The Oregon Trail Lied to You | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
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- Опубликовано: 28 мар 2016
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The Oregon Trail might be educational, but not in the way most people think.
If you grew up in the 80s-90s, there’s a good chance that you played The Oregon Trail in school. The game sold over 65 million copied, and was praised for its educational value. The goal was to teach students about the harsh realities of the old west through an engaging and entertaining video game, but it turns out the information might not have sunk in as well as we thought. More recent studies have found that games like The Oregon Trail are not great at teaching kids historical facts, but they may have been learning equally important skills instead.
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Hosted by Jamin Warren (@jaminwar)
See more on games and culture on his site: www.killscreendaily.com
Made by Kornhaber Brown (www.kornhaberbrown.com)
I think historical games like Oregon Trail and Civilizations don't teach us about events, but rather, they give us an idea of what it was like to be in that role of a pioneer or a leader of a nation etc. This is something I think is important for schools to utilize as a way to not necessarily TEACH their students, but to get them much more interested in learning about the subject. A couple days ago I was given a group assignment in math where we had to plot out the height of a roller coaster over time on a graph using piecewise functions. This assignment reminded me of a game called Roller Coaster Tycoon 3, a game not meant for education but meant to show what it's like to run a theme park, build rides in it, and design its layout. Specially, it reminded me of building roller coasters, which is something I really enjoy doing in the game. Because of this I was much more interested in the assignment and actually felt motivated to do it! I feel if you play Oregon Trail, then learn about it in school, perhaps you'd like learning about the actual Oregon Trail more because you experienced an interpretation of what it might've been like to be on that harsh cruel trail and you make a connection to the people who actually went on it. Instead of saying, "meh, these are just a bunch of old farts, they're boring," now you're saying to yourself, "Hey I was one of them! I know what it's like to be on the trail! Now I'm actually concerned about their well being! I want to know more! I want to know if they made it and if so how!?" It's that kind of interest that makes learning much more memorable and fun. So while Oregon Trail doesn't TEACH a player much about the events and places of the real Oregon Trail, it does give you a feel for it and gets you more invested in it.
Sorry that was so long, it was probably a pain to read, but I just had to get that out.
Teacher here - I think it's important to recognize the pure hard skills that are taught with games like OT. Using a keyboard, starting a program, reading text from the screen are all important skills that were very foreign to elementary school students in the 1980's. I was a late reader and I know that when I was sat down in front of OT I had a really hard time playing it simply because I lacked the reading comprehension to play it. Minecraft plays a similar roll for students now, it gives them a non-threatening (perhaps playful (although that's a loaded word in ECE land)) way to start configuring/taking ownership/modifying their computer experience. It's not about what Minecraft wants to teach, but the ancillary skills that are taught.
I agree, I also think however that games like OT can make students care more about their subjects. Playing games like roller coaster tycoon could make math more interesting if you tied in roller coaster design with it. Games don't necessarily teach, rather, they let you experience, and you develop a connection between the lessons being taught and the game. It's why we care so much more about characters like Mario and Link, even though we probably have LESS in common with them than we do with Albert Einstein or George Washington.
I feel that the Oregon Trail taught resource management. Looking back, the winning strategy was to select the banker because you were able to start out with more resources...was the game a hidden lesson in social economics? Those who start with more resources are more likely to be successful. Now that's something to think about!
Agreed. Historically, I knew it made more sense to set out as a farmer. But going as a banker meant that I could buy more stuff.
+Aaron Stevens But the point bonus
Seriously, the point bonus. I like how he said no one ever reached Oregon. My class did - more often than not. We had to compete for high scores, which taught early lessons in min/maxing.
willythemailboy2 Yeah, I won this game many times, too in school. Hunting was fairly easy if you had the ammo, and that gave a ton of food. More resources made it easier.
I tried watching this but came down with dysentery and died.
waterdamnaged I tried getting dysentery and dying but I got dysentery and died.
I tried watching this but RUclips is broken and no videos will play.
I learned from Civilization that when a nation moves its troops to the border of another nation bad stuff is about to happen. Even if they're all like "don't worry, it's just an exercise" about it.
Oregon Trail teaches you precisely the lessons you are meant to learn. You ask "did anyone even get to Oregon?" Well, very few. That's the point! So many people died, it was incredibly hard and required almost herculean effort as well as being able to balance a number of factors. That's the crucial lesson of Oregon Trail.
