Are games a fun source of Information? (1 Viewer)

ConnorGiles

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When I say this, I put this out not just to the gamers on this forum, but to everyone.

I believe that games are not a problem (which most parents tend to find are the heart of all problems). In fact I would state the opposite, I over my few years on this earth have been privileged to own games throughout my life and have learned many things from them. From common sense to knowing many generals from the three kingdoms period in china.

One of my favourite childhood games to date is Dynasty Warriors in which I learned all of these generals, what their personalities were portrayed as and so forth.

Samurai Warriors being another one of them.

When people get talking about the three kingdoms period I tend to think I know quite a lot on the matter and I have learned all of this through the use of video games.

I tend to like a lot of factually correct games, (Fun fact, did you know every boss in assassins creed who you assassinated died in that exact place by the same person - I find that amazing how we are basically watching a snippet of their lives.)

My question to everyone is this - Games are widely portrayed as a problem (causing people to be violent etc..). What are your thoughts on this matter?

I think I have put my opinion across :p
 

scott-atkinson

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I used to play Strip Poker in my High School days, that was a fun source of information.. :p
 

scott-atkinson

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I used to play back in the eighties a game called Fields of Glory based on Napoleons Battles, this was filled with lots of facts and figures about his generals and strategies and of the allies, and how Europe was shaped after the wars..

It was also a great game to play, albeit dated now...
 

ConnorGiles

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I used to play Strip Poker in my High School days, that was a fun source of information.. :p

Trust you to post something like that ;)

I used to play back in the eighties a game called Fields of Glory based on Napoleons Battles, this was filled with lots of facts and figures about his generals and strategies and of the allies, and how Europe was shaped after the wars..

It was also a great game to play, albeit dated now...

I bet some of the information you learned maybe even all has stayed with you and when the topic has come up you can have a say ;)
 

Frothingslosh

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There have actually been a lot of studies showing that video games actually improve cognition and decision-making speed, as well as agility and hand-eye coordination. They've also found that leading clans/guilds/whatever requires many of the same skills always sought in management.

I would say that they also teach how to handle the occasional loss, too, but I've encountered entirely people of all ages who utterly lose their minds when they lose for me to really think that.

While you certainly don't want your kid doing nothing but playing video games all day (they can save it for when they're 35 and still living in the basement!), I'd say that some gaming, once chores are done, is good as long as it doesn't completely replace face-to-face interaction with your kids' peers.
 

ConnorGiles

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There have actually been a lot of studies showing that video games actually improve cognition and decision-making speed, as well as agility and hand-eye coordination. They've also found that leading clans/guilds/whatever requires many of the same skills always sought in management.

I would say that they also teach how to handle the occasional loss, too, but I've encountered entirely people of all ages who utterly lose their minds when they lose for me to really think that.

While you certainly don't want your kid doing nothing but playing video games all day (they can save it for when they're 35 and still living in the basement!), I'd say that some gaming, once chores are done, is good as long as it doesn't completely replace face-to-face interaction with your kids' peers.

Totally agree, My brother is 22 now and all he does is part time work - Part time University and Full time Gaming... Drives me crazy, I have no peace!
 

ConnorGiles

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I was as the british say "taking the mick" ;) - small compared to me also!

I'm 6'4/6'5
 

Frothingslosh

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Meh, so you were taking the piss.

Just about everyone these days thinks he was really short (I did until just about a year ago), so it was a safe assumption to make. :p

(I've had some exposure to British slang - in EVE Online, before I joined Goonfleet I was in a corp where about 2/3 of the people lived in the UK. One of them was an honest-to-God Scottish highlander. Sober and calm, he was mostly understandable. Unfortunately, when he was drunk or angry (and he was one or the other about half the time), his accent had to be heard to be believed!)
 

ConnorGiles

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I knew he wasn't that short :p - But then again most people are short to me. ;)

Never really played it, but I understand when you proclaim strong Scottish accents to be hard to understand. My uncle now lives in Scotland and has for a good 12 years now and posh English accent has quickly turned to whole hearted Scottish!

"They may take our lives! But they'll never take our freedom!"

(Meh - more internet slang ;) )
 

Frothingslosh

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Even the Brits couldn't understand him. You could almost catch an English word here and there, but they were adrift in a sea of Gaeloch until we could make him slow down and enunciate.

We all agreed, however, that the hardest accent to understand is Austrailian. It's like they're not even speaking English any longer!
 

