Overcoming Objections to MUVEs in Education - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 6

basketball or studies physics several hours each
day, is praised for their dedication and hard work.
But a student who plays an equal amount of video
games is considered by most adults to be behaving
inappropriately. Yet it is likely the athlete, scholar
and gamer are acting on the same impulse toward
obsessive interest that most of their peers share
through adolescence and the teen years.
When it comes to MUVEs, the assumption
that time in the virtual environment equates to
time cut off from social interaction is simply
wrong. From the first MUD to the latest MMO,
the appeal of multiplayer online interaction has
been mainly about interacting with other people
(Bartle, 1999). The swords and sorcery themes of
MUDs and MMOs tie back directly to “pencil and
paper” or “table top” role playing games, particu-
larly Dungeons and Dragons . Those games were,
and are, inherently social in nature. What outside
observers either fail to perceive or simply do not
value, is the fact that using a MUVE is a social
behavior. It may be a different social behavior than
the observer is used to, but, as one axiom puts it
“virtual world, real people”. Despite dismissal by
outsiders that virtual social interactions are shal-
low and essentially meaningless, many MUVE
users consider them just as important and real as
their other relationships. Even when not playing
online, games form a core part of young people's
social interactions as they gather to play in groups
and talk about strategies and experiences together
(Kutner and Olson, 2008).

despite the stereotype, boys 17 and under make
up only 17% of gamers while women over 18
represent 34% of the gaming population. Accord-
ing to a report by the Pew Internet and American
Life Project (2008) 99% of boys and 97% of girls
between the ages of 12 and 17 play computer or
video games. ESA (2009) reports that 50% of all
American's play games or MUVEs regularly and
63% of parents believe the medium has potential
benefits for their children. Sherman (2007) predicts
that by 2011, 80% of American Internet users will
have an avatar in a virtual world. Given those
figures, it is a statistical inevitability that one
day, the majority of teachers, administrators and
students will be experienced gamers and regular
MUVE users.
Kutner and Olson (2008) surveyed 1,254
seventh and eighth grade students in two middle
schools about their game playing habits. Only
17 of the students reported never having played
a computer or video game. Sixty-three others had
not played any games in the past six months. Of
the remaining students, 92% of males and 68% of
females reported playing games at least one hour
each week. While the lists of favorite games for
males and females differed in order, there was
significant overlap in titles between them. This
indicates that girls not only play games but have
broader genre interests than is typically supposed.

The Stereotype of Gamers

There may have been some good reasons for
developing the stereotypes of computer gamers.
Creating stereotypes is a normal function of the
human brain in its continuous effort to organize
its understanding of the world. Stereotypes are
generalized sets of rules to help categorize and
make predictions about particular things. All
stereotypes are caricatures by nature, as they are
based on gross generalizations about imperfectly
understood classes of things based on limited ob-
servation and input. It is important to keep in mind
that stereotypes are always about things that are

Objection: games and mUVes
only Appeal to males

Based on the traditional stereotype of gamers as
teenage males who live in their parents' base-
ments and play games alone and obsessively, this
objection expresses concern that MUVEs are not
an educational medium that will be popular with
female students (Kutner & Olson, 2008).
According to the Entertainment Software As-
sociation (2009), the average gamer is 35. In fact,