Asking whether you got to the end is like asking how you beat Missile Command.
Missile Command is a never-ending game.
Oregon Trail has a ending.
Age of Empires taught me to let my people prosper so that they can fight my wars for me.
Side note: the bacteria that causes dysentery spreads mainly through faecal matter which easily contaminates water sources. I would say it's unlikely that eating squirrels is the direct cause of dysentery.
Lesson from Kerbal Space Program: rocket science really IS that hard.
I made it to Oregon on my first try. Took less than 15 Minutes. I just bought the stuff the merchant recommended and never stopped for anything.
Bob died, but Bob, Bob, Bob and Bob made it.
Same. I always kept a high speed and it made no difference?
I agree that the game did not teach you about the Oregon Trail. However, it did prompt me to ask my teacher what "cholera" was, and then learn how to pronounce it. It didn't teach history, but inspired curiousity instead.
1) I learned not to play games online with people. In my 90s classroom, the computers could link up and multiple children would be able to play on the same wagon party. But there was always that one guy who stayed out hunting way, way after the max lbs. of meat was gather. Meaning swabbles broke out between him and the other kids who were tired of blasting away at squirrels and wanted to get on with the game. I think that's where my deep-root impatience with MMOs began.
2) I actually learned a lot about history from Oregon Trail, but I've always been a massive nerd. I played Amazon Trail too, which is where I discovered Fordlandia and the facinating events of it's collapse. Now that would be a neat PBS video...
3) How dare you sully her good name! My wife and I BOTH learned things from Carmen Sandiego, because it turns out massive nerds find each other eventually.
2. Someone else who played Amazon Trail? Cool!
3. Agreed. Carmen Sandiego was highly educational!
Telling my teacher I couldn't do PE because I had chagas disease doesn't work, I found. And no they don't want to hear it described.
in Canada we had our own kind of variant of Oregon Trail in elementary schools called Cross Country Canada. You played a trucker who had to go pick up a requested asset native to certain cities (albeit it doesn't specify which city it's in) and we have to deliver it to another Canadian city on the map. We were supplied with a cheat sheet to inform you where to go pick up what you need, be it lumber or ore or some other commodity, and then you had to traverse the country, making sure not to run out of gas or crash and keep your spending down.
Essentially everything you said about Oregon Trail and education translates pretty perfectly to what I learned about Cross Country Canada. It was just a truck simulator. Now mind you, being from a really strict household where I only really got to play educational games, I can safely say that they improved during my lifetime, focusing on smaller sections of a subject, but at the same time, there were certain mini games I favoured over others for the sake of simply wanting to have fun. There was a definite balance between entertainment and using brain power that I think is hard to hit, but I think it can be done. I am thinking of a few that would have really done well if not for their controls being some of the worst I've dealt with in recent memory. That is something devs are prone to overlooking at times too.
Final Fantasy II (4) taught me how to program, only it didn't happen till a few years after I played it (as well as subsequent games in the genre). The format of the game was a completely foreign concept to me at the time and it blew my mind. The idea of actually taking an active role in an adventure complete with exploration, character development, combat, and strategy was incredible. When I was in Jr. High My parents bought me a graphing calculator second hand and it had a few bassic programs on it. I reverse engineered them in order to make a basic turn based battle sim that eventually grew into a top down exploration game with multiple screens to explore, random encounters, and a leveling/equipment system. I would have loved to keep going, but I eventually completely filled the calculator's memory. While I don't program anymore, I am still enchanted by the magic possibilities of video games.
You meet a man on the Oregon Trail. He tells you his name is Terry. You laugh and tell him, “That’s a girl’s name!” Terry shoots you. You have died of dissin’ Terry.
Well, the game "Transport Tycoon Deluxe" (now OpenTTD) has taught me one very important thing, despite not being a teaching game: English. I'm French, and I started playing this game when I was 8, alone, on my own. At first I was really guessing stuff with the icons in game, but you can only go so far. So I borrowed an English/French translation dictionary and I just started translating everything that popped up on the screen.
Few weeks after, I knew how to say stuff like "The livestock production has fallen by a third this last quarter".
