Wolfquest

‘Serious Games’ that set out to deliver some form of training or learning have been around for years. Unfortunately, almost all of these games put the ‘learning’ before the fun, which usually involves bolting weak videogame elements on to content-heavy training materials.

There are examples of such games that are so unbelievably dull that players could hardly be blamed for losing the will to live during play. A major ICT company’s recent attempt to teach process management by wrapping it in a bad impression of an early 1990s First Person Shooter (FPS) ‘stands out’ as a particularly awful example.

Which is one of the reasons why we’re delighted to see the latest release of a free ‘Serious Game’ called Wolfquest. The game is produced by a small team at the National Park at Yellowstone in the US. Much like the previous version the idea is to let players simulate the experiences of living as a wolf in Yellowstone National Park. That means hunting like a wolf, meeting other wolves, finding a partner and, in the latest release, raising wolf pups.

Wolfquest is, understandably and rightly, true to the observations and data collected by the scientists studying wolves at Yellowstone. As a result, players’ wolves are often in danger and keeping cubs away from eagles, bears and coyotes is particularly difficult.

In addition to providing an authentic simulation, Wolfquest has good graphics and offers an immersive learning environment that seems to be enjoyed by kids of 9+. (Younger kids may find it a bit too real.) There are a few limitations, as the game isn’t nearly as long as most players would like, players have to pay close attention to the instructions to progress and there are a few bugs in the software. (The software glitches can usually be solved or offset by restarting your web browser, saving regularly and/ or setting the graphics to a lower resolution).

All of which means that, to many kids, Wolfquest qualifies as a game instead of a chore. This is quite an achievement on the part of such a small team of developers, because Wolfquest offers fun and active learning instead of a simplistic spin on using the same old methods to deliver training instead of education.