I, like Sarah, have had a hard time buying into the idea that games are representations of reality and that we can and do learn valuable lessons from games, particularly video games.
Koster writes “…games teach many skills that are relevant in the corporate setting (58).” I can see where he is coming from. I can see how a game of chess can teach you to look out for an opponent’s moves and plan accordingly. I can see how a game of 21 can teach you when to take the leap and when to stay behind for your own welfare and good.
However, with the emergence of new games like Wii Sports or Super Mario Cart (which I guess really isn’t all new, but new for me!), I can’t see how any valuable lesson can be learned from playing a game like these. I cannot see or understand the driving lesson behind learning how to pitch a fake ball or a drive a fake car and crash and bump into fake characters. But I do see potential. I see the potential in “adding an element to a game” to change it and to perhaps teach us something more.
I particularly like the idea that Koster notes in his book about using games to offer us greater insight into how the modern world works. Maybe we shouldn’t have games that demonize our opponents any more and but instead teach us to work with others and depend on others-we can.
But we don’t. As Koster noted: it is the games that teach the most obsolete skills, not the subtler skills, that gain the most popularity. I really wish that weren’t the case. I really wish that more efforts would be put on “find[ing] a new dimension to add to the gameplay” to teach a little more in the right direction; but tell that to the companies that think it’s okay to market violent fighting games to 11 year old boys.
When it comes to games and education, one thing to watch out for is expecting a one-to-one correspondence between the virtual activity represented in the game and the same activity in real life. For example, you’d be hard-pressed to argue that playing Super Mario Kart will make help your driving skills. But it does engage a host of abstract problem-solving skills that are applicable in numerous ways in daily life: timing, planning ahead, optimizing results in the face of scarce resources, and perhaps the most vital skill of all, learning how to fail and then using that failure as grounds to improve your next attempt.
When I read your post, it reminded me of something Callois mentioned in our reading for today: “[The] elementary need for disturbance and tumult first appears as an impulse to touch, grasp, taste, smell, and then drop any accessible object. It can readily become a taste for destruction and breaking things.”
While I agree that it would be beneficial to include some kind of moral message or some more educational lessons within videogames, at the end of the day their inclusion would not help game sales, undoubtedly one of the most important factors determining game content. It would seem to me that videogame designers would want to take advantage of that “elementary need for disturbance” which is deemed unacceptable in the natural social order.
Perhaps videogames provide an appropriate place and way to manifest these destructive tendencies, which might otherwise be manifested in ‘real life’. While I don’t necessarily accept this idea as correct, it was certainly something interesting to think about.
There is another school of thought that videogames with violent tendencies seem to seek out, or even create a desire for mayhem in children and teenagers. I can certainly understand this reasoning as well, but as Professor Sample suggested, it is important not to expect a one-to-one correspondence between virtual activity and real life. So, at the end of the day, I am skeptic about both ideas. I think the impact of the violence that is included in games depends heavily upon the individual playing them. And while I agree that including more educational lessons in videogames would certainly be beneficial, it (unfortunately) seems unlikely that these lessons will become more visible in the videogames in the near future.
I especially like Professor Sample’s point that videogames can teach a lot about failure, because it certainly happens a lot while playing a game. I always thought that children had a difficult time understanding how important failure is in teaching lessons and improving oneself. Learning how to use failure for one’s own benefit is a very important social skill, and I certainly agree that videogames can help kids grasp this concept.
We’ll talk a lot more about this idea of violence in videogames later in the semester, but I’m glad it’s coming up already. It’s such an important issue, but it’s often distorted by the news media, who, in the aftermath of any kind of shooting, always try to make a connection between the shooter and videogames (a connection that proved utterly false, for example, in the case of the VA Tech killer).