This game literally taught me English better than any teacher I had (especially since back in the day, you wouldn't start learning english until 11 or so). So yeah, the game has nothing to do with learning but I was so passionate that I just couldn't stop playing/translating/learning. :)
I disagree with this video. The Oregon trail didn't teach you anything about going on the trail? Really? It didn't teach you anything about the time period? I find this odd. The idea that one had to hunt to survive, focus and survive? Learning about stories, and what was valuable? It places you in another culture. While yes this game, certainly gamified a few things, if you never tried to play it without fording the river, as most people wouldn't because it was dangerous as hell, then you were you invested in it?
I'm not saying there weren't problems but having an experience with this made me relate to stories of the times in a way only games can.
It was an effective teaching tool, not saying some criticisms you put forward don't have merit, but overall the experience was a teaching tool and a boon. It let me imagine what that life was like, and understand an experience outside my own. If you think learning history is solely dates and names than I think you're working from a false premise.
Thank you!
+Richard Philip Bouchard you are welcome :) Wow, and Thank you, may your legacy live on.
+Wednesday's Serial I'd wager some got more out of it than others. But I also agree that it was a game first and education second. I think people could have learned even more if the pitstops had been more than pitstops. If knowing the history of the forts or strategies about going one way or the other mattered more, then people would have retained more specific knowledge than the general "it was the 1800s, people went west, you had to hunt for your own food, and sometimes you got sick."
+NekoMouser While I agree with the premise, we are also talking about an era where every character was valuable (memory wise), and any significant history would be a lot of memory.
+Wednesday's Serial No. It didn't teach anything real about the trail, the people who were on it, those who were encountered, nor the actual strife.
Who claimed anyone was invested in anything?
Sim City 2000! You have to manage where you put certain commodities, what sort of power to use, use risky business strategies and adapt to what people want.
I played this game as a kid in computer lab in the 80s, and loved it. Ironically I later became a Banker in Boston (an option in the game!)
I love historical games because they teach you the way that people acted, thought and behaved, and in essence transport you like no other medium into that time and place. That is what is best about the AssCreed games. They give you little nuggets of historical truth, wrapped in a historically accurate setting. I guess it doesnt teach u too much, but its nice to be able to 'experience' the world the way our ancestors may have (minus much of the violent stabbing).
Plus Assassin's Creed has a database of all historical landmarks and event that happens through each game, i think im the only one that read those... like every single one of them.
If you want to look at games that can teach you things - don't look at PC games. Look at table-top RPGs. If you've played D&D, then you've kept track of rations, how much rope you might need, healing potions, done at least basic math to calculate your character's armor class and bonuses - and you've grappled with basic ethics in trying to make sense of the alignment system.
I recall a story I once read of a math teacher who taught 4th or 5th grade kids - he used D&D in his classes, since it was far more fun for the kids to roll dice and then count and add up to see if they slew an orc, than doing basic "What is 7 - 5" coursework - even if they ultimately solved the same problems.
Civilization constantly taught me about history. When waiting for different things or researching why a certain civilization has this power I did learn things.
One of my all time favorite video games, Anno 1602, subconsciously steered me towards my major in college, economics.
I have a Word document I'm writing about things video games have taught me. Here's two:
Use every day wisely (Persona 3 & 4, LoZ: Majora's Mask)
Don't hang on to things that aren't serving you any more, or spending time trying to
work on something that won't pay off (Persona 3 & 4, Pokemon)
"How did you get Col-aru" it's cholera xD
Duh. But as kids most of us didn't know how to pronounce it because of it wasn't something we encountered regularly
That's how you pronounce it. Co-leh-ruh
"How did you get Koh-lair-uh? I don't even know what that is."
LMAO xD
Diablo 1 & 2 taught me the names of a lot of historical weapons. As a kid, though, I thought a bastard sword was just a sword that jerks use.
+hypersapien I learnt about that sword from "Summon Night: Swordcraft Story" :3
Naturally, as a kid I thought it was hilarious at the time.
Oregon Trail taught me that 100 percent of the people on said trail died of dysentery. It's really kind of amazing anyone made it to populate the area with dysentery rates that high. I did make it to the last part at the end with the rapids, once. I died after smashing on a rock.
The Oregon Trail taught me that I wanted to be a game designer. When I was in elementary school, and everyone else was in the computer lab learning how to type properly, I was playing the one game that the school had deigned to install on their computers: The Oregon Trail 2. I hated every minute of it, but it was better than sitting there doing nothing or playing along with the typing program when I already knew how to type.
