1. Video games may be the opportunity for
better public understanding and education the
profession has been waiting for.
BY MATTHEW McLAUGHLIN
P L AY I N G E N G I N E E R S
SCREENSHOTS ON JUMP PAGE COME FROM
THE GAMES KERBAL SPACE PROGRAM, SPACE
ENGINEERS, TROVE, MEDIEVAL ENGINEERS, POLY
BRIDGE, AND LURE OF THE LABYRINTH. ©Published by the National Society of Professional Engineers, September/October 2015

2. THE MAGAZINE FOR PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERS 23
A
barbarian studies the cotton candy-
colored landscape for a moment.
Then she’s off on horseback, fight-
ing her way through angry, anthropo-
morphic ice cream cones to get the ore
she needs to build the final floor of her
gingerbread skyscraper.
It’s a trippy scene to be sure, but also one
that could spark a grade school student’s
interest in designing real-world structures.
Trove is a new video game released in
July—a brightly colored take on massively
multiplayer online role-playing games like
World of Warcraft and resource collecting
and building games like Minecraft—and
while it may be light on real-world engi-
neering principles, it’s bursting with engi-
neering creativity, much like LEGO bricks
have been for more than 50 years.
The engineering profession has for
decades been asking itself how it can
improve public understanding of what
engineers do, provide better engineering
education to grade school students, and
get those same students excited about
careers in engineering. Played regularly
by 155 million Americans, according to the
Entertainment Software Association, video
games could be the best answer yet.
The New Gaming
It’s never really been in doubt that video
games can create excitement, but for
much of their history, the mainstream
view of video games has been to label
them a guilty pleasure at best and a
corrupting, brain-atrophying influence at
worst. Both video games and attitudes
have evolved, however, and a growing
amount of research and success stories
not only challenge old stereotypes but
show video games can be both beneficial
and an incredible tool for teaching.
A popular example that has made
headlines in recent years is the Institute
of Play’s Quest to Learn school in New York
City. Opened in 2009, the school is a lab
for developing game-based approaches
to teaching using both video games and
nondigital games. The school now boasts
three winners of the New York City
Mathematics Project’s Math Olympiad and
an average student performance on both
English language arts exams and science
exams that significantly surpasses the city
as a whole—by 56% and 43% respectively.
The Institute of Play isn’t the only group
exploring the educational potential of video
games. NASA and MIT have both developed
their own games, and even more govern-
ment agencies, universities, and indepen-
dent groups are researching video games
and establishing educational programs and
projects that use them.
A video game doesn’t need to be made
by NASA or developed for the classroom
to be useful as a teaching tool either. Even
commercial games, developed purely for
entertainment, have surprising poten-
tial as tools for teaching. For example,
Constance Steinkuehler, a researcher of
cognition and learning in online games,
has published a number of studies on
World of Warcraft and how it encourages
players to develop scientific and math-
ematical thinking habits.
A 2008 study of World of Warcraft discus-
sion forums by Steinkuehler and fellow
researcher Sean Duncan found 86% of posts
engaged in social knowledge construction,
more than half evidenced systems-based
reasoning, one in 10 evidenced model-
based reasoning, and 65% displayed an
evaluative epistemology in which knowl-
edge was treated as an open-ended process
of evaluation and argument.
“[Players] actually have really serious
debates around data and analysis of that
data and what it might mean,” says MIT
Professor Eric Klopfer, director of the univer-
sity’s Scheller Teacher Education Program
and Education Arcade. “There’s these really
rich, data-laden, numerical kinds of conver-
sations that they have.”
DiscoverE has also proven the educa-
tional potential of commercial video games.
The group has used the game SimCity in its
Future City Competition since the middle
school engineering program started in the
early ’90s, paving the way for the more
recent movement to use video games as
tools for teaching.
“The interactive game gives the
students a chance to really grasp the
complexities of city design and manage-
ment,” says DiscoverE’s Maggie Dressel,
Future City program manager. “Students
learn to prioritize their spending, so as not
to run out of money, and learn the impact
that their decisions have on the develop-
ment of the city.”
The interactivity of video games is
really the key to their educational potential.
