Are computer games relevant for human rights education?
During the last five years, computer games have matured to be one of, if not the most popular media for people to spend time on. At the same time, the age of the average gamer has increased, hitting 35 years in 2009. But what can this highly commercial media offer to educators of human rights? Serious Games Interactive is a research-based developer of educational computer games. The company was formed in 2006 and is based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Since our start, we have set a new standard for what can be expected from games used for serious purposes. At Serious Games Interactive, we strongly believe that computer games represent a very powerful media to use for education. There are three key reasons for this. First, computer games represent an interactive learning approach, in which the user’s choices have direct consequences. This implies a “learning-by doing” approach where users get immediate feedback on their actions. Second, games constitute problem-focused learning, i.e. problem-
