h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Could we turn a trend to our advantage, and teach advanced concepts via the medium of gaming?

Already been done, loads of games require complex micro-management and problem solving skills.

Have you ever experienced a beneficial effect after playing a computer game?

Apart from getting better at the game? Yes, loads, see above.

Do you think teenagers would be turned off if they knew a computer game was 'educational'?

Yes because they aren't stupid and they know that a game that sets out to be educational can never be as good as a game that sets out to be a good game.

Do you think that we should now accept gaming as a necessary part of growing up?

No, but it's fun.

Ever come up with an idea for a great game that won't rot your brain?

Games don't rot your brain.

Do you worry about the detrimental effects of gaming 'violence' (guns, war etc.) on youngsters?

Depends on the youngster, I'd have to be worried about thier attitude to violence in the first place. Kids playing games involving death predates computer gaming.

Is the recent trend for 'brain training' games just a promotional fad?

Yes, it's a repackaging of puzzle gaming.

As original gamers now hit middle age, is it time to embrace all aspects of gaming as a daily part of our lives?

You don't have to if you don't want to

Hi a_a_e! . [can I call you a_?]

I read your answer to the talking point. Open ended questions, like these, are subject to interpretation, so I have to accept that your answers relate to your interpretation of the questions.

Perhaps you wouldn't mind responding to my interpretation as well.

By my interpretation 'advanced concepts' would not include the micro-management and problem solving skills involved in any game I've seen; especially when the skills are almost always so game oriented that they do not well translate to the 'real world'.

I don't know what the author of the questions really had in mind, but I thought it would include things like statistics and probabilities (I imagine that some gambling games might actually be beneficial in teaching the concepts, but they restrict themselves to the mathematics around decks of cards, dice, roulette wheels and the like).

The 'advanced concepts' could also include astrophysics, sub-atomic physics, medicine, biology, entymology, etc.

I would have had to answer: 'Possibly, but it may not look like much of a game.'

Other than hand-eye coordination, can you describe one of the beneficial effects, and the game from which they resulted?

I think that, if teenage students realized that they had to study and pass tests - and wanted to - they might appreciate the chance to learn the information in more of a game atmosphere. Do you have a reason to think that teenagers would only play an educational game if they didn't know that it was educational?

You wrote: 'Games don't rot your brain' which is literally true; but there have been studies that suggest excessive, prolonged game play can create unhealthy surges of natural brain chemicals (adrenalin, seratonin, etc.), reduce eye-blink rates that can iritate the eyes, desensitize people to certain kinds of violence, and result in a breakdown of social skills and proper language skills.

Of course, texting in any form seems to cause the last two.

I agree with you about kids playing games involving death. That has been around for centuries. I believe, though, that there is a danger of making their playtime too realistic. It's one thing for a child to point a stick and say bang, and another to let them suit up a character in body armor and allow them to use automatic weapons and worse to cut foes in half. The former is relatively innocent and pretend, while the latter can be harmful to a small number of easily influenced children.

Overall, I rather liked your responses!

If you have the time, I'd be interested in how you respond to these 'tweaks'.

Happy to... although it might be a bit long, I'm at work and don't have time to make it short, and yes you can call me a_ if you want.

I'm divided on your first point.

I can think of lots of games that involve statistics and probability that can be taken to really quite advanced levels should the gamer chose to and it was to the micro management and problem solving of these aspects that I was referring to. It's a part of mostly any tactical game you can buy: that you need to build a team (or something ) that can be generally balanced and versatile within any of the possible game scenarios at the sacrifice of power within any given scenario, or the whole team specialised or individuals specialised in different areas etc. All this often based on varyingly complex statistical systems, variables and sub games (elemental suite type sub-games being a common example) I know from experience that the skills gained from this, a good specific game to cite would be something like Disgea: hour of darkness, or civilization, are fairly transferable as I have used them in real life doing events management.

