The Voices In My Head - The Official Blog of Chris Stubbs

As I've mentioned before, World of Warcraft is one of the video games I frequent in my spare time. With now over 9 million players world-wide, one of the most signifigant aspects of Warcraft is the community that surrounds it. There are literally thousands of WoW (World of Warcraft shorthand) in game addons, "how to" guides, strategy sites, forums, comics, personally created movies and resource sites that pepper the internet. And nearly all of this media has been created, not by Blizzard Entertainment (Warcraft's developer), but by average gamers - seeking to improve their own enjoyment of the Warcraft phenominon.

Arguably the most highly traffic-ed of these resources is Wowwiki.com - essentially Wikipedia for the Warcraft Universe. It contains information on just about everything a Wow player could want to know. But Wowwiki is a web page. And Warcraft doesnt contain a web browser. That can make for a whole lot of alt-tabbing between your game and your browser of choice.

That is until a few days ago, when Wikia and Playxpert got together and decided that alt tabbing between games like Warcraft and sites like Wowwiki was sooooooo 2001. Enter the in game wiki-widget.

In essence, this little ditty lets you bring external resources right into your game. And somewhere, millions of gamers with too little RAM cheer...

Ok, so at first glance maybe this doesnt sound so exciting. "Great Stub. You found a mod that lets obsessive gamers become even more obsessive while simultainiously becoming more lazy. How wonderful". Well maybe... but think educationally on this one. When I play Warcraft, I am using Wowwiki to help fill some gap in my knowledge. Maybe its the location of something I can't find. Maybe its a complex encounter strategy I can't remember. The what really isnt all that important. Whats important is the why: to educate myself on something. To answer a question. To add more to the experience.

Whether you are making a game, or writing a lesson plan, creating good content is a huge part of the process. In a previous post, I talked a little about the balancing act between educational value and fun in the EduGaming space. But does an add-on like this change the entire paradigm? The ability to feed real world information directly into your game experience, on command. Hmmm....

We're starting to see a change in the gaming landscape, as the wonders of the internet allow more and more interconnectivity between a fictional, gaming experiences and real world data. The Discovery Channel game SharkRunners feeds tracking data from real world Great White sharks into the a shark tracking game. Madden '08 is working to partner with the Weather Channel so that live weather data can be transfered to your virtual NFL stadium as you play. This stuff exists. Its happening now.

So lets take the same idea and extend it a bit. Last night, while playing NCAA Football '08, one of the virtual players on the Michigan State team I was oblitteraring suffered a broken collarbone. Well what if I didnt know what a broken collarbone was? NCAA doesnt have that answer, but WebMD certainly does. So you pop open your little in game widget and away you go to the land of information, not formatted for web, or mobile phone consumption, but rather a steamlined version for video games. Or maybe while playing Call of Duty, I run across a Panzerschreck weapon. What the heck is a Panzerschreck? Roll your cursor over the name of the weapon, and with a quick click you are connected to a World War 2 weapons database, the pauses your game, and provides you with an overview of the old school tank buster.

Now lets get crazy and spin it total Edu style. You're taking a Roman History class, and as part of your instruction your professor has asked that you play a bit of the game Rome Total War. You just spent a day studying the Battle of Cynoscephalae, and as a suppliment to your lecture, your instructor wants you to see and experience the battle through the Total War engine. So you load up the prebuilt Battle of Cynoscephalae level and kill the in game music. Why kill the music? So you can listen to the podcast of the lecture you just had while you play through the battle. Then pop open your in game widget. Maybe you pull up a class slide or online textbook, for clarification on the historical strategy. Or maybe you deviate from history, and want to blog about your successes or failures as they are happening from in game. Or maybe your instructor has provided a ruberic or a quiz as part of your Battle of Cynoscephalae assignment, and you open it up within the game to work through it.

Or ... you know... you could just read about it in a text book. Either way.

Maybe its not a question of balancing education and fun. Maybe its about giving you everything at once. Real games. Real content. Each supporting the other and providing the user with a best of both worlds scenario. Im feeling something happening here...

Image taken from Mashable.com