My contempt for a game that I spent a half an hour every other weekday playing led me to making a board game version that my teacher ended up keeping and using in class for some lesson or another, and most people who played it agreed that it was better than the computer version.
Now, 11 years later, I'm a year out from graduating with a degree in Video Game Art and Design, and hopefully a future career in working to make video games.
Pajama Sam, Putt-Putt, and Freddie Fish were my childhood.
Also we had this ghost typing game where typing correctly and quickly would haunt the house (:
I don't know how educators expected us to win at Oregon Trail, which is what I just realized is essentially a strategy game, when I was 7 years old.
I learned English from King's Quest II. It seems unimaginable now, but I finished this game in it's entirety in a single sitting (I didn't know how to save a game, so I had to start over every time I quit) using an English-Hebrew dictionary to figure out what the hell was going on when I was 8 years old...
It is raw fact that Pikmin speedrunning can qualify you for a degree in business management.
Cross Country Canada was another game similar to Oregon Trail, in that you travelled around the country delivering goods in your truck. Probably made to learn resource management and geography, but most people enjoyed speeding and picking up hitchhikers :)
The games that taught me the most were games that didn't set out to teach at all. SId Meier's Pirates!, a physical encyclopedia map of the Caribbean, and curiosity taught me quite a lot about geography, history, trade and economics. Europa Universalis got me curious about all kinds of history and culture. But Kerbal Space Program is probably the best example - it taught me orbital mechanics, the mathematics behind rocket launches, delta-v, specific impulse, figuring out proper ejection burns to go to other planets, gravity assists, and even quite a bit about aerodynamics. It seems to me that the best way a game can teach is to expose you to new ideas and concepts, to ignite your curiosity, and to give you a starting point from which to dive into the wealth of information available today on any subject. I've spent hours reading about the rise and fall of nations and cultures I'd never even heard of thanks to games. All I learned from Oregon Trail was that being a banker gives you a big advantage when you're putting everything you own on the line to move halfway across a continent through bad conditions. :P
Life has taught me that everyone hates me. Best game 2016.
I love you ❤
The Sims taught me that it's always a good idea to put a ladder in your swimming pool.
Metal Gear Solid on PS1 taught me that video games could be much more than what we could traditionally expect. More engaging, more cinematic and more relatable. From then on, my passion for video games was confirmed.
"Lost Mind of Dr. Brain" and "The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis" were fantastic edutainment games.
+James Closs I agree! Those were like my favorite games when I was little. I'm super glad that they've remade Zoombinis at least. I still love playing it :)
Roller Coaster tycoon has taught me a bit: micromanaging, running a business, managing finances, physics, and how to create a visually pleasing landscape.
@jaminwar, what games would you recommend schools offer to their students?
The Level 9 adventure game Red Moon taught me how to exploit bugs to my advantage.
If you killed a creature, it's ghost would reappear and haunt you. However, you could use the command 'bury Ghost of X' to make it go away.
You could also use 'bury X' to bury the creature while still alive.
You could also use 'bury Y' to bury any object in the game. So if a chasm was in the way, you could 'bury chasm' and the chasm would disappear.
Door that you didn't have the key to? No problem, just 'bury door' and proceed.
The version of Oregon Trail I played was in the mid to late nineties on a CD-ROM, and had these creepy semi-animated faced people you could talk and trade with. I never really got over them, I still see them in my dreams sometimes.
Sounds like you were playing Oregon Trail 2nd edition. Those faces were creepy
I'm a fan of Sim-City-like games, but the most effective (for me) was actually Cities: Skylines. It teaches you pretty much everything that goes into designing a good city: infrastructure building, zoning, using natural resources, finances, etc. You get pretty immediate feedback when you make a good or bad decision, too; cars back up when you design an intersection poorly, which means that car-based government services (fire trucks, landfills, morgues) can't operate as well, which causes all sorts of problems in the city. Good stuff.
I have learned so much from games. However, I find that they tend to best at teaching the nature of things rather than an exact set of knowledge which is why they are beneficial to life but not comparable to a classroom. Civilization teaches you nothing about cultures, militaries, science and economics but instead how those thing interact with each other. Something that classrooms and videos can't do nearly as well. Some games like total war or world of tanks teach you incredibly specific historical details but above all games give perspective, appreciation and teach systems to players. This is the kind of PBS Game/Show episode we love!
