[Edu-sig] Playing games

[Arthur]

kirby urner wrote:

> Back to your cryptic witticisms I see.  I can't turn these into a real
> coherent position for ya.

It will apparently never be coherent to you.  You seem to require a kind 
of literalism that I think is not to the point.

Try this:

Computer technology, in general and in education, has not changed a 
basic realty of economics - you get what you pay for.

You get from "writing" computer games by drag and drop exactly what you 
get.  And stripped of pretensions, there is absolutely nothing wrong 
with that is.  It *is* better than nothing, *but* worse than something 
more than that.

The discussion of where it is reasonable to settle under particular 
circumstances is a reasonable discussion. 

A discussion geared toward surrounding something like GameMaker with 
pretense is not.

I think there is much of that going on, so I find it necessary to claw 
at that pretense.  Otherwise I would not.

Art