Congress Slashes Funding for Peaceful Conflict Resolution Game

In a departure from the usual video game setting a recent educational video game called "Cool School" was designed to teach kids peaceful conflict resolution. Unfortunately Congress has decided to slash the funding of this program that has been receiving rave reviews from the testers at schools in Illinois. "Cool School focuses on taking players through a school where just about everything (desks, books, and other objects) are alive and have their own personality. Over the course of ten levels and over 50 different situations designed by Professor Melanie Killen and then-doctoral student Nancy Margie (both of the University of Maryland). The primary goal of the game is to teach students how to solve social conflict through skills like negotiation and cooperation. During the title's development, Killen and Margie were able to work with some talented members of the video game industry, including independent developer F.J. Lennon and animator Dave Warhol." The game is now available as a free download and will play on both Mac OS X and Windows XP.

Really....

[Darkness404]

Really, Congress should not use funds to help support software that it not free/open source. Now, in true /. style I didn't read TFA but I did read the summery and it doesn't say anything about Linux or source code. If a program isn't F/OSS, number 1 some people can't play it and number 2 its use is governed by one person or company, not the world. And if this goes over well in schools, this could be a real problem for Linux adoption if it doesn't work well in WINE.

Re:GOOD.

[Tetsujin]

Congress isn't using war/oil money to fund video games. And in any case it's taxpayer money.

It's all "taxpayer money". So what? That's what a tax is - they take your money. It's not yours anymore.

Video games are a medium, like anything else. The point of this project was to try to use that medium to teach - now, there may be numerous reasons this is not a great idea (the fact that kids play games because they're fun, for instance, combined with a game whose primary goal is not to entertain but to teach - the fact that technology changes so fast that the game may have a short practical lifespan, etc.) but if nothing else, something like this is probably worth research.

Re:Good...

[Anonymous Coward]

> we don't need to be spending MORE money on non-essential, non-core services.

The US Army is a non-essential, non-core service. Iraq has nothing to do with you. Neither does Afghanistan. Oh yeah, the Taliban may be resurgent, but if you left they wouldn't bother you. Osama is long gone. Biggest best funded military in the world with massive spy agencies, and they can't get this guy. (Yes, they may read this post and log it, but pro-tip guys: Osama doesn't post to Slashdot).