What have you learnt through computer games?
October 9, 2024 5:01 AM
I'm doing some thinking about games as education tools, and I am wondering if you have ever found yourself with a skill (or knowledge, but ideally a skill) that you've acquired from a simulation or from playing a game.
I learned a lot about building the best team for each challenge and managing the individuals within each team when I raided in World of Warcraft.
posted by kimberussell at 5:40 AM on October 9
posted by kimberussell at 5:40 AM on October 9
I have poor visual imagery and never learned to read maps -- I could theoretically understand one but never got the "You are here and you need to go forward a while and turn right" aspect.
When I was about 20 I got obsessed with an Atari ST game called MIDI MAZE which was a multiplayer silly Doom precursor. It displayed a 2D map in realtime along with your character's first-person view in 3D space, and after a hundred hours or so my brain "clicked" and ever since then I could read a map.
posted by mmoncur at 5:58 AM on October 9
When I was about 20 I got obsessed with an Atari ST game called MIDI MAZE which was a multiplayer silly Doom precursor. It displayed a 2D map in realtime along with your character's first-person view in 3D space, and after a hundred hours or so my brain "clicked" and ever since then I could read a map.
posted by mmoncur at 5:58 AM on October 9
I likely honed my arithmetic skills playing an educational computer game in the 1980s (walking through a castle and solving one basic arithmetic problem per room).
posted by brainwane at 6:01 AM on October 9
posted by brainwane at 6:01 AM on October 9
I'm pretty good but my husband is even better at what we call Car Tetris: packing all the road trip/camping stuff into the car so it fits best. It might not be a really useful skill but we both know how to cram all the shapes into a rectangular space because of playing Tetris.
I also learned to type significantly faster thanks to the beautiful and entertaining typing/magic battling/fox riding game Epistory.
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 6:08 AM on October 9
I also learned to type significantly faster thanks to the beautiful and entertaining typing/magic battling/fox riding game Epistory.
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 6:08 AM on October 9
I learned the Korean alphabet from a matching game on my iPhone.
posted by jabah at 6:09 AM on October 9
posted by jabah at 6:09 AM on October 9
Same as kimberrussell, I learned a lot about being a decent manager from World of Warcraft raid leading. Bringing together 25 people to try and accomplish difficult tasks for multiple hours involves a lot of people skills, compromises, considering personal strengths and weaknesses, fairness of rewards, scheduling, organization, and patience. It actually helped me get a job once - the interviewer mentioned video games in a positive way and I took a chance and mentioned that I played WoW and had been a raid leader for a few years. He made the same connections to those skills and we had a nice chat about it.
posted by rachaelfaith at 6:27 AM on October 9
posted by rachaelfaith at 6:27 AM on October 9
As someone who grew up on the games of the 80s you could argue they taught me persistence. Mario would die and die and die but if you kept trying you would get through the level.
posted by mmascolino at 7:16 AM on October 9
posted by mmascolino at 7:16 AM on October 9
I’ve learned (or been led to learn) a surprising amount of world history via the Civilization series.
I also learned a lot about programming from Robowar (a game where you programmed robots) in the 1980s.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:27 AM on October 9
I also learned a lot about programming from Robowar (a game where you programmed robots) in the 1980s.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:27 AM on October 9
Mario Teaches Typing
posted by forkisbetter at 7:37 AM on October 9
posted by forkisbetter at 7:37 AM on October 9
Well, first of all, I definitely learned my letters and some reading from Reader Rabbit in the late 80s as a tiny Mizu. Because my family had a personal computer for as long as I can remember (1986 and on) and there were always little games to play on it, I learned a lot of computer skills because I wanted to play the games, like keyboard usage, symbol meanings and numbers, ideas like using arrow keys to navigate, and responsible usage of sensitive components (don’t bend the floppy disks!)
But also because in those days you could really see the pixels, and the colors were so notable, I asked a lot of questions about light and colors, ways to convey images and sounds within a limited toolset. We had an NES pretty much upon release in the states and it was in the same room as the computer which was in the same room as the sewing machine and craft stuff and the electronic typewriter, and I was fascinated by all of those things and liked to learn about why they were all different, especially why the NES made colors on the tv but the computer monitor couldn’t do all those different colors, and why the sewing machine and typewriter involved putting fabric or paper through it and the tactile differences there, how buttons and knobs controlled things on each and each had their own symbolic language. And I would not have had the same level of fascination from 2-6 years old if there had not been videogames to hook my interest from the getgo.
