing the game was, “how can we get a video game and teach some elementary material about ancient Greek culture, politics and music.”

The player, as the musician, has to travel across Greece to get to Aristotle. Along the way, the young musician finds that Aristotle has made some enemies. The game throws the player right into the political atmosphere of ancient Greece.

“You as the player, on one hand, you are honored to be called before him but on the other hand you find that not only are people plotting to kill Aristotle, but they may actually have some good reasons for doing that,” Mcallister said. “Part of the problem you decide is whether you want to help the assassins.”

For now, the LGI is just trying to build up a good base at USU.

-aedmunds@cc.usu.edu