The educational value of video games.

Although critics will say otherwise, I personally believe that video games are educational in a certain sense. Let's look at the Sim City franchise. There, we have economics, shades of architecture and budgeting skills taking the helm here. The Fire Emblem series requires a sense of small-scale military warfare at the very least But Pokémon Conquest takes it up to eleven by using the entire map as an battlefield. And yes, the player has to manage who needs to guard the border regions from the opposing factions, lest they lose to an powerful army if you stationed the wrong characters there. And even the more violent games like Call of Duty and Battlefield 4 requires some degree of teamwork and situational awareness in order to be successful.

Answer no master, never the slave Carry your dreams down into the grave Every heart, like every soul, equal to break

I can make a different argument.

The 1986 version of Major League Baseball for the NES taught me how to play the game for realsies.

Sports games in general can do that.

I kinda forgot about sports games on account that I don't have a lot of them.

edited 7th Aug '14 5:55:56 PM by RabidTanker

Answer no master, never the slave Carry your dreams down into the grave Every heart, like every soul, equal to break

I've learned a lot about history from the Assassin's Creed games. Such as how Cesare Borgia was actually not really that evil, to the point where the provinces he had dominion over were so well-administered that political opponents were unable to get support from the people there.

edited 7th Aug '14 6:15:23 PM by theLibrarian

Asuras Wrath introduced me to Hindu Mythology in it's unique, over the top way.

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Animal Crossing taught me how to understand military time when I was younger.

When you wish upon a side of beef, soon will come an end to all your grief

Shin Megami Tensei and it's Compediums, with hundreds of texts about Gods, Demons, Monsters, Creatures, and Characters from various religions, mythologies and stories from around the whole world.

I could spend hours just reading them all.

Endless Ocean and all the trivia, info and curiosities you get about Marine Life just by spending a few minutes interacting with them, most of my Biology Classes have nothing on that.

"Please crush me with your heels Esdeath-sama!

Apart from things like eye-to-hand coordination that lots of game teach, there are also historical bits(i.e Civilization), tactical thinking(most strategies) and what not.

Simple mathematics combined with quick-thinking are a staple of Hearthstone particularly whenever someone has a nerve to play Nozdormu, cutting the turn to fifteen seconds.

Modern FPS also familiarize a player with how modern military looks like to... some degree.

grah

I took an educational game design course a few years back. Honestly, the two biggest problems you face are a) kids (and others) can get rapidly bored if they realize you've tricked them into learning and b) you need to make sure that failure isn't too fun. If succeeding in mixing the right chemicals results in congratulatory music and the next challenge and mixing the wrong chemicals results in an explosion and a screen saying that you just wiped out the chemistry department, Game Over, kids are going to go for the explosion. Which... is educational in a completely different manner.

If it's intentional games like Freddi Fish or Reader Rabbit, that's pretty obvious.

For games like Co D or Grand Turismo, you'll have to dig deep into it to find the most real-life senario to use in real time.

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I don't think it's right to say it that way, playing any game involves learning in some form. Everyone likes learning, they just hate putting up with gaining information that isn't within their interests, or hate it when it's simply presented in a boring as fuck way.

What you learn from, say, a fighting game, memorizing all the moves and understanding how the system works to the point of which your primary problem is only when human opponents get unpredictable, may be pretty useless and/or inefficient information, but you still learned a great deal. I think I even heard that people who learn more actually get better at learning itself, even if what you learned may not be actually useful for you.

And even when it comes to learning things that aren't very useful to society, if you can at least improve in areas where your interests are, I think it's a pretty great payoff, particularly if you're having lots of fun. My knowledge of the specifics of the complex and sometimes convoluted Yu-Gi-Oh! rulings may be almost totally useless in particular to anything I get graded on, but it does help me learn how to play another trading card game a lot faster.

All forms of media provide learning, and people hate it when they see the same stuff too often. Why? Because they already learned about it, it doesn't have that shiny new mysterious feel to it if it's packed with too many cliches. That's how much people want to learn, they get sick of what they know already if it's presented too often so bad they'll start criticizing it for not bringing anything worthwhile to the table and insult the ones that actually do like it because everybody should be as educated about the norms in the media they watch as they are.

I learned the vast majority of my early English reading skills from playing video games and my pronunciation guide was always from TV(this was before voice acting in video games was easy to implement, and thus not exactly widepsread) since there was no way in hell I was going to put up with trying to socialize when everybody is making fun of you for sucking at the language so hard you can't even read your homework.

MMORPGs are serious business.

Don't forget the Age of Empires games.

I like to keep my audience riveted.

Some of the more "video gamey" video games (as in those not concerned with narrative) definitely indirectly teach you some important life lessons. Roguelikes, for example? They teach you that playing your cards as their dealt (as in mastering yourself, your circumstances, your tools and resources and your surroundings) is more important than bruteforcing everything, especially when you don't have that particular option. In fact, most Nintendo Hard games reinforce the idea that failure is fine as long as you learn from said failure and grow stronger from it.

edited 8th Aug '14 4:51:59 PM by Schitzo

ALL CREATURE WILL DIE AND ALL THE THINGS WILL BE BROKEN. THAT'S THE LAW OF SAMURAI.

Fire Emblem taught me that what everybody knows as "spears" are actually called lances.

...Oh wait, no it didn't. It just doesn't know what it's talking about.

.hack taught me that everything in the internet hates you and wants to kill you

not everyone

everything

edited 8th Aug '14 5:29:37 PM by Trip

Especially if you know how to Data Drain.

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Kendo Rage taught me that Japan is weird and prefers their women chibified.

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I grew up playing educational games and platformers. I learned a lot from those edugames. The Trail games by Maxis taught me history, and budgeting for trips. The Sim games taught me all sorts of things, from biology, to more budgeting, to balancing multiple factors to keep various systems running.

MECC made the Trail franchise, not Maxis.

Of course, don't you know anything about ALCHEMY?!- Twin clones of Ivan the Great

Ehee, my middle school history teacher said he uses bits of Assassin's Creed III to illustrate the American Revolution. The kids who'd played the game at home were especially interested and commented it was cool to "feel" the world.

As a kid, the Oregon Trail games got me into a ton of history books. I was a history nerd long before Assassin's Creed, but it did make me curious about a few of the more obscure figures it features.

Oh, the Legacy of Kain games made me more interested in storytelling in general.

edited 9th Aug '14 11:03:48 PM by Phoenixflame

If you're not careful, Kerbal Space Program can end up teaching you about orbital mechanics, spaceflight and other related subjects.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

http://videogamemagazineletters.tumblr.com/post/90599825499/what-video-games-taught-us-part-1-of-2

http://videogamemagazineletters.tumblr.com/post/90600940369/what-video-games-taught-us-part-2-of-2

The Protomen enhanced my life.

Right, Mecc. Sorry, it's been years since I played those.

And KSP teaches you about orbital mechanics whether you like it or not.