Later, in middle school I was in a nerdy gifted and talented program (shocker) and part of that was we had regular classes in the school’s computer lab. And one of the best school assignments of my entire life was that we were told to play Sim City 2000 with a partner. We had a few play sessions and connected lessons about city planning, infrastructure, history of stuff like sewer design and power grids and local government structures. Very cool stuff, I think the social studies teacher had some lesson plans but others were in response to questions prompted by Sim City experiences. Then to culminate the unit, we were assigned to choose a chunk of our city that we had built in the game, and make a physical model of it with our partner and do a presentation on it in class. My best friend and I made an absolutely kickass cardboard box and construction paper on foam core model of a few blocks in our city that was on a lake and had a hospital with fancy commercial zoning and high density residential and a fire station. We were supposed to talk about how we would change things for it to be a real neighborhood and not from a game and I got into a back and forth with my teacher who insisted there needed to be a police station near the hospital and commercial district and I argued that because everyone was so happy and healthy there would not be crime. So I learned a whole lot of different lessons because of a video game there.
Speaking of sim games, my old favorite sim Afterlife had a totally amazing soundtrack, and from that I learned about ambient music and a bunch of international instruments, and also I learned about a bunch of different religious paradigms that I hadn’t yet come across except in very brief passing. I remember learning about the difference between atheist and agnostic from Afterlife, and also the concept of Purgatory because I was raised Jewish and we don’t have that. Actually I learned a lot of Christian religious concepts from Afterlife, not because I was miraculously sheltered from Christianity but because due to the game I actually gained an interest in where these terms and mechanics came from. But also Buddhism, different worldwide ideas about reincarnation, and plenty of other minutia.
From Myst and Riven I learned basic cryptography ideas, nonlinear narratives, and how to push the limits of my patience.
From Civilization’s many iterations I learned about a bunch of different cultures, not in depth but being familiar with their existence, how technologies build on each other, a lot of things about boats I otherwise would have zero interest in, and cumulatively how there is a balance between gameplay and realism and what is culturally relevant during game development and how to see underlying biases of creators from their output. And that hex tiles are awesome.
posted by Mizu at 7:43 AM on October 9
But also because in those days you could really see the pixels, and the colors were so notable, I asked a lot of questions about light and colors, ways to convey images and sounds within a limited toolset. We had an NES pretty much upon release in the states and it was in the same room as the computer which was in the same room as the sewing machine and craft stuff and the electronic typewriter, and I was fascinated by all of those things and liked to learn about why they were all different, especially why the NES made colors on the tv but the computer monitor couldn’t do all those different colors, and why the sewing machine and typewriter involved putting fabric or paper through it and the tactile differences there, how buttons and knobs controlled things on each and each had their own symbolic language. And I would not have had the same level of fascination from 2-6 years old if there had not been videogames to hook my interest from the getgo.
Later, in middle school I was in a nerdy gifted and talented program (shocker) and part of that was we had regular classes in the school’s computer lab. And one of the best school assignments of my entire life was that we were told to play Sim City 2000 with a partner. We had a few play sessions and connected lessons about city planning, infrastructure, history of stuff like sewer design and power grids and local government structures. Very cool stuff, I think the social studies teacher had some lesson plans but others were in response to questions prompted by Sim City experiences. Then to culminate the unit, we were assigned to choose a chunk of our city that we had built in the game, and make a physical model of it with our partner and do a presentation on it in class. My best friend and I made an absolutely kickass cardboard box and construction paper on foam core model of a few blocks in our city that was on a lake and had a hospital with fancy commercial zoning and high density residential and a fire station. We were supposed to talk about how we would change things for it to be a real neighborhood and not from a game and I got into a back and forth with my teacher who insisted there needed to be a police station near the hospital and commercial district and I argued that because everyone was so happy and healthy there would not be crime. So I learned a whole lot of different lessons because of a video game there.
Speaking of sim games, my old favorite sim Afterlife had a totally amazing soundtrack, and from that I learned about ambient music and a bunch of international instruments, and also I learned about a bunch of different religious paradigms that I hadn’t yet come across except in very brief passing. I remember learning about the difference between atheist and agnostic from Afterlife, and also the concept of Purgatory because I was raised Jewish and we don’t have that. Actually I learned a lot of Christian religious concepts from Afterlife, not because I was miraculously sheltered from Christianity but because due to the game I actually gained an interest in where these terms and mechanics came from. But also Buddhism, different worldwide ideas about reincarnation, and plenty of other minutia.
From Myst and Riven I learned basic cryptography ideas, nonlinear narratives, and how to push the limits of my patience.