ConnorGiles

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Believe it or not, We may be linked with Wales and Scotland but when the accents come out. We're as lost as you!

Hell, I live in the black country and I can't understand them at times with their accents and slang!
 

Frothingslosh

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Ive thought about playing EVE is it any good?

Yes and no. It's the sandbox game to end all sandbox games, so it's basically what you make of it.

To start with, to cover all the things the haters will hit you with: the UI sucks beyond belief, the game's learning curve is more of a learning cliff, and the auto-generated missions are repetitive and not very challenging. The players can and will scam you at the drop of a hat, and unless they actually hack or exploit the game, the devs are fine with it. (Exception - scamming newbies in newbie areas leads to instant bans.) You absolutely can lose your ship and everything on it permanently, leading to the rule 'Don't fly what you can't afford to lose.' Finally, people think that sticking to 'high security' space will protect them from other players, but all it really does is guarantee faster NPC police response time and guarantee the destruction of the attacking player - it doesn't help keep YOU alive unless you can survive the 15-60 seconds it takes Concord to arrive. Oh, and there's a TON of math underlying the game, but you don't actually need to know it unless you want to play at the absolute highest level.

Still with me?

EVE is a game where they literally go "Here's a universe, here are some blueprints, knock yourself out." You can do anything the game engine will allow you to. There are people who do nothing but run NPC missions all day, people who mine all day (which I find boring beyond comprehension), and people who hide out just outside safe space, ambushing them and living off the scavenged remains. Farther outside, in completely open space, you find organized groups of players (corporations (guilds) and alliances (guilds of guilds)) who claim, control, and protect large areas of space, complete with production and defensive facilities. These alliances are always warring, sometimes for resources and sometimes for the fun of it.

You can be a pirate, a fighter for an alliance, you can run missions or mine, you can focus on industry and building stuff, there are people who just haul things for people, and people who do nothing but work the market and make money.

Training is odd - skills come in ranks, and every skill has 5 levels. Low ranked skills have short training times, and the time to learn a skill is multiplied by the level you're training to, meaning Battleshiops 5 takes 5 times as long to learn as Battleships 1. Beginner skills might take 15 minutes to learn, while endgame skills can take a month. Also, skills train in real time, so there's no grinding for them. As long as the account is active, one character can have skills training. (It sounds bad, but you stop worrying about it and start looking at skill completion as a bonus rather than something you're actively working toward.)

EVE has had scandals where someone who spent two years running an in-game bank stole everything in it (to the tune of a couple hundred thousand dollars' worth of in-game money). There was one where a corp infiltrated, took over, and robbed another corp, culminating in the virtual assassination of the CEO and the eventual disintegration of the corp. There was one every summer when Goonswarm sent fleets into "high security" (read - NPC protected) space to destroy neutral mining ships.

There was a two year long war (the Great War) between Goonswarm and allies vs Band of Brothers and allies, involving perhaps 20k to 30k players and costing hundreds of thousands of dollars of in-game ships and structures, and was so big that there were articles about it in the New York Times. There was a follow-up two year war between the same crowd (The Second Great War) that ended in the utter annihilation of Band of Brothers after a leader switched sides and intentionally destroyed their claim to controlled territory.

There are battles between one person on each side, and battles with several thousand on each side. A battle less than a month ago resulted in 2900 destroyed ships and a total destroyed value of $300,000. (The cost to purchase and outfit a battleship, converted to real money, is around $5-$10.)

So it can be really really fun or it can be really really boring - it's up to you and what you like, honestly.
 

Frothingslosh

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Oh, I forgot to mention that in EVE, literally everything save a few of the most basic items is built by players. The 2900 ships I mentioned? All player-made. Some of them can take up to 6 MONTHS real time to build.

And the scenery is awe-inspiring.
 

ConnorGiles

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In our hectic, modern lives, many of us focus so heavily on work and family commitments that we never seem to have time for pure fun. Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, we’ve stopped playing. When we do carve out some leisure time, we're more likely to zone out in front of the TV or computer than engage in fun, rejuvenating play like we did as children. But just because we’re adults, that doesn't mean we have to take ourselves so seriously and make life all about work. We all need to play.

Well said makonvict, Very well said.
 

ConnorGiles

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Deleted comment here too :confused:

Luckily I captured him in my quote :cool:
 

Frothingslosh

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Yeah, I just checked his profile and he's gone from 8 posts (last I looked) to zero. *shrug*
 

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