Videogames are seen by the masses as a mere recreational tool for having fun and spending time together or alone, but how many people have ever thought they could learn something by playing?

The video game industry has reached very high levels in the realization of their products; they are of high quality not only in terms of graphics and performance but also for the research that is carried out on environments and physics. Let’s take the Assassin’s Creed saga as an example: a game about an imaginary sect of assassins fighting the Templars, created by the Ubisoft production house, containing very precise historical references researched by the development team. By analyzing these elements from a different point of view than that of the player, anyone who has ever played this game will know real historical facts and be able to place them in the right era. Talking about learning and video games, we have to mention serious games. Serious games were first described in the book of the same name by Clark C. Abt and are described as “games with an explicit and well-defined educational purpose, not primarily intended for entertainment, but not excluding it”. They are, therefore, video games, very often simulations of real interactive environments set in various types of scenarios. Serious games can be used in very different contexts; the objective can range from education to awareness-raising to problem-solving, but they can also be used for other purposes. There is no theory on the pedagogy of serious games, but we can say that they are based on the concept of learning by doing and active learning. 

Vrainers aims to push serious games to the frontier of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, creating interactive environments with which the user can confront and improve various aspects of their soft skills.

Bibliography

Serious game: metodologie innovative per l’apprendimento esperienziale, Diversity Management, Alessia Alò.

Perché i serious games ci aiutano ad apprendere?, State of Mind – il giornale delle scienze psicologiche, Antonio Ascolese

Author:

Sebastiano Alvaro

A student of I.T. and Game Programming, I studied at A.I.V. – Accademia Italiana Videogiochi. Passionate about Rap, Videogames, and programming in all its facets.