NY School Opens Lab for Serious Games

I've been suggesting for years that we should combine games and education. There is, for example, more than enough violence in history to satisfy the blood lust of even the most avid "Grand Theft Auto" addict. But if the context is "How would you have fought the Battle of Hastings - in Harold's place - and won?" you not only get a good dose of violent game playing, but you have to understand the build up to the battle, so you're learning history at the same time. More generally, games based on the challenge of reversing the historical result could only be won with a thorough understanding of what produced the historical result...

In one of my forthcoming fictional pieces, I have players involved in the 9-11 game - where the game can played on several levels, but the highest level challenge is to see where you could intervene in such a way as to prevent the attack and the resulting World War III, with no more than a 10 minute conversation with the right person in the 24 hours prior to the attack. (and no, it wouldn't be as easy as phoning Richard Clarke at midnight on the 10th and giving him the names of the 19 hijackers)