The Potential of Games

Two very good, and related, reads:

• This month's Harpers contains an article called "Grand Theft Education", discussing the potential for games to educate. Among the interviewees is the one-man-think-tank, Raph Koster. Definitely worth picking up off the magazine rack next time you are at a store.
• Alice links us to this liveblogged transcript of Will Wright's talk at BAFTA.

Some very similar thinking in both about games' ability to teach a variety of things not only as well, but better than other media.

Here's the teaser that will get you (from Will's talk):

(Slide: Programming Next Generation Systems)

That’s the title of my talk. I don’t mean these (Slide of consoles), I mean these (Slide of children playing games) (Laughter).