Maps And Games

Map Games:
There are several map games on line, most of them are geared toward the grade school age bracket. All of the ones that I found were trying to teach the target students something, usually geography. These educational map games varied in complexity depending on the age bracket for the target students. Some were quite simple and were focused around simply understanding map basics such as symbology. One map game in particular had a quirky guide that helped the child playing the game to identify symbols on a map and what they represented. These appeared to be targeting a younger crowd, while other games were designed for a highschool understanding level. The games for older students often were designed to teach the students capitals of states and countries, something that only older children would be able to learn and have the patience to try to understand the given material.
Some of the games that I found seemed to have little to no educational value, they were simply games. An example of this was a puzzle map game that was essentially a digital map puzzle where the peices were jumbled up and the player needed to fit all the peices back together. This game simply used a maping theme to entertain the player while trying to get all the epices back together.

Games Using Maps:
Unfoutunatley there were not a lot of examples online of games that used maps or mapping in the process of playing. I was however lucky enough to partake in such a game last semester. The game was called geospatial disc golf. Each group went out and created a disc golf course hole that encorporated structures and obstacles present on campus. We then created maps using GIS that were to scale with the real life golf course. The purpose of the execise was to learn the techniques used in creating digital maps that could be created and edited in GIS. It also taught us the practicality of doing so, in this case it allowed us to create a digital "booklet" of every hole on our class golf course. The actual gaming aspect of the project was when we were able to play the holes that other groups made and then challenge that group to play our course as well.