Greetings Bodo. Thank you for sharing your thoughts! I am glad that you liked Jane’s talk.
In a way, your post summarizes the human condition. When we choose to, we can dedicate our minds and hearts to solving problems in ways that bring well-being, peace and prosperity to millions. When we choose to, we can visit unspeakable horrors upon millions. Regardless of the context - games, the internet, economics, education, media - a lot depends on where we choose to focus our abilities.
Fortunately, on this forum we chose to focus on games that help us engage, motivate, and challenge the participants in our courses, so that they can become better at providing the services of meteorological organizations around the world.
We are not alone in our focus. Thousands of game designers and educators gather every year to share their experience and knowledge in creating educational games. Their conference is called Games, Learning and Society (http://glsconference.org). When I first attended it a few years ago, there were about 150 participants. Today, there are thousands of participants and the games that they showcase are focused on helping people of all ages build their capacities.
While many big budget game studios create violent games, others do not. The makers of one of the most popular strategy game announced yesterday the release of CivilizationEDU to schools. They have designed the game to “provide students with the opportunity to think critically and create historical events, consider and evaluate the geographical ramifications of their economic and technological decisions, and to engage in systems thinking and experiment with causal/correlative relationships between military, technology, political and socioeconomic development.” (http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160623005149/en/) It is unfortunate that our media outlets spend so little time covering such developments but generously cover violent games. Another choice perhaps?
The game also offers statistical tracking to measure “students’ proficiency at problem solving.” The game designers claim to have found a way to equate student progress in the game with their mastery of the historical concepts presented. I’d like to see how they have done that.
Cheers,
Tsvet