Children’s identityLearning in the virtual worlds of Sims 2 and Harry Potter

Abstract

It is indisputable that there is something about video games which get people really excited and which makes children, teens and adults play for hours on end: the fantasy, thegraphics, the gaming possibilities, the challenges and the complexity, but above all, thecontinuous decisions the player must make as part of his strategy and to meet goals or getpast levels (Prensky, 2005). We can find various types of video games that offer multiplepossibilities projecting patterns and social referents through their characters. This presentation is comparing two video games we used in two workshops (The Sims 2 Pets and HarryPotter and the Order of the Phoenix) from the perspective of those internal and externalselements of the game, which facilitate learning. The main goal of the project is to analyzethat a social simulation game such as The Sims offers multiple chances to compare theimaginary world and the real world, whereas in adventure games such as Harry Potter thegame introduces the player in an unreal world created by the author of the novels. In this