[Tasl] Using Video Games as Bait to Hook Readers

[mlgav]

October 6, 2008
The Future of Reading
NY TIMES


Using Video Games as Bait to Hook Readers


By MOTOKO RICH

  


 
	 CARLSBAD, Calif.— When PJ Haarsma wrote
his first book, a science fiction novel for preteenagers, he didn’t
think just about how to describe Orbis, the planetary system where the
story takes place. He also thought about how it should look and feel in
a video game. 
The online game that Mr. Haarsma designed not only extends the
fictional world of the novel, it also allows readers to play in it. At
the same time, Mr. Haarsma very calculatedly gave gamers who might not
otherwise pick up a book a clear incentive to read: one way that
players advance is by answering questions with information from the
novel. 
“You can’t just make a book anymore,” said Mr. Haarsma, a former
advertising consultant. Pairing a video game with a novel for young
readers, he added, “brings the book into their world, as opposed to
going the other way around.” 
Mr. Haarsma is not the only one using video games to spark an
interest in books. Increasingly, authors, teachers, librarians and
publishers are embracing this fast-paced, image-laden world in the hope
that the games will draw children to reading.
Spurred by arguments that video games also may teach a kind of
digital literacy that is becoming as important as proficiency in print,
libraries are hosting gaming tournaments, while schools are exploring
how to incorporate video games in the classroom. In New York, the John
D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
is supporting efforts to create a proposed public school that will use
principles of game design like instant feedback and graphic imagery to
promote learning.
Publishers, meanwhile, are rushing to get in on the action. Scholastic, the American publisher of the Harry Potter
series, recently released “The Maze of Bones,” the first installment in
a 10-book mystery series that is tied to a Web-based game. 
In advance of the publication of “Brisingr,” the third book in the
best-selling “Inheritance” fantasy series by Christopher Paolini, Random House
Children’s Books commissioned an online game. About 51,000 people have
signed up since June to play and chat on message boards on the site.
But doubtful teachers and literacy experts question how effective it
is to use an overwhelmingly visual medium to connect youngsters to the
written word. They suggest that while a handful of players might be
motivated to pick up a book, many more will skip the text and go
straight to the game. Others suggest that video games detract from the
experience of being wholly immersed in a book.
Some researchers, though, say that even when children don’t read
much text, they are picking up skills that can help them thrive in a
visually oriented digital world. And some educational experts suggest
that video games still stimulate reading in blogs and strategy guides
for players. 

FOR THE REST OF THE ARTICLEhttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/books/06games.html?em


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 
At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that
threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives 
forever, for the better.

~~Barack Obama