Link is the Ubermensch

On a whim, I checked out Coherence Engine, a blog listed under blogger.com's "Blogs of Note". Wow. This guy is awesome.

"One of the stages of Jospeh Campbell's Hero's Journey is the "refusal of the call": the initial unwillingess of the hero to venture out of the village and into the unknown. You only need to think of Luke Skywalker; he's received the call (Obi-Wan says to him "Come with me to Alderaan."), but he refuses it ("Uncle Owen needs me."). Of course in that and most hero's journeys, the refusal is only temporary. But as I think about how to encode the hero's journey into a game, that's a tough one. The whole point of a game is to get to experience adventure. What player would thumb the "no" button, when Obi-Wan says "come with me?" Even in table-top roleplaying, where there's more chance for real acting and character development, this sort of reluctance is very difficult. Because, deep down, the player -- not the character -- really, really wants to go."

Joseph Campbell and video games. Together at last, just as I knew they always should be. Reading this blog almost made me feel as though my video gaming was justified. I'm still thinking about how I could actually bring this into a class. Somebody should write a book about the pedagogy involved in teaching video games, because I've known many a teacher who's tried (either through personal choice or the demands of the school/district) to teach Campbell, often with mixed success. This may just be a way of doing it -- at least, for some kids. But how do you bring a video game into class? With a movie, you can show excerpts and talk about them and stuff (or even show one from beginning to end, time and permission allowing) -- how do you do that with a game? Should each student be allowed to play the game in class? That seems wrong.

Oh well.