Forgive me if I start to rant...

The author clearly noted that there is a great popularity amongst "shoot 'em up" games. The author also noted that the main goal of distance learning is the motivation and retention of students. Unfortunately, the author never noted the interests of their students.

As far as I am aware, distance learners tend not to be traditional students. Often, distance learners are students who want to come back to school and learn something new. Multimedia games are geered towards young white boys not the variety of people that distance learning should be targetting. In fact, my uneducated guess would be that the traditional game would actually steer many of the distance learners away from the desire to compute.

The author did note that although they want to attract learners by a system of rewards (hmm... that might be a gendered issue as well), "shoot 'em up" games are inappropriate for a learning environment. They still go with the motif of adventure games. Although our introductory course allows people to create adventure games, 90% of the games turned in are "shoot 'em up" games. People associate adventure games with that type of mentality.

I agree with the author that it is essential to exploit multi-media for distance learners but the idea of revolving distance learning around adventure games apalls me. At least currently, there is a definitive group of people attracted and detracted from computer via video games. Personally, I do not believe that they are attracting the people that they want to attract.

I think you missed the game of choice of the article. The multimedia adventure games that were encouraged were the entirely gender-neutral games mentioned such as Myst. The Adventure game in CS 15 is not what the authors would describe as an "adventure" game, I'm sure they would describe it more as a shoot 'em up since there are not puzzles or anything like that, simply other players who you have to interact with in simple manner. Thereofre I think the comparison is unfair.

Also, I really don't see why rewards have to be considered a male ideal. I haven't played Myst, but the rewards of a gender-neutral game like Carmen Sandiego are simply being promoted rather than having a score, getting your kill-count up, etc. So don't be so quick to judge in this case.