Simulation Game: CellCraft
CellCraft was developed by Carolina Biological Supply as a fun and interactive way to learn about the biology and functions of a cell and its organelles. The game appears to open with a lengthy training phase, hosted by mysterious creatures, possibly platypuses (platypi?). However, as the game develops, the player discovers that she is the cell the the platypuses are creating.
As the cell, the player learns how to control her cellular movements with pseudopods, how to control her metabolism with ATP and mitochondria, and how to produce RNA and enzymes with ribosomes. This sounds like pretty in depth stuff, but the game does a good job of keeping it simple, fun, and memorable.
After a while, the game takes the form of a single-player RPG. The player must manage a variety of factors to feed her cell (which is almost like an avatar in other simulation games), protect it from predators and parasites like viruses, make it grow, and make it reproduce. Like many RPGs the game's universe, rules, and possibilities are vague and confusing, but become second nature after an hour or so of gameplay; but there is the rub.
RPGs (e.g. The Sims, World of Warcraft, etc.) are appealing because 1) they offer something for all learning preferences and 2) the more one plays, the more one becomes 'addicted' her "character," to gameplay, and to the game universe. If a student became 'addicted' to this game, she would undoubtedly be able to use biological vocabulary fluently, as well as understand and explain cellular biology with ease. Unfortunately, I did not find myself becoming increasingly drawn into the game in the way that I found myself drawn into some RPGs during college. Instead, I honestly kept thinking to myself, "This is fun, but is it over yet?" Then again, I am not a high school student. If the choice was, "Memorize this vocabulary list for the test" versus "Play this game for two hours," I would choose to play the game without question.
Despite the criticism above, it seems to me that CellCraft is fun, interactive, memorable, and a very helpful tool for students and teachers of biology. From the standpoint of situative theory, the game is perfect: the player becomes an 'apprentice' cell, learns about cells by being a cell and by gradually taking over responsibility for that cell's life. A student who could really "get into" this game would have a much more thorough and long-lasting knowledge of cells than a student who had merely memorized facts for a test!
