A good instructional game, like many good commercial games, should be built around what the author calls "authentic professionalism." In such games, skills, knowledge, and values are distributed between the virtual characters and the real-world player in a way that allows the player to experience first-hand how members of that profession think,…

This article is excerpted, with the permission of the editors and the publishers, from an edited book published by Peter Lang Publishing in conjunction with Eyebeam (www.eyebeam.org), a not-for-profit new media arts organization in New York City. It reproduces one of the book's four organizing "modules"--Games as Exchange--which focuses on new…