Landscape Audit

Quest Atlantis
The Atlantis Remixed (ARX) Project (former Quest Atlantis) is an international learning and teaching project that uses 3D multi-user environments to immerse children, ages 9-16, in educational tasks. Emerging from a decade of research with Quest Atlantis, the ARX Project now combines strategies used in commercial games with lessons from educational research on learning and motivation. The Atlantis Remixed Project allows students to travel to virtual places to play educational adventures, talk with other users and mentors, build virtual personae, and eventually create their own games. This project is intended to engage children ages 9–16 in a form of transformational play comprising of both online and off-line learning activities, with a storyline inspiring a disposition towards social action. The Atlantis Remixed Project and Quest Atlantis provide students entire worlds in which they are central, important participants; places where their actions have significant impact on the world, and places in which what one knows is directly related to what they are able to do and, ultimately, who they can become. Explore our site and learn more about this exciting project.  (from http://atlantisremixed.org/#44)

I read about the the game first in a paper of . In the paper, the researcher described the design rationale and the basic functions of the game. It has almost everything I could have wanted for my project: a first person RPG game, a 3D gaming environment, an educational purpose, and a choice based game mechanism. The purpose of the game is different, though. As shown in the video below, it is being used to teach students how to construct elements (thesis, supporting arguments, evidences) into an argumentation paper. It could be a good future reference for my own design.

The game can be found here. While the game is not free, one can ask for permission to play it under the name of educational research. Click here for more information.

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Fable III
Fable III is the third video game in the Fable series of action role-playing open world video games. The game was published by Microsoft Game Studios and developed by Lionhead Studios for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. The story focuses on the player character's struggle to overthrow the King of Albion by forming alliances and building support for a revolution. After a successful revolt, the player becomes the monarch and is tasked with attempting to defend Albion from a great evil. The game includes voice acting by Ben Kingsley, Stephen Fry, Simon Pegg, Naomie Harris, Michael Fassbender, Zoë Wanamaker, Bernard Hill, Nicholas Hoult and John Cleese.The game was released on 29 October 2010. (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fable_III)

While this game is not about education, it does base its game mechanism on choices on almost any issue the character, the consequence of witch will be gradually reflected on the character's popularity and appearance. Furthermore, it is also one of the most popular role playing game ever publish on Xbox. It's first person view combined with unlimited choices really provided its players something to be addicted to.