Virtual Worlds as Teaching Tools
As gamers, we know games are incredible learning tools. Just look at everything you’ve memorized to pwn noobs in AV, right? Hell, you knew what I meant when I said “AV.” That’s learning. On and off, the educational community has been considering the potential of games to teach real lessons in science, math, and reading, but the efforts have always been local and half-hearted. With the rise of social gaming (like, say, the World of Warcraft that Alterac Valley comes from), the scale of gaming has changed. This change allows more gamers to experience the lessons a game might teach.
The educational video games Food Force, a U.N.-produced game on the mechanics of food aid distribution, and Whyville, another game that takes place in a virtual world, each has about 4 million players, a number that far exceeds the number of students graduating each year …
Video Games Stomp on Recession, Kick its Shell Across Screen, Grab Mushroom
A mushroom made of pure, uncut, 100% raw cash. Gamers this year gave the falling economy, likened by experts to a “black pit where no hope or light can reach,” only a passing glance as they marched merrily out to stock up on sequels and some truly unique games. So long as the electricity stays on, the gaming community has remained quite content to do without other luxuries, such as heat, light, and food that wasn’t extruded from a noodle machine in China.
While sales of other products sunk into the clinging tar of the recession’s bubbling caldera, video games remained stable, even rising. This strange insulation from economic woe has been linked to several factors, chief among them that games offer very cheap entertainment for the price, a great incentive for those who are staring down the barrel of a jobless rent day. Also, …
Video Game Music Attracts Major Composers, Musicians
Video games these days are big productions, and with good reason. The gaming industry is looking to clean up about 50-billion dollars in revenues this year, and this growing power to suck cash from the wallets of all peoples of the world shows no signs of relenting. The hunger of gamers and gaming has no end, and cannot be satisfied, only sated for a brief moment, by the next latest and greatest experience. To craft these experiences, game designers build their worlds using the latest technologies, the finest graphics their budgets can conjure up, and the best music from the most skilled professionals in the world.
That means calling out to the minions of the music industry, labouring in their pits and studio hovels. Not only that, but the clarion horn of video gaming cash has echoed through the valley of Hollywood, drawing out those …
8-Bit Jesus: Retro Gaming Christmas Music
One of the many joys of running wild on a popular blog site is that I get to introduce thousand of people to my own personal favourite things. You might have noticed I’ve a bit of a fetish for retro gaming from the old NES era, and I’m not alone in this strange desire. The good Doctor Octoroc has thrown together a collection of Christmas carols, mixed in the 8-bit style like all good video game music should be. The result is 8-Bit Jesus: Classic Christmas Songs in the Style of Classic NES Games, and why are you still here reading this? Go! Go now!
Okay, maybe you need more convincing.
Here’s why this collection of video game Christmas music kicks ass; the songs aren’t just some remix of carols with bleeps and blurps in for the notes. Oh no. …
This is the Christmas Spoils Thread
Between sucking down chocolate squares and getting lit up on eggnog, somehow I found time to open presents this Christmas morning. Turns out I got Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and a card to GameStop for even more used gaming goodness. I gave one of my cousins Sam & Max Season One (buy it!) and the other got Civilization 3 (buy it!) because seriously, have you seen some of the games the kids are playing these days? They need some right proper quality in their digital diets, I say.
So how did you guys make out? Post your Christmas loots and let us all know just why we should be jealous. What did Santa stuff elbow-deep down your stocking this year?
Another Video Games are Corrupting Our Children List? It Must be Wednesday
Yet again, those grand crusaders against all things they don’t personally like have focused their red and disapproving eye upon video games. Today, the grayface in public is one Kym Worthy, the Wayne County prosecutor. From her Detroit office, she lashed out at video games, claiming that violent games are responsible not just for a host of random societal ills, but also the murder of Daniel Sorensen. Sorensen was stabbed, decapitated, and set on fire. Tragic enough on its own, but the killers adopted a “video games made me do it” defense, presumably because there are precious few sane excuses for random firey decapitations.
Kym Worthy also linked the killers to violent video games, as if certain games had really and truly influenced them in some magical way that doesn’t apply to the hundreds of millions of folks who also play video games every day …
Time Magazine’s Top 10 Video Games of 2008
Everyone with a keyboard and a blog to write on has been scrawling out their own top ten lists for this year, but Time Magazine’s list is the only one your parents are going to see. That makes it important, because this is how the non-gamers out there, you know, the folks making the laws and running the businesses, see us and our hobby. What the mainstream thinks of us defines in ways that we ourselves never could.
Anyhow, the rundown is pretty simple. There’s the GTA IV, the LittleBigPlanet, the Rock Band 2… The games you’d expect from a professional list that draws on sales numbers. But you’ll also find a few surprises, like, where did Braid come from? And what about this flash game, Hunted Forever?
Take a look at the list, in all its horrible slideshow glory. These …
FCC Commissioner Blames World of Warcraft and MMOs for College Dropouts
Okay, sure, we all know that one guy who spent so much time off in EverQuest or NetHack that he forgot to go to class, but is that sort of thing epidemic? Deborah Taylor Tate, FCC Commissioner, seems to think so. In a speech on telecom policy and regulation, she mentioned online gaming, and specifically World of Warcraft, as a major reason for college dropouts. She also used the term “gaming addiction,” which we know is just a buzzword. Actual study of troubled gamers shows little evidence of true addiction.
Being the cynical type, I have to wonder if the lady Commissioner’s comments represent the beginning of a campaign against online gaming. Perhaps the FCC has been watching the gaming scene and pondering how to get their regulatory claws on the millions of gamers — and billions of dollars — that make up modern video …
Video Games May Sharpen Aging Brains
We’ve always known that a little bit of gaming is beneficial, you know, the old hand-eye coordination routine, but recent research is showing that video games can have an even greater effect. Gamers are able to process information and make critical decisions much more quickly than non-gamers, and now, there is evidence that gaming can help fight off some of the mental effects of aging.
The study, published in the December issue of Psychology and Aging, notes that older people who were trained to play the game Rise of Nations performed better on tests of memory and reasoning than before they played.
As casual games like Peggle and Brain Age rise in popularity, not to mention that Wii console lurking between the family photographs at your grandmother’s house, it’s obvious that older people are taking up the gaming torch. Perhaps our youthful hobby will be able to help …
Over Half of American Adults are Gamers
A brand-new study conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project confirms what many of us here in the trenches already knew; there are alot of grown-up types hammering gamepads these days. According to the study, over half of American adults play video games of some sort, with roughly 20% lured to the screen every day by gaming’s siren song.
Of course, as a supposed adult myself, the only reaction I can offer is, “duh.” My generation grew up on video games, what with the Atari 2600 (I had the woodgrain one!), followed by the Nintendo and Sega, then the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis, then the almighty Playstation and the sad, outclassed Nintendo 64. Now, you can get console systems everywhere, I think I got an Xbox once for free with a pizza and a two-liter Coke. Not to mention the handheld …
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