I've actually worked for an educational publisher (of books, not games), and "gamification" was a huge topic. But doing gamification of education right has been a consistent challenge across the industry.
As a non american viewer, who likes to learn things through this format, what always stuck in my head was "the most important video game ever made". It came back again and again and I couldn't concentrate at all at the rest of the video.
I have never played this game only ever heard about it every now and again. Please writers, consider some of your viewers lucky enough to travel the world and then accuse their peers of never even having heard of this "most important video game ever made" for this one country.
Now that I got that out, I'll watch it again in the hopes of retaining some information :)
I found that playing Unturned taught me a lot about the geography of the island it's based on. If a game requires you to use the information you learn to play the game, it's an effective teacher.
I really enjoyed Age of Empires 1 and 2 when they came out. It was bad ass seeing how the combat of the era was simulated and the campaigns followed history loosely enough to make you go and look it up when you wanted to know more. It was my first exposure to the Trebuchet and it's awesomeness that people back then built them. Also the manual was a fun read too with interesting history tidbits.
My favourite edutainment game has gotta be Logical Journey of the Zoombinis. It's supposed to teach logic, naturally, but what it wound up teaching me is -- well, on top of the logic -- to think outside what I expect, to not think "I can't figure this out" but rather "What could fit this data?" The other thing was the thought that differences between people shouldn't be ignored in the sake of equality, but embraced. I like to think that equality is an overall thing -- Someone can be better at one thing, and someone else can be better at another. Zoombinis does this cause each Zoombini (the little creatures you're helping) used to completely ignore their differences of hair, eyes, noses, and feet, but over 2/3 of the puzzles in it require you to sort the little guys out based on those exact differences. More often than not, one who seems to be the "odd man out" would wind up being the key to the puzzle that gives you the solution, or triggers something that saves the last few.
Europa Universalis IV taught me that geography exists as a field of academia only because of our fondness for warfare and how to better min-max our builds to do it better.
Pshaw. If you died easily on Oregon Trail, you didn't know how to play it.
I've played it many times, and survived more than I lost.
Mind you, I did learn how to trade and make an amazing profit...
I think one thing to keep in mind with history games in particular is that the study of history is not just about facts at particular points in time, but also about how individuals and environmental factors interact to eventually create the events we know to be history. I'm thinking of something like the Civilization games, where even though it may not be accurate that I, as an 8th-century Arabian Caliph, took off into space in the year 2050, I still have a better understanding of how the individual decisions of world leaders can affect global affairs, and of some of the factors that might lead to those decisions. I'm not saying that Oregon Trail does this well (I've never played it), but to say that a history game has failed only because the facts are inaccurate may not always be a fair analysis.
I had a game called Dr. Sulfur's Night Lab. I loved it. Lots of sim elements for understanding organic and inorganic chem. I played it in Jr high and when we did chem in high school, I was so excited and definitely applied what I had learned from the game.
Ahhh Oregon Trail. I got to play this game on those old Apple computers. Just, ours didn't have all the pretty colors. Just neon green on a black background. My school only had a couple of copies, so we'd always race to get it. I think I made the trail once or twice, but never with all of the family alive.
Being a game programmer, nowadays I look at a lot of games' educational value from a technical standpoint rather than gameplay.
First-person games are great for this: Doom and Doom 2 led me to BSP trees, Unreal and Duke Nukem 3D led to portal-based rendering, and the Quake series showed me scripting languages and lighting.
Interesting episode :) You mispronounced "Europa Universalis" though, Jamin ;) Sounded like "Univeralis". Not a big problem, just putting it out there :)
Despite the fact that Europa Universalis is somewhat hard to get into, it has taught me so much about Renaissance-era history. When I read the Prince by Machiavelli, I was constantly seeing parallels to Europa gameplay.
I never played the Oregon Trail in school, but I did play a game designed for the Unysis Icon, not sure what it was called, but it detailed settling in Upper Canada (now Ontario), from which methods were best to clear land (cut down the trees, plant your crops around the stumps), which plants to tend, and later in the game, what to do when revolt came to the colony. I actually got a fair bit out of it.