From Civilization’s many iterations I learned about a bunch of different cultures, not in depth but being familiar with their existence, how technologies build on each other, a lot of things about boats I otherwise would have zero interest in, and cumulatively how there is a balance between gameplay and realism and what is culturally relevant during game development and how to see underlying biases of creators from their output. And that hex tiles are awesome.
posted by Mizu at 7:43 AM on October 9
I learned how to play a cutthroat game of Hearts from MSN and how to count cards from Hoyle Casino. Probably not the prosocial skills you were hoping for.
posted by fiercekitten at 8:15 AM on October 9
posted by fiercekitten at 8:15 AM on October 9
From Magic the Gathering (Specifically MTG Arena, the video game version), I learned many many obscure vocabulary words; when an entire mechanic for a set is titled addendum, you learn the definition of addendum.
posted by yaj at 8:18 AM on October 9
posted by yaj at 8:18 AM on October 9
ZeroPhobia is for fear of heights, which it truly can help with, but it also teaches really sound principles for approaching any anxiety in a graduated manner. It reminds me of the book Atomic Habits except for scary things.
posted by teremala at 8:29 AM on October 9
posted by teremala at 8:29 AM on October 9
This is not me personally, but I've met many players who improved their English language skills through RPGs that are heavy on text and/or dialogue. One benefit of RPGs over TV and movies is that they usually have English subtitles that are word-for-word identical to what is being spoken.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:50 AM on October 9
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:50 AM on October 9
If you can get the same end result but have a better time along the way by using a cheat code, just use the cheat code.
Hire the cleaning service.
Get a few weeks of premade meal delivery.
Ask for a raise if you need more money.
Quit the relationship that's not giving you what you need.
If it can be half assed, half ass it.
No one's assigning moral integrity points in real life.
posted by phunniemee at 9:40 AM on October 9
Hire the cleaning service.
Get a few weeks of premade meal delivery.
Ask for a raise if you need more money.
Quit the relationship that's not giving you what you need.
If it can be half assed, half ass it.
No one's assigning moral integrity points in real life.
posted by phunniemee at 9:40 AM on October 9
Board games, tabletop RPGs, and video games taught me a lot about basic statistics. I have a really strong intuitive grasp of how to think about, for example, "the range on this is huge but you roll the dice a lot so it'll all average out" vs "The range isn't that big but you only roll once or twice so the outcome is going to HURT or be GOOD really strongly.
posted by Tomorrowful at 9:43 AM on October 9
posted by Tomorrowful at 9:43 AM on October 9
Bloodborne was a masterclass in the importance of emotional regulation and patience. You want to get past this boss? You have to get to the boss in perfect condition. Which requires being calm, deliberate, never greedy. Yes, you're upset because you just died. Too bad. Take a deep breath and do it. Calmly. Deliberately. Or you will just fail again.
posted by Tomorrowful at 9:45 AM on October 9
posted by Tomorrowful at 9:45 AM on October 9
I know a tiny bit about flying a plane thanks to various flight simulators throughout the years. Though when I got my hands on a real yoke, it was more boring than I anticipated (except for the landing, which I did not perform)
posted by credulous at 9:47 AM on October 9
posted by credulous at 9:47 AM on October 9
I have learned that:
"you must construct additional pylons"
The Horde are the good guys.
And just a ton of historical facts playing historical wargames.
Playing Wir sind das Volk! right now, and there are so many interesting historical events, which are probably well known in Germany, but I have no idea about what they are referencing.
Also, don't get knocked into the whelp pit...
posted by Windopaene at 10:10 AM on October 9
"you must construct additional pylons"
The Horde are the good guys.
And just a ton of historical facts playing historical wargames.
Playing Wir sind das Volk! right now, and there are so many interesting historical events, which are probably well known in Germany, but I have no idea about what they are referencing.
Also, don't get knocked into the whelp pit...
posted by Windopaene at 10:10 AM on October 9
Because getting feared into the whelp cave is 50 DKP MINUS!
posted by Windopaene at 10:21 AM on October 9
posted by Windopaene at 10:21 AM on October 9
Classics: Number Munchers for arithmetic.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. taught me how to use a Soviet PSO-1 rifle scope.
TIS-100 taught me how to write assembly language, in extremely constrained conditions.
Bloodborne was a masterclass in the importance of emotional regulation and patience.
Similarly, the Souls games (but especially Bloodborne) taught me that confidence, or lack thereof, can have a very palpable effect on performance. It's the difference between success and death. (But overconfidence also kills!)
posted by neckro23 at 10:27 AM on October 9
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. taught me how to use a Soviet PSO-1 rifle scope.
