"The Nerd Boat"

Forbes.com has a story on a boat packed with professors learning about video games.

Part of the Microsoft message was about respect: Professional game design is, of course, hardly considered the most intellectual or serious career choice, and professors generally look down upon game programmers as little more than geeks in garages...After Microsoft's Luehmann praised the technical sophistication of three new Xbox 360 games (Mass Effect, Too Human, and Gears of War), a silver-haired professor raised his hand and commented:

"You just showed us three very sophisticated and very violent games, and I'm sure they're good for something--though I don't really know what that is--but what I want to know is, when will you make a videogame that's really useful? When will you make a videogame that's going to teach my students chemistry?"

Professor, I take severe umbrage at your apparent belief that gamers don't understand chemistry. For your information, when I was in eighth grade, I had a dream in which I was playing a video game. I controlled a character who rode a small bipedal dinosaur and collected sodium pellets (very carefully). When the character encountered a haze of green gas, which turned out to be chlorine, he threw the sodium pellets at the gas to make salt, thereby escaping a horrible death.

That, Professor, is practical chemistry.

Now if you'll excuse me, there's a Balor that needs a good old-fashioned butt-whuppin', werewolf paladin style.

posted by Mrs Peel at 07:01 PM

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