What Would a State of the Art Instructional Video Game Look Like?

What would a state of the art instructional video game look like? As far as I am concerned, we already know the answer to this question. A good many of the best commercial video games are already state of the art learning games—though their designers would go broke if too many people knew this, thanks to the poor reputation our schools have given learning in recent years (Coles 2003). A good instructional game, like many good commercial games, should be built around what I call "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, behave, and solve problems.