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brog
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« on: January 20, 2009, 01:41:59 AM »

So I've been thinking a bit about teaching through games, and I thought I'd try starting up a discussion and see if anything productive comes out.
So:
- What have you learnt from playing games?
- What are some examples of things that games teach (other than just things about the game itself)?
- How could games be made to teach more different things?

I'm not interested in blatant "educational games", what I want are games that are worth playing for their own sake as entertainment, but which teach concepts or skills which are relevant outside of the game.

Some ideas:
* The toys babies play with, like the one where you push different shapes of block through different shapes of hole.  It's not much of a game, but the children it's aimed at find it fun and challenging, and it develops their pattern-recognition skills.
* Simple board games like Snakes and Ladders teach children counting and basic probability.
* Sports teach physical skills and coordination.
* Multiplayer games develop social skills.  I've seen quiet 'nerdy' people become quite extroverted when playing LAN games or D&D.  Dealing with losing games could help to develop anger management skills.
* Reasoning within a formal system of game rules teaches the essence of pure mathematics.
* Learning the rules of a videogame involves making hypotheses about how the game works and then performing experiments to check them - this teaches the essence of scientific reasoning.
* Lots of games teach skills of resource management and planning ahead, which are relevant to real life economic situations.

What ideas do you have on how a game could be built to train some other skill?
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sergiocornaga
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« Reply #1 on: January 20, 2009, 02:27:16 AM »

I've learned so much. Mainly vocabulary... adventure games have probably taught me the most. I'm sorry, it's difficult for me to think of specific examples.
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William Broom
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« Reply #2 on: January 20, 2009, 03:00:31 AM »

The most obvious example I can think of is Age of Empires. I learned ancient history from that game. Then they released Age of Mythology and I learned ancient mythology! It was awesome. It was really great the way they blended the learning seamlessly into the game, and yet they also had a surprising amount of text information to read if you wanted to.

To a lesser extent I also learned about Japanese mythology from Okami.

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Synnah
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« Reply #3 on: January 20, 2009, 04:44:02 AM »

I can recite the power ratings of hundreds of cars thanks to the Gran Turismo series. This is not a useful skill.

I also learned a lot about the stars from Frontier: Elite II.
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« Reply #4 on: January 20, 2009, 04:59:29 AM »

The most obvious example I can think of is Age of Empires. I learned ancient history from that game. Then they released Age of Mythology and I learned ancient mythology! It was awesome. It was really great the way they blended the learning seamlessly into the game, and yet they also had a surprising amount of text information to read if you wanted to.

To a lesser extent I also learned about Japanese mythology from Okami.


I thought the same thing about AoE II. Then I started studying history at university level. You can guess the rest that happened, childhood dreams shattered. (Though I have to admit, it's still not THAT inaccurate. And I still love the game)

Other than, on the anger management, I suppose that impossible super mario and all those other IWTBTG like games might be on that one.

What I learned... I learned to think, mainly. Not only logically, but often ethically too, especially on online roleplay-intensive muds I played in puberty and certain rpg's. I also find it true that one learns the english language quite well, while playing the previously mentioned muds as well as conversation heavy rpg's (though some jrpg's are just horribly translated.)
I'm sure there are a lot of other things as well, that just stuck subconciously. I've always been one that believes that one learns better through experience than study and the fact that games offer so much interactive, could explain why things often stick longer than through say study.
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Bree
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« Reply #5 on: January 20, 2009, 05:14:49 AM »

I probably learned a lot about navigation and map-reading from the Zelda games I played. Metroid too. So much backtracking...

I learned about good music from Guitar Hero and Rock Band. I was also inspired to pick up the guitar, so there's that, too.

I wrote a paper talking about the teaching abilities of Portal that you might find useful. I'll try and dig it up later today.
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Pico
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« Reply #6 on: January 20, 2009, 05:47:33 AM »

I learned really much english when i was a kid and i played diablo 2 :|
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« Reply #7 on: January 20, 2009, 02:56:17 PM »

Playing games teaches you that reality is so less interesting than game worlds; and it also develops hand-eye coordination.
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« Reply #8 on: January 20, 2009, 06:54:28 PM »

according to a recent study, video games force players to think more spacially and results in higher scores on I.Q. tests, whatever  that's supposed to mean.

I learnt that from fox news of all places, right before they went back to saying videogames are for antisocial/fat kids.
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handCraftedRadio
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« Reply #9 on: January 20, 2009, 07:00:01 PM »

The most obvious example I can think of is Age of Empires. I learned ancient history from that game.

I also learned a great deal about history from the game. But for some reason I failed history class when I wrote an essay about how the Babylonians fell because they didn't make the villagers collect a sufficient amount of food to build enough clubmen to stop the invaders from burning down their town center.
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Cheater‽
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« Reply #10 on: January 20, 2009, 07:28:00 PM »

I learned English.
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waruwaru
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« Reply #11 on: January 20, 2009, 07:30:07 PM »

I also find it true that one learns the english language quite well, while playing the previously mentioned muds as well as conversation heavy rpg's (though some jrpg's are just horribly translated.)

