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In This Issue
Let the Games Begin
5/20/2005
If we step back a bit, what emerges—or should emerge about the video gaming phenomenon—is a conversation about engagement, not entertainment.
Last fall, November 9th marked a much-anticipated technology event for many in the campus community. Are you wondering what you missed? An amazing new computer? Some breakthrough software application? Did you perhaps miss a critical, hack-proof security patch for your Internet browser or operating system? Software that will forever protect your computer from pop-ups, viruses, and spyware?
Alas, if only it were so. On that November day, Microsoft released the much-anticipated Halo 2 video game, which literally flew off the shelves and out of the Amazon.com warehouse, selling 2.4 million units in 24 hours. Those sales should have sent up flares to educators and those who design technology for the purpose of improving educational delivery. Let’s take a look at the numbers:
The Entertainment Software Association (ESA; www.theesa.com) notes that Halo 2 “took in more revenue on its first day of sales than any movie has ever taken in on opening day.” (The box office champ for 2004 was Spiderman 2, which booked some $40 million on opening day, compared to $125 million for Halo 2). According to the ESA and the CNN news organization (money.cnn.com), Halo 2 went on to sell some 4.2 million units in 2004, and ranked second for the year, only behind the 5.1 million units of the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Overall, US video game software sales totaled $7.3 billion in 2004. In contrast, US sales of professional/scholarly books and college textbooks totaled some $7.5 billion in 2004 (this information comes from the Association of American Publishers; www.publishers.org).
Who’s Playing Games?
A fact sheet on the ESA Web site provides a quick—and for some, startling—reminder about the ubiquity of video games. Some highlights: Fully half of Americans age six or older play computer or video games. The average age of video gamers is 30, and two-fifths (39 percent) are women. Despite the violence sometimes associated with video games, the ESA reports that “83 percent of all video and computer games sold in 2004 were rated ‘E’ for everyone or ‘T’ for teen.” An ESA press release on video game sales notes that “in 2004… eight titles were sold every second” of every day.Then there are the national data on the video gaming behaviors of college students.
Student Monitor (www.studentmonitor.com) reports that as of Fall 2004, fully two-fifths (40 percent) of full-time
undergraduates in four-year colleges and universities owned video gaming machines:
68 percent of the men and 29 percent of the women in the Student Monitor survey
own video gaming systems. Time diary data on the activities of entering college
freshmen from
In May in San Francisco, experts from leading universities, libraries, and research institutions around the world met as part of an ongoing effort to address a pressing issue: archiving the world's history, right up to today. The Quilt, a coalition of 28 regional network organizations, has added XO Communications Services to its authorized vendor list. The Quilt represents 200 universities and thousands of other educational institutions across the United States. With this new relationship, Quilt members can purchase XO's high-speed IP transit and network transport services at competitive rates. At the NECC 2008 conference in Texas this week, Wimba launched a new version of Wimba Classroom, the virtual classroom component of the company's Collaboration Suite. The new 5.2 release expands options for classroom capture and adds a variety of other functional and ease of use features. The lure of automating workflow online so human intervention is minimized is continually reinforced in the minds of higher education administrators by examples of automated campus systems such as financials, student information systems, and other enterprise systems. But what's good for management is not always good for learning. Cognos, which IBM acquired in January, has released an update to its business intelligence software that will run on the Linux operating system on IBM System z mainframes. IBM Cognos 8 BI was being developed by the two companies prior to the acquisition, but assimilation of Cognos into IBM accelerated development. Facebook is a way to greet a colleague as if she or he is on your own campus: a wave at a distance, a hello at the corner burrito place, a honk as you both leave the campus parking lot. Informal collegiality has been extended over the miles.
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