In today's Chronicle, Will Wright, creator of The Sims and Sim City, argues video games are better at motivating students to learn than actually teaching them, and that play is an integral part of that process.

Red vs Blue is getting ready to release their final episode.  You can read more about it at Wired.

For those not familiar with Red vs Blue, it's a comical video series created with the video game Halo and released via the internet. The series was the first popular example of what is now known as machinima, the use of video games to create films. 

If you're interested in the possibility of using games to have students create content, you can find an infinite number of examples at www.machinima.com. They also have tips and tutorials for the most popular games. Sims may be the easiest. If you're focused on foreign languages, Felix Kronenberg at Pomona has some good examples.

Ravi Purushotma is a graduate student in the MIT Comparative Media Studies program where he specializes in new media and gaming.

Communicative 2.0 is a draft of his thesis that explores uses of a wide range of new media for foreign language gaming including gaming, game modding, and mashups of Web 2.0 software.