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"This week, Blizzard tightened up its procedures to ensure compliance with these laws, and players connecting from the affected nations are restricted from access to Blizzard games and services," read the statement. Unfortunately, said Blizzard, the same sanctions meant it could not give refunds to players in Iran or help them move their account elsewhere. "We apologise for any inconvenience this causes and will happily lift these restrictions as soon as US law allows," it added. Although the block on Wow has been imposed by Blizzard, other reports suggest a wider government ban might have been imposed. Players of Wow and other games, including Guild Wars, said when they had tried to log in they had been redirected to a page saying the connection had been blocked because the games promoted "superstition and mythology". Blizzard said it had no information about Iranian government action against online games.

I have not looked into the particulars of this study nor current issues in neuroplasticity in depth, but this experiment at least draws my attention because of my interest in educational games and simulations (and gaming in general).  I have often wondered, for instance, about violence in video games, and though there is no evidence that violent video games make people more violent, the really interesting question, I think, is whether or not acting out violently in a video game alters the brain differently than acting out violently in real life.  Likewise, what about other behaviors that can be acted out in high fidelity through a game from stealing in Grand Theft Auto to cyber spouses in World of Warcraft.  Do these activities affect one's neural mapping?Obviously, there are other, more curriculum-oriented implications of this study that are probably more pertinent to my field, but I think that generally we tend to view digital experiences in a different way than real life experiences, and if it's all the same to our brains, then it seems like that is something we should be conscious of when designing and consuming digital products.

The best part of that scene, and what was so affecting about it, was, as Clint Hocking (the game’s designer) pointed out, it wasn’t scripted. It was something that grew organically out of the systems they put into place. And it was wonderful: upsetting, funny, bizarre, intense. What other form of entertainment can do that for you? Provide a series of systems that you poke and prod and walk around in and explore, to the effect that, sometimes, you have something happen right in front of you that you made happen by virtue of being a virtually present within the system. You think about it long enough and your brain begins to melt, doesn’t it? It’s not storytelling, actually, but it allows a story to happen.

Role-playing simulations are frequently claimed to be effective pedagogical tools in the teaching of international relations (IR); however, there is a surprising lack of empirical evidence on their classroom utility. The assessment of simulations remains mostly anecdotal, and some recent research has found little to no statistically significant improvements in quantitative measures of academic performance among students who participated in them [for example, International Studies Perspectives (2006), vol. 7, pp. 395; International Studies Perspectives (2008), vol. 9, pp. 75–89]. Scant research has been conducted on how role-playing simulations might affect students' perceptions of the instructor's teaching. This paper investigates whether a simulation had statistically significant effect on students' exam scores in an IR course or on student teaching evaluation scores.