Using Case Studies as the Narrative to Game Design and Development

Learning Through Video Games

Oblinger (2005) depicted today’s middle school, high school and college aged students as the Net Generation and characterized them as those who like to be connected, need immediate responses, desire experiential learning, and require social interaction. It has been suggested that many in this Net Generation, also deemed digital natives by Marc Prensky(Prensky, 2001), have grown up with interactive digital technologies and as a result think fundamentally differently than previous generations of students. Some advocates of digital game-based learning imply that developing educational games is a moral imperative, as students of the Net Generation often do not respond to traditional instruction. During the Summit on Educational Games, held by the Federation of American Scientists, Trotter (2005) reported that it is becoming increasingly more critical that America find a way to unite the time people spend playing video games and the time they spend on academic work. Serious games grounded in case-based examples may be one way to do so.