“Games provide instant feedback, real-time
feedback on performance, which is really
powerful,” says Richard Culatta, director
of the Office of Educational Technology for
the Department of Education. “You can see
that happening outside of games too, but
games do a very good job of it. Students
always know where they’re at in the game.”
Structure and feedback not only differ-
entiate games from simulations, but they’re
also what helps players to learn, Klopfer
says. “Games are really good, specifically
for learning, because they do provide more
of that feedback and scaffolding that we
think are really important for learning.”
THIS CANDY BARBARIAN FROM THE VIDEO GAME TROVE USED HIS SPOILS TO BUILD A CREAMSICLE-SHAPED HOME.
SCREENSHOTBYMATTHEWMcLAUGHLIN
©Published by the National Society of Professional Engineers, September/October 2015

3. 24 PE SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2015
alongside the likes of mages, warriors, and
berserkers. But even more importantly,
games in which the player takes on the
role of engineer in more than just name,
designing and building virtual objects, are
also on the rise.
Minecraft is the blockbuster game in
this category, but Space Engineers, a game
that is technically still in development
but available through digital game store
Steam’s Early Access program, has sold
more than 1.5 million copies. Poly Bridge,
another engineering game still in develop-
ment and released through Early Access
in June, is estimated to have sold 400,000
copies its first month. The developers of
both titles attribute the surge of interest in
engineering-themed games to the freedom
and creativity they offer and the public’s
desire for that.
“I believe that the main reasons are the
freedom and limitless creativity that these
titles offer,” says George Mamakos, public
relations and marketing manager for Space
Engineers developer Keen Software House.
“Players are always looking for something
new and different and many games have
been going in that direction lately.”
“I would attribute it to the public’s
growing desire to be creators and not
consumers,” adds Patrick Corrieri,
developer of Poly Bridge. “As a child,
my fondest memories are linked to
building-block games, marble runners
made of wood, and building stuff in my
grandfather’s garage, and I think many
of us have similar shared experiences.”
The truth is the rising number of engi-
neering games is also due to the developers
committed to making such games. Keen
Software House, for example, has a rule “real
science, real facts, real physics, and real
emotions. No magic and fantasy allowed.”
“It is part of our mission to develop
games that will encourage people to get
involved with science and the STEM fields
in general,” Mamakos says. “In order to
achieve this properly, we need to focus
more on realism rather than science fiction.”
“Since release we’ve been contacted
by many different schools and educators
wishing to integrate Poly Bridge in their
classrooms as part of the physics curric-
ulum, which is of course awesome and
flattering at the same time,” Corrieri says.
“We’re happy to work with these schools
and allow them access to the game free of
charge, as the only thing better than seeing
someone have fun with something you’ve
created, is seeing someone have fun and
also learn something new with something
you’ve created.”
Powering Up
If players are interested in becoming virtual
engineers and developers are interested
in creating those opportunities, there may
never be a better time for the engineering
profession to take advantage of video games
to improve public understanding of what
engineers do and develop the next genera-
tion of engineers. It’s not only worked for
DiscoverE’s Future City Competition, but
for NASA as well.
When the government agency wanted
to make its Curiosity rover a household
name as well as ensure the public under-
stood just how astonishing an engi-
neering achievement its entry, descent,
and landing system was, it carried out
an extensive marketing and educational
SimCity works for Future City, in part,
because of its subject matter. In the early
’90s though, it was more an exception than
the rule for video games. The shift in atti-
tudes toward video games over the last
decade is as much driven by the evolu-
tion of commercial video games as it is by
social changes.
Beginning roughly a decade ago, the
commercial video game industry began
making a better variety of games to reach a
greater and more diverse audience, Klopfer
says. The change made people realize video
games had much more potential and were
much more interesting than they had previ-
ously thought, and eventually they began
to think about using them for educational
purposes in more and new ways.
Topics and themes of today’s indepen-
dent and even blockbuster video games
range not only from shoot-em-ups to high
fantasy but from historical fiction to engi-
neering. In fact, engineering games have
become increasingly popular with both
players and developers in recent years.
