And you can’t do this alone, no matter how much experience you have. So you begin to learn to play game with others. The game encourages this, with “friends lists” and built in “speed chat” menus consisting, for kids’ protection, of a limited number of phrases you can use. For example, you can invite your friends to help you defeat a building (or, if you prefer, you can just wait outside for others to show up.)

But it gets subtle. Just because someone is your friend (or wants to be) or happens to show up, doesn’t mean he or she has experience to defeat higher-level Cogs. You can check out someone’s gags when they are in range to help you decide whom to work with, but success depends not only on level and number of gags one has, but also on knowing how to use them in battle. You learn over time what players you want on your team to achieve success in particular situations. Sometimes, to be sure all of you survive, you have to reject players who ask to work with you on a certain task. One of things you can say through speed chat is “I think this is too risky for you.” Just as in real world, such advice is not always well-received, and game gives you opportunity to learn to deal with this.

In midst of any battle – players typically fight higher-level Cogs in groups of four – a player can choose, rather than to throw a gag at Cogs, to instead give his or her fellow players additional “laff points” (i.e. health). Doing this helps prevent them from “dying” and dropping out of battle. One skill typically gained from frequent play is knowing when to help your teammates versus when to attack Cogs. This is not trivial. One adult player described her first battle with ultra-high-level Cogs as “extremely nerve wracking,” and characterized strategies she had to employ to work successfully with other players as “the most emotional experience I’ve ever had in a game.” And this is version for kids!

And there is yet another way Toontown players learn there is value in cooperation. Some of tasks available to higher-level players allow them to earn jelly beans by helping out new players. When these experienced players see a Newbie fighting a Cog on street, they can join in and assist. When Cog is defeated, both experienced player and Newbie get rewarded game at their own level.

Is it Boring?

Still, while tasks at start of game involve defeating only one Cog at a time and tasks at higher levels require players to defeat hundreds of Cogs on their way to liberate bigger and bigger buildings, battles are very similar. “Isn’t that boring?” I asked one “addicted” player. “After all it’s basically same thing over and over – fighting Cogs.”

“I like going up levels,” she replied. And of course only way she can do this is by learning to cooperate well with real people, in real time – while sitting at her own computer.

I encourage readers of this article to try Toontown, both with your kids, and even on your own. (You can go to www.toontown.com to get started.) See how far you can get. If you happen to enjoy experience, you can go on to aforementioned “older players’” games, where enemies are fantasy monsters and buildings castles to storm, yet where principles of cooperation are basically same. If you actually get addicted to cooperative play, don’t blame me – these games are designed to reel you in.

But even if you don’t get hooked yourself – and more you are from “Digital Immigrant” generation less likely it is that you will – hopefully you will have learned this important and generally-overlooked lesson:

What keeps kids playing these games is not violence (that’s all fake and kids know it), but rather ability to work together with others to achieve more and more difficult goals.

Can you think of any skill more useful for children to spend their time learning? I can’t.

An emerging coalition of academics, writers, foundations, game designers, companies like Microsoft and, increasingly, U.S. Military is working to make parents and educators aware of enormous potential for learning contained in gaming medium. While “edutainment,” may work for pre-schoolers, it is primitive when it comes to enormous sophistication of today’s games. We need new and better learning games, and these are finally beginning to appear. Microsoft has sponsored a “Games-to-Teach” project at MIT which is building games for learning difficult concepts in physics and environmental science on X-Box and Pocket PC. Lucas Games has lesson plans to help teachers integrate its games into curricula to teach critical thinking. A UK study by TEEM (Teachers Evaluating Educational Multimedia) has shown that certain games can help youngsters to learn logical thinking and computer literacy. Given almost perfect overlap between profiles of gamers and military recruits, US Military uses over 50 different video and computer games to teach everything from doctrine, to strategy and tactics. “America’s Army, Operations,” a recruiting game released for free in 2002, now has almost 2 million registered users, with almost a million having completed virtual basic training. Academic research into positive effects of games on learning, which not so long ago sat unread on shelf, is being noticed by national media. Theoretical and practical guides such as “What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning And Literacy” by Professor of Education James Paul Gee, and my own “Digital Game-Based Learning,” are now on bookshelves. Experts, such as former Stanford CFO William Massey, who created learning game “Virtual U.” are working with game designers to build games that communicate their knowledge and experience. Foundations like Sloan, Markle and others are funding these efforts. The Woodrow Wilson school has begun a project called “Serious Games” to increase use of gaming in public policy debates, picking up an effort that begin 10 years ago with “Sim Health” from Maxis.

Yet despite all findings, research, and cries for help from kids in school, many parents and educators still tend to think of video and computer games as frivolous at best and harmful at worst. The press often encourages this with headlines about “killing games” when in fact two thirds of games are rated “E (everybody),” and sixteen of top 20 sellers are rated either “E” or “T (teen)”. To counteract this “name prejudice,” users and funders of today’s “new” educational games often refer to them by “code” names, such as “Desktop Simulators,” “Synthetic Environments,” or “Immersive Interactive Experiences.”

Yet what these new, highly effective learning tools really are a combination of most compelling and interactive design elements of best video and computer games with specific curricular content. The tricky part is doing this in ways that capture, rather than lose, learner’s interest and attention. We are now becoming much better at this. The money and will is there to do it, and our students are crying for it.