Games and Gaming #37: Get Your Game On @ The Library

I didn't really like the Carnegie-Mellon games at all. I wasn't able to find any directions on how to play the games. I found the game "I'll Get It" impossible to play. I clicked on the student and then nothing happened (or so I thought). Turns out I was taking the research question from them, but a newcomer to this game would not know that! Then after taking it to the catalog, it would only tell me search complete and not tell me what to do next. Perhaps if they added a dialog box to the bottom (ALA Runescape), it would be easier to understand and figure out what the player is supposed to do. The game "Within Range" was a little easier to figure out. It still took me a little while to discover what I was supposed to do. Perhaps if they had a page of rules and directions that they showed first, I wouldn't have had such a hard time with it.

I definitely agree that games belong in the library. We have not been all about BOOKS in quite some time. Libraries have been "media centers" for a while now and I know that Fort Bend library has actually had children's computer games (for literacy purposes) on a few of it's computers for years. As a learning experience, I like the way Mr. Martin put it in the New York Times article, "'If a kid takes a test and fails, that's it. But in a game, if you fail you get to take what you've learned and try again.'" It is a progressive learning trait that will help them in the real world.

For our library it is more about survival than anything. The teenagers are going to be coming here and playing Runescape anyway. It would be nice to have even more games for our Playstations and maybe even a Wii some day. As interesting as Runescape is, it is nice to encourage the teens to interact with each other more. I also agree that it brings more teens into the library. Perhaps if ye can get them in the door, we can encourage them to check out EVERYTHING the library offers.