bcoe's Journal: Hacking MMO Teaches Programming and Web-Design

A few friends and I have been working for several months now on Hack Wars, an interesting (and exceptionally nerdy) MMO. Found Here: http://www.hackwars.net/stats.php I am not a stranger to developing educational games, having helped conceive of the game 'Speare. Developing the game Hack Wars, however, was a much less bittersweet experience. Granted, Hack Wars is not as explicitly an educational game as 'Speare. This having been said, Hack Wars is a great and fun way to learn the basics of programming -- in an environment that combines aspects of both event-driven and procedural programming paradigms. The game also encourages players to learn the basics of web-design, giving players daily votes to spend on promoting each other's websites. Now, don't get me wrong, Hack Wars is designed from the ground up to be a fun and competitive MMO; it is, however, neat to be able to imbue it with an actual grounding in computer-science -- a field I am quite passionate about.
-Ben