This month’s Round Table is about learning from video games. The truth is that I actually learned quite a bit from video games. From things as simple as Math Blaster forcing me to be able to do math fast enough to win, to budget management in games like Sim City, to teamwork and risk versus reward evaluation in EverQuest. Games can teach quite a bit, in many cases they teach the same way life teaches: through experience. You do, you learn.
Of course, not everything you do in games is a quality learning experience, and some games are best approached as a game only and not a lesson to be learned. For example, no matter how many Grand Theft Auto games come out, hopefully no one “learns” that killing hookers is a decent source of cash.
The title of this entry is moderately tongue in cheek… because, obviously, I didn’t learn everything I needed to know from video games. I learned plenty of things from TV, movies, comic books and an old homeless Navy man named Morty.
I’m kidding about the homeless guy… or am I?
But what exactly could I pretend I learned from video games?
Dungeon Keeper taught me that I can get more work from people if I beat them, but that beating them costs moral and breaks their spirits, so while they may work faster, they won’t respect me or be loyal. Sim City showed me how to balance a budget, and understand that no matter how great things were, Godzilla might still come and destroy everything. EverQuest taught me to be nice to people in random encounters because you never know when someone you chose to shit on is going to be the recruiting officer of that guild you want to join, or when its going to be that guy who you helped get his corpse back when no one else would. Burnout Paradise showed me that you can work hard, pay attention, and be great, but the cross traffic at the intersections are still going to get you now and then. Playing almost any console game online has made me understand the importance of preparation, because there is nothing more frustrating than playing with someone who jumped online and into your room as his first action, without even knowing how the controls work. King’s Quest III taught me the importance of semantics by only allowing certain words, conjugations and word combinations to mean anything, everything else was frustration. Warlords, and many other turn based and real time strategy games, showed me the importance of production schedules and how to think ahead before committing to decisions. And Dead Rising taught me that when the zombie hordes come, everything is a weapon.
Of course, little of that is strictly true. I don’t have any fantastic story about how a game helped me overcome dyslexia or cure cancer, but I do feel that games have, throughout my life, helped encourage and reinforce certain aspects of my education. And I think that almost any game has that potential, given the right context and perhaps a guiding voice (of a teacher or parent). Sometimes, though, games simply provided a break from learning, a rest for my brain, so that I could attack learning again later with renewed vigor.
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