Yes you read that title right, I game to learn, like school and reading learn. Shocking I know, you are reading an article on the internet about learning and video games… by a gamer, but let’s get on with it. There are many different reasons to game, take your pick from needing to escape, because we refuse to read, to hit the pause button, or maybe to compete, to be someone else, to experience something new or to be challenged. For me, it’s honestly to learn. Now the stereotypical fanboy flamer would rather slam their own dick in a car door before they learn from a video game, but for me it’s the next best thing to sex the History Channel.
How do I learn from video games? Take a closer look at some games and you will realize how much fact is crammed in with the fiction and entertainment. I’m not talking about Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing or Super Mario Bros. here. Series such as Total War and Civilization do their best to tie in historical references, characters, and events so you are learning while playing. Those wily devils have tricked you. Half-Life may not teach you much but Rainbow Six went a long way to teach about tactics, planning, and the wide variety of uses of flash-bangs and MP-5’s. Even little things like how Counter-Strike shows you how to properly load and charge a M4, hopefully that’s not something that you need to ever use, but it is something.
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I enjoy playing video games for the same reason I enjoy playing sports; and that’s to be challenged. Many of my favorite video games, especially the older ones, are incredibly difficult and arduous to beat; Super Mario Brothers, Mega Man 4, Left 4 Dead (on expert). Furthermore, these are the games I enjoy and want to play more than some others. For example, the idea of a challenge answers the question of why I like RTS games; if I can outsmart my opponent in order to beat them, I feel as though I accomplished something, rather than having a kill-death ratio of -5 and winning the game. However, many other genres need strategy in order to win, and with level difficulty changes the game can be enjoyed as I continue to get better.
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Everyone who games has their own reasons for picking up the controller (or mouse), whether it is to escape, because we refuse to read, to hit the pause button, or maybe to compete. Last week, Matt wrote his reason to game, to be someone else. This week, I share with you why I game. I game to experience things. Not just stand in someone else’s shoes, but to experience events, places, emotions that are not available to me in my normal course of life. Experience can be a dose of reality in the form of sports games, flight simulators, or economic and world simulators like SimCity. Experience can also be something of the imagination, fantasy or science fiction worlds, which gaming provides an abundance of.
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There are a lot of reasons we each choose to pick up and play video games, be it to escape, because we refuse to read, to hit the pause button, or maybe to compete. For me, it’s the chance to go outside myself and do things I can’t do on a daily basis. From being a professional athlete to picking up a hooker and stealing a car, games offer you the opportunity to be someone else, if only for a minute.
Inevitably for most of us, what we wanted to be when we grew up doesn’t quite coincide with our adult lives. When I was little, I had aspirations of becoming an astronaut and a professional baseball player. While I did have a shot at the latter before blowing out my knee, I can still strap on the virtual cleats in many of the MLB games that have come out through the years. Because of my fondness for the sport, it’s still a way for me to live out my dreams on a daily basis without actually being on the field.
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After reading Yaris’ hard hitting Why We Game article I realized two things; number one, that after reading his, my article would seem silly, and two, the things that I worry about in life are often silly as well. I do have things that are happening in my life such as a baby due in less than a month and a mortgage that keeps coming and doesn’t seem to care that my pay check has been sucking a little in the current economy, but in the end I am happy to have the baby on the way and happy to be able to pay for a house for him to live in. I realize that my life is by many standards easy and by any standards blessed. That, however, does not keep me from the most ancient of human traditions of worrying my ass off about every little fucking thing in the world.
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Back in the days before computers, before even color television, there was a time of peace and tranquility, so to speak. Kids and adolescents played in the streets, opened fire hydrants and ran around, and many of them read books on rainy or dull days, or sometimes simply for the sake of reading a book and being entertained. However, today’s world has begun to see the extinction of reading for pleasure, and there are many different complex answers to this, what has since become an incredibly complicated and intricate question itself, “why don’t kids read?”
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We’re starting a new weekly series here at Loot Ninja, called Why We Game. Everyone has multiple reasons why they spend their free time with video games, and we’re here to tell you ours as well as analyze reasons other people may have.
We’ll be kicking this off shortly and you can expect to hear from everyone here at least once with their opinions. Check back tomorrow for our first from Yaris. It just may blow your mind, and I’m not even kidding.
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