TIS-100 taught me how to write assembly language, in extremely constrained conditions.
Bloodborne was a masterclass in the importance of emotional regulation and patience.
Similarly, the Souls games (but especially Bloodborne) taught me that confidence, or lack thereof, can have a very palpable effect on performance. It's the difference between success and death. (But overconfidence also kills!)
posted by neckro23 at 10:27 AM on October 9
Buying and selling fake items and managing inventory on Neopets as a teenager taught me that I really enjoy that kind of thing. I don't think it's a coincidence that I've ended up in a procurement job :)
This isn't part of the game directly, but I would make spreadsheets of items to track prices and I definitely still use spreadsheets for everything possible at work.
posted by Eyelash at 12:13 PM on October 9
This isn't part of the game directly, but I would make spreadsheets of items to track prices and I definitely still use spreadsheets for everything possible at work.
posted by Eyelash at 12:13 PM on October 9
I learned to touch-type playing MUDs.
posted by BungaDunga at 1:20 PM on October 9
posted by BungaDunga at 1:20 PM on October 9
When I got into a bad skid in my car I surprised myself with my ability to intuitively get it back under control. I'm pretty sure I have countless hours playing Grand Theft Auto to thank for that.
posted by dudekiller at 1:59 PM on October 9
posted by dudekiller at 1:59 PM on October 9
Somewhere in KOTOR there were a bunch of math puzzles that you could solve instead of having to fight your way through some situations. I specifically remember recognizing some version of the Tower of Hanoi and saving some grenades that way....and not recognizing the Look and Say sequence costing me some grenades.
Also on the o.g. Xbox, Project Gotham Racing apparently side-loaded "steer into the skid" to my driving firmware. There's a lot of drifting around corners in that game. One night when I hit a patch of ice on an overpass, the "ease off the gas, turn gently this way" neurons all fired very gracefully. When I got to the other side of the overpass, I was like "who was that?!" But of course, it was the guy trying not to lose his streak of perfect drifts between cones in St. James Park on a rainy day.
posted by adekllny at 1:59 PM on October 9
Also on the o.g. Xbox, Project Gotham Racing apparently side-loaded "steer into the skid" to my driving firmware. There's a lot of drifting around corners in that game. One night when I hit a patch of ice on an overpass, the "ease off the gas, turn gently this way" neurons all fired very gracefully. When I got to the other side of the overpass, I was like "who was that?!" But of course, it was the guy trying not to lose his streak of perfect drifts between cones in St. James Park on a rainy day.
posted by adekllny at 1:59 PM on October 9
There are many factory/optimization/strategy games on PC that are good for teaching organizational skills and basic programming. A good example is the recent Satisfactory, but most of the games from Zachtronics are very educational.
On the simulation side, all of the vehicle simulators can help teach you some important skills. Good examples are the new Microsoft Flight Simulator and American Truck Simulator.
posted by JZig at 2:21 PM on October 9
On the simulation side, all of the vehicle simulators can help teach you some important skills. Good examples are the new Microsoft Flight Simulator and American Truck Simulator.
posted by JZig at 2:21 PM on October 9
From all those games where you have to aim well, react instantly, or use various twitchy motor skills, which I'm not great at, I learned that a night's sleep makes me better at these to a really surprising extent. Such that even in real life if there's some new motor or coordination skill I'm having trouble with, I practice some and then go away for at minimum a few hours before trying again, instead of losing patience or deciding I'm not good at it.
X-section helped me get better at visualizing some 3D stuff. (I actually find all the geometry games by that developer to be great in many ways but fairly poor on the pedagogy front - but similarly to the motor skill stuff, with X-section I'd have trouble visualizing some slice and then come back to it later and find I could now visualize it easily.)
posted by trig at 2:27 PM on October 9
X-section helped me get better at visualizing some 3D stuff. (I actually find all the geometry games by that developer to be great in many ways but fairly poor on the pedagogy front - but similarly to the motor skill stuff, with X-section I'd have trouble visualizing some slice and then come back to it later and find I could now visualize it easily.)
posted by trig at 2:27 PM on October 9
General computer skills! I started out on a C64 and had a 286, 386, 486, pentium and so on, purely to play games. And getting them to run on my always out of date hardware had me really dig in. There was no Interet, just magazines so it was a lot of trial and error to figure it all out, memory management in DOS, command line usage, troubleshooting boot problems, editing the registry, how file systems work among myriad other things. I don't wok in IT but I am always the goto guy for Computer troubles, which is a very valuable soft skill, people are really happy if you can fix their Computer. And it taught me persistence.
