video games – are they any good?

Jane McGonigal holds the title of Director of Game Research at the Institute of the Future. She thinks very highly of gaming and thinks they can be leveraged to motivate people to solve real world problems. See article. But the debate rages on.

Here is another counterpoint article/review that does not take kindly to McGonigals book.

It is interesting to note that McGonigals first article has grossly exaggerated claims  while her second article is more tempered and advocates proper balancing of reality with gaming.

Ironically, for the use models she is advocating, the games themselves need to be grounded very much in reality else the solutions discovered through gaming would be utterly non-transferrable (read useless/irrelevant) to real world problems. But I can definitely see the value of gaming environments in making learning difficult concepts, a lot more fun.