Some games teach kids about the benefits of sticking to an unrewarding task for a long-term benefit. I'm particularly thinking of Harvest Moon, where you have to gather resources to buy seeds, till the ground, plant the seeds, water them for days on end with little to no indication that anything has changed, and only after many days see profit for your actions.
Plus, you have to plan out your budget a bit, especially on the second or third trip through the game. When do you lay out money for seeds? When do you save up money for larger purchases? Which purchase provides the most short-term and long-term benefit -- the backpack to let you carry more stuff, the basket to let you get more profit from a trip to the mine, the tool upgrades that let you clear your field and plant more crops? How much time do you want to spend watering, and how much time mining?
There's even the question of how you approach the harvest sprites, because in Back to Nature I found that I could bully them into joining me if I just gave them minimal presents at the start and wouldn't take no for an answer. And then I made sure they were working my field every day they possibly could, staggering their shifts so I was never left with a day where I had to do it all myself. Getting them to work early makes them more effective faster. But is it right to push past their lack of consent, ignore their comments about wanting a break, and treat the progress of your farm as more important than their freedom and comfort?
The Oregon Trail taught me that wagon wheels weren't all that sturdy, dysentery was deadly and I couldn't shoot animals worth a shit.
What it teaches is complexity - there are MANY factors that determine whether your family will be successful in their journey. MANY different hardships to encounter. MANY different ways it could come to a bad end. We expect the player to fail several times before they learn enough to accomplish the goal.
As an instructor, I recognize that this game would be one tool in a larger toolset to engage students, immerse them in a scenario and use that to talk about related topics. Learning games are not a standalone lesson, they are part of an overall strategy.
Also worth noting is that your reference to the Clarke and Mayers book is a quote of a quote, originally found in a paper from 1994, detailing the use of an open lab with no instructor interaction with the material. In analyzing the shortcomings of the program, the author writes: "Due to limited time, an absence of teacher guidance and the desire to use the software solely for amusement, children tend to play the game differently from one another, based on their personality. They enjoy its different aspects, yet learn only a little from it." Blame is clearly laid at HOW the software was used: "Oregon Trail is a software program with tremendous educational potential; however, the way it is currently used at OOJH is for amusement only."
(Reference: thejournal.com/Articles/1994/08/01/Educational-Effectiveness-of-Computer-Software.aspx?admgarea=Features1&Page=1)
Additionally, the "less is more" principle in the Clarke and Mayers book refers to overuse of animation and multimedia elements in e-learning, NOT to the subject material. "...better learning results when e-lessons minimize irrelevant visuals, omit background music and environmental sounds, and use succinct text. In other words, less is more."
Things Civilization games taught me:
1. If someone keeps sending troops into your territory, declaring war makes you the bad guy.
2. If you want to conquer your neighbor's land, keep troops on his land until he declares war. Everyone else will still trust you.
3. Ghandi's pacifism was just an act until he could obtain nukes. Then he goes all super-villain on everyone.
i think that for a lot of non-native english speakers, video games taught a lot of english, bc a lot of old games weren't translated; also nowadays, lots of indie games dont have money to get translation. i know i learned lots of words like sword, armor, start, cancel, coin, etc... from video games :') it's only keys words sure, but it's a start. it's like when you travel a lot you can recognize words like "exit" "taxi" or "hotel" (even in different alphabets!) just bc you see them a lot in context, and it provides minimal but useful knowledge.
Girlish Love Revolution is super cheesy/cute but it inspired me to keep working out on a regular basis. It's a romance game in which you have to keep encouraging your main character to exercise in order to get fit and healthy . The game spans a year and as you stay on your workout, nutrition and school regimen you can see your strength and intelligence improving. It was pretty real to life in that nothing improved overnight or without consistency and balance.
Minecraft taught me a lot about visualizing, planning, and methodically creating things in 3D. As a long time 2D sketch artist, it was very stretching for me to plot out non-rectangular shapes in the game.
+1 for mentioning 'The Incredible Machine' - that game got me interested in physics, but more importantly, mechanical design.
At the time OT came out most kids had never used a computer. Just having engaging technology is enough to make kids unafraid of making mistakes and exploring what it can do. With the super friendly UIs today it freaks kids out to use a terminal.
Back in my day, we had two colors for Oregon Trail. Green and black. You kids and your 4 bit and 8 bit color had it easy.