Virtual Engineers
There’s a huge majority of soldiers, cops,
wizards, and tomb raiders that make up
the mainstream of video game protago-
nists, but engineers are fast becoming
star protagonists as well. Action role-
playing game Torchlight II and massively
multiplayer online role-playing game
WildStar both feature engineers as a class
A PLAYER GETS A TASTE FOR THE COMPLEXITY OF CIVIL ENGINEERING WHEN THEIR BRIDGE DESIGN FAILS IN THE
VIDEO GAME POLY BRIDGE.
SCREENSHOTBYMATTHEWMcLAUGHLIN
Game Videos
See the video games mentioned in
this article for yourself by visiting
the online version at www.nspe.org/
playing-engineers. There you’ll find
videos showcasing games like Space
Engineers and Poly Bridge.
©Published by the National Society of Professional Engineers

4. THE MAGAZINE FOR PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERS 25
campaign, which included a video game
for Microsoft’s Xbox 360. The campaign, as
PE reported in October 2012, was a huge
success, and the landing was watched by
an unprecedented 36.4 million viewers.
“We had several different avenues
through which we were trying to pass infor-
mation about what the landing attempt on
Mars was going to be like and what was
involved,” says Dave Lavery, program execu-
tive for solar system exploration at NASA.
“We thought many of those avenues were
ones where, as the information customer, you
sort of sit there and you have things coming
at you, and you absorb them or you don’t.”
Inspired to provide the public with a
more interactive experience, NASA decided
to try a video game. In this case, Mars
Rover Landing, which was made available
through the Xbox 360’s online store.
The game was designed to put players
at the controls of the entry, descent, and
landing system, giving them a hands on,
virtual experience of the landing process,
Lavery says. “It was a way to understand
better, understand faster, and at a more
natural and deeper level what was going
to happen when we tried to land on Mars.”
The game was successful both in terms
of the number of downloads and amount
of positive feedback it received. Because
NASA built into the game a way for players
to watch the actual landing, it added to the
landing’s overall viewership as well.
The engineering profession has a
number of ways it can take better advan-
tage of video games. It could develop more
games specifically for educational purposes,
as NASA did with Mars Rover Landing;
or develop more educational programs or
curricula that take advantage of commer-
cial games, as DiscoverE has done with
Sim City; or it could even do both, as MIT’s
Scheller Teacher Education Program and
Education Arcade does. Regardless of the
preferred method, if the engineering profes-
sion does decide to take better advantage
of video games, there are developers inter-
ested in helping.
“Bigger organizations in the engineering
and STEM fields should move closer to
game developers in terms of collaboration
on this, invest more time or even money,
and support the development of games
that promote their work,” Keen Software
House’s Mamakos says. “This is actually
something that we are planning to do in
the future.”
Even big game companies are
expressing interest in getting involved.
When the Department of Education’s Office
of Educational Technology held its Games
for Learning Summit in April, not only
educators and government types showed
up. Ubisoft, one of the industry’s biggest
developers and publishers of video games
participated as well.
“I played loads of games growing up,”
Director of Design for Ubisoft San Francisco
Paul Cross said at the summit. “I wish a
lot of them could have been more useful
to my life.”
The opportunity is there. It’s really up to
professionals who want to tell their stories
to make video games work for them.
“Having technology be more ubiquitous
in our schools really has the potential to be
one of the most transformational moments
in the history of education,” says Office of
Educational Technology Director Culatta.
“But that largely depends on what we do
with it, and all of us … coming together
and thinking about how to take advantage
of this.” PE
ALONE AND WITHOUT A WORKING SHIP IN THE VIDEO GAME SPACE ENGINEERS, A PLAYER HAS ONLY ONE WAY
HOME, AND THAT’S THROUGH ENGINEERING.
SCREENSHOTBYMATTHEWMcLAUGHLIN
Keen Software House has generously given
PE magazine two copies of its game Space
Engineers and two copies of its game Medieval Engineers
to give away to our readers. Find out how to enter for your
chance to win by going to the online version of this article at
www.nspe.org/playing-engineers.
WIN A
VIDEO
GAME
©Published by the National Society of Professional Engineers, September/October 2015