It’s something we argued about for years with our parents and teachers who caught us playing our Game Boys under the desk, and now finally change is a-coming (well, maybe).
Ray Maguire, Sony UK’s boss-man, has urged the government and education officials to begin integrating video games into the national curriculum.
Speaking at the Learning Without Frontiers conference, Maguire preached to the audience that gaming needs support from the powers-that-be if its full potential is to be realised.
“The time is right now to do it,” he urged. “We shouldn’t wait too much longer. A collaborative effort is absolutely required, it needs endorsement at the highest level, it needs someone in government to say we will do this.”
He argued that through innovative technology such as the Playstation Move, PSP and LittleBigPlanet, teachers have a whole new medium to interact with their class that they’re not making the most of.
“We’ve already started courses for teachers, student side and school side,” he said. “We want to hear from schools and local authorities interested in tackling the issues in front of them.”
We definitely see where he’s coming from, but can’t help but feel that if we were given LittleBigPlanet at school, we’d have spent far more time making sackboy beat-em-ups than marvelling at the intricate physics involved.
