So I came to this preconference to hear about the "educational" aspects of gaming. The first thing I learned is that I am a gamer, because I do occasionally play games on my computer, my daughter's Nintendo DS and even my cell phone when I'm bored. Who knew? In fact more people play online games than do social networking. Even more surprising is that the largest group of "gamers" is women over age 40!
Just as traditional board games have an educational/literacy benefit, so do video and computer games. Eye hand coordination, problem solving, reading, interpreting, pattern recognization are all skills that are practiced in computer games. In addition, there are team building aspects as well as community building opportunities in gaming free play or tournaments.
Some interesting statistics:
80% of public libraries allow patrons to play games on library computers. 78% of the participants said that the reputation of the library improved from gaming. And most remarkably 76% of gaming participants returned to the library to do something else.
The Bloomington Public Library has a room for people to create their own games, a Digital Creation Lab. The Ann Arbor Public Library will be opening their tournament software to all libraries next year. That means people from all over the country can participate in tournaments.
The other thing we have to think about is how our other services relate are viewed by gamers. How boring is a traditional online catalog to a gamer? At the same time we need to remember our more traditional clientel and give people choices about how they are viewing information (text or visual).
If you're going to host a gaming session or tournament, make it larger than life
(screen size should be bigger than at home), and dark for for more fun. Also bring traditional materials for people to check out after the event.
After learning about gaming, we got to play!! I just played tennis with someone using the Wii console. Even though I have an injured knee, I was able to play tennis using the remote. This has real positive implications for people with physical disabilities. A remote can really even the playing field!!
Diane