However, I'm not so sure about the science stuff. You can base games on these things, good games, it's been done. There are doctor type games, games based on evolutionary biology and a lot of games involve quite detailed science in their storylines. I have two problems with the idea of games as serious teaching aids though. Firstly, I don't want a doctor that learnt his trade on a Nintendo! Secondly, I think you are right, it won't be much like a game, for it to be any use it would be a simulation.

I think you're right about learning in a game atmosphere, and I think kids would still play games even if they were openly educational at home, but I think games, the better games, are Art with a big A and for a really brilliant game to come out there can be no compromise in the design, it may well be educational as well, but it was made to be a game, and no-one will play a poor game when they can play a good one.

I agree with your last two points as well, but they are about playing games too much, in the wrong way or allowing children access to inappropriate games. It boils down to responsibility, which isn't something I think games erode intrinsically and a lot of the time the responsibility isn't even in the hands of the people playing the games! (Those are busy ) That is to say by the very thing of being understood to be a *game* games don't make you sick, you have to be sick or open to suggestions of sickness first place and in that case I imagine they can certainly make you sicker!

To look at the depiction of violence in games: I can tell you that as a child, on various Mario games, I must have viciously despatched tens of thousands of probably endangered turtles, and as Link (the hero of the Zelda games) I entered peoples houses at will, smashed up their pottery and took the money they had predictably hidden inside. I have never stolen anything and I don't jump up and down on turtles, or hurt any living creature directly. The thing is even if you look at even the most child-friendly games you will find unpleasant subject matter. The vast, vast majority of all games, even children’s games, involve death or something like it, even in puzzle games a Game-Over screen can be seen as the death of the player. It's about presentation. The really weird thing is that when you put graphics aside and look closely at children’s games the morality is often worse than in the adult games! In a child’s game it's all black and white, you might take the role of someone who has to murder thousands of people and raze a few brightly coloured villages to the ground but you save the world, and you are the hero- end of story. In adult games the immorality of the player's character is often highlighted and there are usually anti-war/violence messages (albeit sometimes ridiculous or ones) and repercussions for immoral behaviour that aren't in games with a younger audience. It's odd, people don't seem to care or even notice that although when you can shoot people and steal cars with the effect of being chased by the police in a real looking game with an 18 rating people get upset but if you happily murder hundreds of innocent villagers and receive nothing but reward in a cartoon no-one bats an eyelid. In part this is to do with a disconnection from the media of games in the people who get upset, this is because they don't play games and don't realise that the experiences in games bare only minimal resemblance to the things they model. They are explicitly *game* experiences. I've seen it myself, I was playing a violent game with a kid who was about 12 and their mum expressed shock at what see saw on the screen, so I said why don't you have a go. At first she didn't want although she eventually did... but she couldn't do it and by that I mean she couldn't control the avatar with enough skill to defeat an enemy. Trepidation and offishness gave way to frustration and then by the time she'd picked up the control system and laid waste to a few orcs she was pleased with herself! It was brilliant. She totally forgot her earlier objection and replaced it with an injunction to not play for too long.

Hi again, a_:

Fantastic, and thanks for the well-reasoned response!

Very, very nice responses, and I find that we are pretty much in agreement on the issues.

I do believe that games can become valuable teaching aids. When my son was less than two years old, I bought our first home computer; a simple plug-in-a-cartridge type that also allowed programming in Basic and Extended Basic. The only games he could play, until he got a little older and I found some easy to manipulate joysticks, were Early Learning cartridges. We also played games with him, read to him, and discussed things like language skills, but he learned enough from the cartridges (and us) that he was the only student in his first school class who could knew his colors, numbers, shapes and could read the congratulatory stickers his teacher used as motivational aids!

There may be a way to mesh good gaming with higher functioning studies, without it coming off as a read-and-test game; but what that might look like, I don't know.

I do get your point about management and decision making skills. Any character creation game gives you sets of attributes from which to create your combination. Yes, each decision limits subsequent decisions; but, when it comes down to it, all the decisions are retractable - or you can wipe a character and start over without consequences.