And most young people simply don't have this kind of deeper, basic, intuitive understanding of technology, just because it is so much easier to get by without it. I think I haven't installed a new operating system from scratch in years, the last PC I built was 8 years ago,now I use a Laptop from Lenovo that simply works, if I want to play something I fire up GeforceNow and everything is handled.
And English! I am German but wanted desperately to play Ultima IV, there was no German language support so I just had to learn it.
posted by SweetLiesOfBokonon at 3:14 PM on October 9
And most young people simply don't have this kind of deeper, basic, intuitive understanding of technology, just because it is so much easier to get by without it. I think I haven't installed a new operating system from scratch in years, the last PC I built was 8 years ago,now I use a Laptop from Lenovo that simply works, if I want to play something I fire up GeforceNow and everything is handled.
And English! I am German but wanted desperately to play Ultima IV, there was no German language support so I just had to learn it.
posted by SweetLiesOfBokonon at 3:14 PM on October 9
It's not a computer game, but I think that Zendo has helped me formalize how to troubleshoot IT systems. It's a deduction game but the possible solutions are near infinite. The process I and countless other players learn to adapt is:
1. Observe the dimensions that separate follows the rule from doesn't.
2. Form a hypothesis.
3. Test it with the smallest possible change.
And the lessons:
1. Find a working system to compare against, or at least data from one in the past.
2. Think hard about the possible dimensions you can use to describe your systems.
3. Keep changes as small as possible to test your hypothesis, and test only one hypothesis.
4. Progress lives in surprise -- the tests you run that don't work like you thought they would are more useful than additional tests confirming what you already know.
5. Data from both functional and broken systems are equally important, make sure you test what your theory says should work and what shouldn't!
posted by pwnguin at 4:11 PM on October 9
1. Observe the dimensions that separate follows the rule from doesn't.
2. Form a hypothesis.
3. Test it with the smallest possible change.
And the lessons:
1. Find a working system to compare against, or at least data from one in the past.
2. Think hard about the possible dimensions you can use to describe your systems.
3. Keep changes as small as possible to test your hypothesis, and test only one hypothesis.
4. Progress lives in surprise -- the tests you run that don't work like you thought they would are more useful than additional tests confirming what you already know.
5. Data from both functional and broken systems are equally important, make sure you test what your theory says should work and what shouldn't!
posted by pwnguin at 4:11 PM on October 9
If you can get the same end result but have a better time along the way by using a cheat code, just use the cheat code.
Conversely, overuse of cheats in Skyrim taught me that easy gratification isn't everything and genuinely working for a thing can imbue value. It was really fascinating to realize how I'd gotten increasingly bored and naturally drifted away from something I had been doing for hours per day. I actually recently did have the same experience with a meal service, where it was a delight at first but much less satisfactory over time. This is not at all to shame anyone for using such "cheats"! It's just a curious thing I noticed and sometimes integrate into life, such as opting to plan a more self-reliant backpacking trip than one could, or choosing to learn how to manually operate something that has automated settings, or just being conscientious about which aspects of a task I offload and which I keep for myself.
posted by teremala at 4:20 PM on October 9
Conversely, overuse of cheats in Skyrim taught me that easy gratification isn't everything and genuinely working for a thing can imbue value. It was really fascinating to realize how I'd gotten increasingly bored and naturally drifted away from something I had been doing for hours per day. I actually recently did have the same experience with a meal service, where it was a delight at first but much less satisfactory over time. This is not at all to shame anyone for using such "cheats"! It's just a curious thing I noticed and sometimes integrate into life, such as opting to plan a more self-reliant backpacking trip than one could, or choosing to learn how to manually operate something that has automated settings, or just being conscientious about which aspects of a task I offload and which I keep for myself.
posted by teremala at 4:20 PM on October 9
Not a computer game, but I've learned a great deal about probability and risk by playing poker with friends.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:43 PM on October 9
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:43 PM on October 9
Kind of specialized, but I was a firm D&D 3.5 ruleset player and had no interest in learning this newfangled "5e" crap, and as such, soon found I couldn't find a game to get into because everyone had switched to 5e. I didn't want to learn 5e, but I DID want to play this "Baldur's Gate 3" game with the hot vampire dude everyone was talking about... so I did, and look at that, it uses the 5e ruleset (more or less)-- so I learned to play 5e and now I can find a group to play with if I want to.
posted by The otter lady at 7:47 PM on October 9
posted by The otter lady at 7:47 PM on October 9
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posted by aincandenza at 5:29 AM on October 9