I was taught about Parallax Scrolling by video games
games that taught me things:
* Civilization - of course. besides the obvious stuff, I enjoyed the various national anthems so much, I learned how to plink several out on the piano back in elementary school
* Gone Home - please everyone play this game
* Type:Rider - rather blatantly "educational", but still a good time
* Never Alone - I never intended to watch the documentary videos, but the unfamiliar art style and other references to a culture I just knew NOTHING about made me too curious not to.
* Papo & Yo - a combination of Gone Home's "please everyone play this" and the exposure to the art of an unfamiliar culture (a la Never Alone)
Well... games helped me learning english!
A lot of non native english speakers benefit themselves from games, movies and multimedia stuff to learn it. It's a great and fun way to improve vocabulary!
I learned how to talk to girls from Duke Nukem.
+MikeFeyrer How is your success rate?
+mergele1000 100%...
I would say that the problem of not retaining as much when in "discovery mode" (which is certainly a phenomenon in educational games) is offset by placing the learner in an agentic role that allows them to make meaningful choices. In many fields, especially history, the specific details (the name of a fort, a date) are less important than the systems thinking that is encouraged by choices. e.g. what are the ramifications of stockpiling supplies?
Anyway, would love to see more on learning games and game-based learning. Perhaps an episode on James Paul Gee?
Many games are valuable because while they don't outright teach you about a subject like a textbook, they can give you enough context to make it very easy to then dive into the subject on your own. Age of Empires II gave me my first context of Medieval history, Il-2 Sturmovik the flight simulator allowed me to experience air combat over the Eastern Front of WWII, etc. Once I had a general idea about what was what, it made it a lot easier to understand things I read about later. Other than that, though, I think games are really good at teaching in a way that nothing else can: they give you experiences. You can read about fighter pilots and planes in WWII, but that only goes so far. But if you play a realistic flight sim, even though you probably aren't exactly recreating a historical event, your understanding of the historical events can increase dramatically when you have experiences similar to those people actually encountered. Similarly, you can read about battles in WWI, read dates and place-names and numbers of troops. But then you play a few matches in Verdun, and suddenly you realize how difficult it could be to survive an assault, how impossible it could be to gain ground, how generally soldiers died not because they didn't have enough skills, but because an artillery shell just happened to hit their position, or because a sniper happened to be watching the lip of a crater in no-man's land the moment you peeked out your head. This kind of learning is almost unique to gaming, as rather than simply being told or shown an event, you are practically there, having to make decisions as though you were actually there. This greatly improves understanding of human history, but also gives critical-thinking abilities that can help you in the present day. I think this is a massive untapped potential present in games; imagine if in your history class, once a week you played a game, sometimes like Verdun showing you the realities of individual people, other times like EU4, requiring you to grasp complicated cause-effect relationships that drive history forwards. I think both the level of interest and the levels of understanding would be drastically improved over simply learning out of a textbook.
Well, Oregon Trail was the first game I ran into where you had to juggle your supplies/money. But yeah, never made it to the end. :)
How is it hard? When I played it in grade school, I only died once. Every time after I survived. Also, none of the teachers had the delusion that this was a history lesson. They made us play it so we would get comfortable with computers. This is not a grand revelation.
Undertale taught me that it's okay to kill all your friends
I believe that the number one way a game teaches you anything is by subtly encouraging you to learn it so that you can become better at the game. The best ones teach you without you even realizing that you had ever learned anything (you were just trying to win). In this way, games are AMAZING at teaching you things by giving you the practical application at the same time. I'm sure many people, to different degrees, have learned a lot (or, in my case, almost everything I know) about soccer by playing FIFA. That was not the original goal (pun intended), but learning about the sport (rules, players, etc.) helped me build my team and be the best player I could be. Also, in closing, Math Blaster was the greatest game of all time, at least, according to my 6-year-old self.
I spent my childhood on my pc with educatioal games that my mum brought me from her school and I've learned lots of thing from them. They worked: they were easy, full of science and math and I still remember their valid lessons. So I can assure that the only problem is that normal videogames are much easier to find, so only few kids have played good educational games, at least in my contry, Italy.
I'm European and the only reason I know about the Oregon Trail is this franchise... I guess I learned more than most people. :D
I don't even remember how I got into this game about 2 or 3 years ago, I've must've seen it in some YT video and caught my attention.