Perhaps I'm thinking too much along the lines of solo play. Perhaps there is more to be gained, educationally, by pooling talents in a gaming environment?

From what I've seen, though, gaming addictions can be remarkably destructive. If one has a stable, rationale mind, and no addictive tendencies, I don't see much harm in gaming; but there is still something disturbing about the choices of play that seemingly stable and rational people make.

There is, for example, a game that came out as 'City of Heroes' that seemed pretty positive morality-wise; then they came out with 'City of Villians'. Lord of the Rings Online developed The Horde where one can play the monster side of the battle - Freeps versus Creeps. Strangely, the Creep side appears to actually be the more 'honorable' group. They know they won't get even advantages from the developers, because the Creeps are supposed to lose; so it seems strange that as many play that side knowing that their characters (while actually defending the area they historically controlled) are supposed to be evil.

You are correct that the morality is often worse than in the adult games. It may not matter as much in more fantasy oriented settings, but the so-called real-life games of destruction may blur the boundaries more. I'm not worried about some level 42 mage casting a spell on me during my commute to work; I'm more concerned with some Grand Theft Auto addict bringing his gun along and taking some traffic problem out on me.

Why do you suppose that so many people want to play villians, creeps, murderers, auto-thiefs, etc.? Is this a good emotional outlet? Is it indicative of some kind of frustrated, unrealized fantasy? Can the less stable minds be affected by the lack of a moral code other than the gamemaster's imposed morality? Could the continuing trend of more and more realism in games like Halo remove the disconnects you mentioned?

Researching minds want to know!

As to why so many people want to play 'villains' FT, I imagine that a lot of it has to do with the same instinct that makes us want the thief/bank robber to get away with it in movies or books. A vicarious thrill that offers us escape from standard parameters of morality and social responsibility. In the same way that children can actually tell between fantasy and fact (possibly far more than we give them creedence for) adults generally do know the difference between right and wrong behaviour. And who hasn't dreamed of pulling off the perfect heist, or kicking some a** (albeit pixelated a**)?


>Perhaps I'm thinking too much along the lines of solo play. Perhaps there is more to be gained, educationally, by pooling talents in a gaming environment?<
Indeed, the future (as gaming companies have been telling us since the year zero) is in interactive gaming. Social networking meeting role-playing in a friendly and co-operative way seems to be the notrm, especially when you look at sites such as Second Life. It's the aspect of escapism that worries me. Like some Philip K Dick novel; could it all be a diversion from more sinister goings on around us in the real world?
Paranoid GJ

Very interesting analysis, GJ!

I find it interesting to think that people want the thief/bankrobber to get away. That generally doesn't occur to me. I'd find that sort of ending most unsatisfying. It would be like wanting to find that Mr. Hyde lived happily ever after, or the Phantom of the Opera found love and piece in Paris.

I don't mind following the exploits of the lawbreaker, if enough groundwork has been achieved in casting the 'victims' in an even darker and more vicious light, or the lawbreaker is following a higher law and trying to right a wrong. But I cannot remember enjoying any movie or book where the lawbreakers were glorified and made to seem rightous, even though they still inhabited the moral low ground.

Never played Second Life. I've enough problems coping with the first one. Like Marvin once said, "Why would I want to make it up? Lifes bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it"

There certainly are sinister things on about the world. I just tend to think that us adults should be trying harder to keep the young focussed more on maintaining the good that exists then giving them escapist fun on the dark side.

I'll admit that your question about pulling of the perfect heist, or..." did hit home. There were times when those types of thoughts occurred to me, especially after watching some of the ways that the inept were caught on crime solving shows; or after some sci-fi show about a watch that could stop time for everyone but its holder.

It may be more rationalisation than anything else, but I always considered those trains of thoughts to be more of a mental exercise than a supressed yearning for misadventure for a vicarious thrill.

But, I'm pragmatic enough to have a 'to each their own' attitude about such things.

BTW, you're only paranoid if you just 'think' that they're after you!

Um... That was supposed to be peace, not piece!