I also picked up alot of vocabularies playing those Infocom text adventure games when I was young.
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ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)
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« Reply #12 on: January 20, 2009, 07:32:02 PM »

Learned some things about history from Civilization 1. But really, this question is difficult to answer. We don't know what we learn from games, or from anything. We don't remember where we learned most of the stuff we know, and it's hard to identify how a game has changed you. The question's unanswerable. I do think that people learn a lot from games, but it's so hard to measure. It's like asking "what have you learned from your friends?" or "what have you learned from television?"
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brog
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« Reply #13 on: January 21, 2009, 02:08:04 AM »

Hm, history's an interesting one.  I can imagine a game could do a good job of showing the causes and effects of certain types of historical event.. wars especially, but probably others too.  Conflicts over resources, territory, and so on.
Plus you have the possibility of trying out counterfactuals, simulating how things might have gone if some event had happened differently.  Maybe one day introductory history texts will all be in game form?

But really, this question is difficult to answer. We don't know what we learn from games, or from anything. We don't remember where we learned most of the stuff we know, and it's hard to identify how a game has changed you. The question's unanswerable. I do think that people learn a lot from games, but it's so hard to measure.

Don't worry about it!  I'm just proposing a topic for discussion, I wasn't expecting a definite true and complete answer, just some different ideas and food for thought.  "Educational games" have traditionally done such a bad job of things, I'm wondering how it could maybe be done better.
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mirosurabu
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« Reply #14 on: January 21, 2009, 02:51:06 AM »

Quote from: Brog
Hm, history's an interesting one.  I can imagine a game could do a good job of showing the causes and effects of certain types of historical event.. wars especially, but probably others too.  Conflicts over resources, territory, and so on.
Plus you have the possibility of trying out counterfactuals, simulating how things might have gone if some event had happened differently.  Maybe one day introductory history texts will all be in game form?

Europa Universalis 3 has done some good job on this topic.
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William Broom
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« Reply #15 on: January 21, 2009, 03:04:00 AM »

The most obvious example I can think of is Age of Empires. I learned ancient history from that game.

I also learned a great deal about history from the game. But for some reason I failed history class when I wrote an essay about how the Babylonians fell because they didn't make the villagers collect a sufficient amount of food to build enough clubmen to stop the invaders from burning down their town center.
No wonder you failed. Clubmen cost more food than wood. Wizard
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J.G. Martins
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« Reply #16 on: January 21, 2009, 03:06:19 PM »

I'll go ahead with what most people have said. I had a computer plus stupid kids games since I was around 3 or 5 or something. I learnt english before any english class, and like Luilak, roleplay-intensive MUDs (Shadows of Isildur) helped me mature a fair bit, kind of like the way books might do. They put you in strange imaginary situations that you have to deal/cope with that you'd never experience in real life. Even though it's purely fiction, you think about it.

Also, hand-eye coordination, spatial awareness, perception of causal relationships, the ability to keep and notice many things at the same time, and a variety of skills that I've recently noticed a lot of non-gamers don't really have, etc etc.

Games like The Incredible Machines are awesome. Besides the usual puzzles, you can jump into  a blank slate and make up your mind about what you want to do, and have to figure a way to do it. Surprisingly enough, most kids (or adults!) these days can't get past the first dozen levels of the game.

I really believe in the IQ relation mentioned earlier. It makes sense.
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« Reply #17 on: January 21, 2009, 04:43:41 PM »

Manual dexterity, hand-eye coordination, visual memory, pattern recognition, concrete and abstract reasoning, reaction time, spatial mapping and memory, mental rotation, working memory, visuomotor planning and sequencing, fine motor skills, etc etc etc....

There are thousands of skills that we fine-tune by playing games, and there is certainly a potential for games to serve a helpful role in early brain development and recovery from brain injury. The brain learns from every single experience it has and neural connections grow stronger with each reinforced firing. Since videogames are such a spectacular platter of sensory information and motor output, there is no doubt that they have the capacity to alter brain physiology in a productive way.
Of course, other sorts of input and output need to be reinforced once in a while too Wink
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Shambrook
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« Reply #18 on: January 21, 2009, 05:32:15 PM »

I learnt almost everything I know about computers from fiddilng around with them to get games to work, does that count?

There are also some pretty bad habbits I've learnt from gaming, after growing up on Carmageddon 2 (Most underated racing game ever made) I've always been tempted to try hand break turning in my car. I know it's a fucking stupid idea but the temptation is always in the back of my head.
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Bree
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« Reply #19 on: January 21, 2009, 05:38:23 PM »

I played Tony Hawk 2 as a youngun; now, every time I see some sort of rail, I imagine how long of a grind combo I could make.

I also learned a lot from Animal Crossing. For one, if you bury a sack of money in the ground, you can grow a money tree from it.
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