This paper is bold, ambitious, and aptly named. On the one hand, we have a rapidly evolving technology of computer games and a generation of young people who have grown up with gaming experience. On the other hand, we have universities with the charter role of educating these young people, using technologies that often are decades out of date.

How do you bring video game technology to bear on the problem of improving university education for these young people? The easy answer is to say that video game technology has no place in university education. But the same could be said of computers and, if you go back far enough, books. So, the easy answer is not really an answer at all. Furthermore, video game technology potentially offers several important benefits. Most young people are intimately familiar with this technology. Education could be vastly more successful if it were as compelling as video games. And video games represent an important transition in education from learning by being told, to learning by doing.

Lynch and Tunstall boldly attempt to begin bridging the practical and conceptual gap between video games and education. They present an argument in favor of video game technology for education and sketch out a development model. This paper is ambitious because the gap between university education and video game technology is so vast that any paper on the subject is destined to fall into a chasm. But given all the pitfalls of attempting such folly, the authors do about as good a job as can be reasonably expected.

The title has further resonance when considering the problems associated with getting such a paper published. This paper is not an empirical study of an existing technology. It is a proposed design methodology for creating educational video games, based on the authors’ experiences--a bold first step. And while there is still a great deal to be done, this paper will hopefully encourage others to follow.