Anyone remember that dungeon crawler embedded into Encarta '95? I loved playing that! And I learned about a whole bunch of dog breeds, too xD
I honestly think that one of the best learning experiences I've had came from Sid Meyers Civilization. As you said with Oregon Trail it was not the historical accuracy, but social behaviors when everyone is working toward different goals to achieve the same end. You can learn a lot about how people think and react through it.
Star wars math taught me a ton of math, now I might go on to major in physics
I'm blind, can you please add subtitles so I can hear the video better?
DayZ has taught me about human sociology as human interactions in the game are like navigating a menu in fallout as people will respond to to phrases in one of three ways. one disinterested. two, kind and willing to talk, trade or join you. three, people act aggressively as they have already made their minds up within few seconds on interaction that you are a threat.
grand theft auto vice city taught me the values of economics and the constabulary.
I literally never thought of Oregon Trail as an educational game growing up, weird
Resource management is something I learned. I don't always learn everything from games, including The Oregon Trail. However, games where resource management is important did teach me the significance of it. Which includes better using money.
As for people completing the game, I only recall one person in class back then clearing it. I recall it simply because it was a big thing for everyone in class.
there are actually a lot of different Carmon Sandiago games.
the spelling and grammar one is the only reason I passed 5th grade.
I couldnt spell, alphabetize words, identify parts of speech or any of that shit.
then I got obsessed with Carmon Sandiago. I couldn't stop playing it for months on end.
I don't know why it was so addictive, but it helped me learn all the grammar shit I needed to pass all my tests.
I learnt from playing "The Sims" not to get too attached to your baby if it gets taken away by the social worker.
For me the most influential game that tought (or made me want to learn more about the subject) was Medal of Honor Allied Assault. From that game my... well maybe passion is a little bit to big of a word... lets call it - great interest in WW2 and the history in general. I wanted to learn more about the Normandy or North Africa. Who fought there? Why? Why they win? Why they loose? They fought in other places too - What happened? Why? Who won and who loose and why? etc. etc.
I think video games can be a great tool for learning, even if they weren't meant for that in the first place. I learned english through video games.
I remember playing the legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time and getting stuck on a certain part for a long time because I didn't understand where I had to go (because I couldn't read the dialogue). I played loads of video games after that, and since my language and english are a bit similar, I managed to pick up new words while playing. I remember using a dictionary for translating a few words on a sign in the Wind Waker later, so I could solve a puzzle.
Listening and reading english almost feels natural to me now (though my writing might contain some mistakes).
Surrounding yourself with a new language (in this case english video games), is a great way to get used to it and learn new words.
League of Legends taught me that everyone is an idiot.
The knowledge overload was actually a boon when you take into account that you would play it so much. Even if you only learned a little every time, you picked up something new each time.
Bass Fishing and Oregon Trail taught me how easy it was to crash an early model Apple computer. The school librarian got really tired of rebooting the machine for us kids. My kid plays the current crop of Flash driven educational games, and I use that term loosely. I have no idea what the time management, restaurant themed games are trying to teach, other than pre programming her for the crappy fast food job in her future.
Ok, one more: the two ecoquest games by Sierra. These were great for teaching lots of facts about the flora and fauna in the ocean and the South American rainforest, as well as heightening awareness around practices that harm or endanger communities and ecosystems.
I think learning how to not die of cholera is much more important than particular fort names.
I learnt English by reading the fan-translation of Fate/Stay Night, from A2 to B2+ in less than a year just by reading that visual novel. Nowadays my English level is C1 and I haven't had English classes in 5 years.
This is why I love video games and the internet in general, as I've had the opportunity to immerse myself into an experience previous generations didn't have.
I listen to debates, monologues, reviews, critiques, channels like this one, MinutePhysics, etc.
I actually learned a lot from the original pokemon games. I learned strategy, how to think ahead, and, to a lesser extent, math as I calculated how many hits I needed to take out the enemy.
Europa univeRALIS nice one.
On that note, I think I've learned more school related information from Europa Universalis and Crusaderkings than any other games I've played.
+Ebon Hawk Hell yeah. In games like CK2 and EU, I've ended up learning the maps and geography decently well at different time periods. The games have also gotten me to learn more about various religions, leaders, cultures, nations, and so forth present in them. For example, CK2 showed me how big the Aral Sea once was, which got me to read up more about it and why it's sadly disappearing.