I can’t get through an episode of Telltale’s The Walking Dead without becoming a guilt-ridden mess, and an exhausted one at that, having just spent a couple of hours making agonising choice after agonising choice. It’s these ethical conundrums that have led to the adventure game being used in a school in Bergen, Norway.
The class has spent two weeks playing through the game as a group and vote on decisions, using their choices as a springboard to discuss ethics in an engaging way relating to the curriculum.
The video is in Norwegian, so slap on those subtitles.
This is far from the first time that a game has been used as a teaching aid beyond game design classes, of course, with the likes of Positech’s Democracy series being used to teach economics and Skyrim being used to analyse Nordic sagas.
For decades it’s been suggested by various education groups that gaming could be used in schools to promote analytical skills and coordination, but it’s interesting to see the scope of their employment expanded into more esoteric areas like ethics.
Cheers, Destructoid.