Teaching Intelligent Design or Sparking Interest in Science? What Players Do with Will Wright's Spore
ARTICLE
Trevor Owens
Cultural Studies of Science Education Volume 7, Number 4, ISSN 1871-1502
Abstract
The 2008 commercial video game "Spore" allowed more than a million players to design their own life forms. Starting from single-celled organisms players played through a caricature of natural history. Press coverage of the game's release offer two frames for thinking about the implications of the game. Some scientists and educators saw the game as a troubling teacher of intelligent design, while others suggested it might excite public interest in science. This paper explores the extent to which these two ways of thinking about the game are consistent with what players have done with the game in its online community. This analysis suggests that, at least for the players participating in this community, the game has not seduced them into believing in intelligent design. Instead the activities of these players suggest that the game has played a catalytic role in engaging the public with science. These findings indicate that designers of educational games may wish to consider more deeply tensions between prioritizing accuracy of content in educational games over player engagement.
Citation
Owens, T. (2012). Teaching Intelligent Design or Sparking Interest in Science? What Players Do with Will Wright's Spore. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 7(4), 857-868. Retrieved December 9, 2019 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/50182/.

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Cited By
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Evolution and natural selection: learning by playing and reflecting
David Herrero, Hector del Castillo, Natalia Monjelat, Ana Garca-Varela, Mirian Checa & Patricia Gomez, Department of Educational Sciences, University of Alcal
Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research (NAER Journal) Vol. 3, No. 1 (Jan 15, 2014) pp. 26–33
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