Identifying Learning Objectives and Student Needs - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 189

picking themselves off the grimy floor of a dungeon to try and try again. Video
games encourage players to learn and reward them, both extrinsically and
intrinsically, when they succeed. That is why the range of students at Marked
Tree High School in Case History 1 and at Robert Lewis Stevenson Middle
School in the case history that follows this level can all be reached.
Game designers routinely tweak their games for all sorts of players. In 2005, I
began the first design of three video games based on Agatha Christie mystery
novels: And Then There Were None (aka Ten Little Indians ). At first glance,
using topics where the primary action involves detectives questioning witnesses
and suspects over tea in the village vicarage might not strike one as appropriate
material for video games, which even more than movies and television, are an
action medium. In fact, video games are the only medium where the audience is
an active participant. Yet would a first person shooter be the best type of game
for an Agatha Christie novel (see Figure 11.1)?
Figure 11.1
Hercule Nukem.