"And then, every kid in the classroom could be given a country, knowing that he would be awarded marks according to his individual economic performance. Of course, everyone would try at first to play on his own, thinking only about his own interest, and everyone would crash! Then, kids would maybe start to understand the importance of teamwork on this issue”, Kent Quirk tells me enthusiastically.
I am sitting with him, his wife Kim and Nicolas on the sunny terrace of a Starbucks Coffee in the “People Republic of Cambridge”, as they teasingly introduced the city. And despite the appearances, Kent is not a teacher discussing new pedagogical methods. He is a software architect and he is introducing the enormous educational potential of Melting Point, a computer game about global warming.
In the shoes of a policy-maker
Melting Point is a serious game dealing with a very complex issue. Kent’s general idea is to give you and me the opportunity to understand better the incredible complexity hidden behind the issue of global warming. Thanks to his game, you’ll be able to put yourself in the shoes of a policy-maker for a moment, by trading-off economic and politic issues to solve the scientific problem of global warming. The game is currently intended as a flash game that takes only a few minutes to do. However, its longer version could also become a very useful tool for policy-makers, as well as a platform to argue about science, allowing to test both the effects of various policies on global warming and the climate response to human activity through more or less optimistic scenarios.
An impressive project
Kent started the creation of Melting Point a year ago, as he became frustrated with the US inertia on the global warming issue. “I thought the Medias were only interested in the controversy and when they acknowledged the existence of the issue, they only focused on a tiny bit of the solution. This was irritating, especially as the size of the problem means that we need to find a real solution to fix it in the next decade or so.” He decided therefore to work on Melting Point on his own for some months.
The result is impressive. It has already driven the interest of Scholastic, a publisher specialized in educational books. Kent will be presenting the flash game version of Melting Point to the public at the Games for Change festival that is to be held in New York City on June 11 and 12. He hopes to attract other potentially interested companies there. Why not yours?
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