“Lets play a money making game!” -The Legend of Zelda. Video Games are revolutionizing society. They have changed for the better, transitioning from mindless wastes of time, to useful tools of learning, video games are revolutionizing, and are becoming smarter, more complex, and healthier.
Video games are not just simple, mindless forms of entertainment anymore; they can now teach, inspire, and provide the player with life skills, or the knowledge needed to start a successful career. Many games companies like Electronic Arts (EA) are changing the content of their games. The successful game franchise by EA, “The Sims” has developed games like “The Sims 2: Open for Business.” The focus of this game is to start a small business in a virtual world, and virtually run it. Video games have now even become a course in college. "Now games are a legitimate academic subject, with many university courses around the world offering degrees in video game design and development. And many game designers and researchers are seeing how games influence cognitive and other skills (par 2)." Students now have the option of exploring a career in gaming, which is very profitable in todays market. James Paul Gee, a video game programmer for Nintendo, explains what goes through the mind of someone playing "Pikmin." " As Gee writes, the game requires a great deal of focus, critical thinking, multitasking, and problem solving to succeed. Players must manage teams of characters, assign them tasks appropriate to their behavior patterns, guide them to work together smoothly, and strategist how to optimize resources such as virtual food. Yet, even a 6-year-old can play it. Imagine, teaching a first-grader pretty complex, real-time, problem-laden resource manage...
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...to "IEWTPT Tactical Questioning." (par. 6)"These repurposed video games can potentially save lives. The air force has been using video games to train pilots for a few years now. "A military or commercial flight simulator need not have perfect visual detail, but it had better mimic the behavior of the real vehicle, Haseltine says, "because lives are at stake." (par. 13)" Instead of letting a beginning pilot get in a $13,000,000 plane and waching him crash it, they can now get in a fake one and safely cruse around in a virtual world. The Military is using video games to save lives and train their recruits.
Although parents may not view games as a tool like a book, they are slowly Changing and will soon be reputable sources of knowledge, and will most defiantly benefit society. So ”Pick A Box, its contents will help you on your way.”-Toad, Super Mario Bros. 3.
There are a lot of reactions that take place in your brain when you play violent video games. Gamers replay what they see in their minds and then physically try to reenact those memories in real life. Anderson and Warburton provide evidence that there are mirror neurons in humans and primates that represent a mechanism in the brain that facilitates imitation (69). Imitation is essential to human life. We learn significant behaviors from watching others and unfortunately, that is a double-edged sword. Just as we can imitate good behaviors, we can also imitate the bad ones. They also suggest that people sometimes copy what they see in the video game. “An 18-year-old youth in Thailand stabbed a taxi driver to death trying to ‘find out if it was as easy in real life to rob a taxi as it was in the game’ (Reed 70).
Nowadays video games get nothing but bad reputations from people. You have people in powerful positions saying that video games have nothing but bad effects and that they only promote violence and lead to children acting out on that violence. Who are the people listening to these people in powerful positions? Parents. Some Parents have this misunderstanding that all video games are bad and that all video games have a negative effect on their child and how they develop. Some parents with that understanding are misinformed and need to understand just how beneficial video games can actually be for their children. Although some parents think that video games offer nothing but negative effects, they are actually really beneficial to kids and
Video games based on learning are quickly becoming known as “the new frontier of learning.” Many children who have learning disabilities have an easier time learning basic skills from playing games rather than looking through a textbook. When learning is disguised as a fun pastime, children are more likely to welcome it. Video games can be utilized in school to influence children into becoming more comfortable with their own knowledge. In some cases, children feel incompetent to their peers because they are not as gifted in math or writing. By using video games, students are not expected to compete with their classmates, so they will become confident and outgoing which, in turn, will show their true talents. A group of researchers at the University of New York conducted an experiment with a group of students that were assigned to play video games competitively or on their own. Through performing this test, they concluded that those who chose to play competitively, or on their own both had an increased final score because they were able to play at their own leisure ("Educational Video Games Can Boost Motivation to Learn.", 2013). Observing how video games can help both gifted children, as well as the individuals who are struggling, is evidence that video games can be as useful as they are
Video games have come a long way. They have evolved from the simple game of Pong into a complex, multi-platform, multi-genre, multi-billion dollar industry.
In chapter 1 and 2 the author, James Paul Gee explains video games are forms of learning since people must learn them to play. The game creators aid the learning process in that they determine the ease of playing the game. In case a game cannot be easily learned, obviously many people will not play it and the company and its creator will become bankrupt. Ideal learning in a game is a capitalist practice of selection of the fittest. Although the developers could solve the games by shortening and making them easier, they tend to make them complex and relate them to intriguing dilemmas faced in schools and workplaces. This is a vital way of getting people to practice and know something that is lengthy and
There have been several studies conducted on learning and serious games, for example, a recent study by the Office of Naval Research found that video game players performed ten to twenty percent better in perceptual and cognitive ability than non-game players, and that video games helped adults process information faster(Steinberg,2012). Another study by the Federation of American Scientists found that students re...
Video Games have been accused of making youth violent and aggressive, making people isolate themselves from society, and for lowering the attention span and the ability to concentrate in youth. These claims have yet to be supported by several well organized studies and have never been more than a correlation to any of these claims, and in fact have been disproven on several occasions. Adam Eichenbaum (2014), author contributing to the American Journal of Play, concluded a discussion on the research on video games say that “Today’s video games are much more than entertainment. They are also weapons in the fight against declining mental capacities in old age. They promote job-related skills. And they are a model of how to teach children complex and difficult tasks and abilities. As with any technology, video games are neither intrinsically good nor intrinsically bad.” (pg. 67) Video games are not the waste of time that they are accused of being, nor are they damping the development of today’s youth. If anything is to be said about video games is that in them lays a great potential for good; that video games serve as tools for people who want to make a change in society, whether the changes are positive or negative lie in the hands of those that choose to use video games as tools. These are not unrealistic or histrionic claims; video games, after all, are more than just
We should develop games that people want to spend time on that are also educational, increasing the attention span of people, visual acuity, and multitasking abilities of all generations. The author very effectively portrays her message of by connecting with her audience charismatically, visually, personally, and logically. In the age of technology we must come to terms with the changing hobbies and daily activities around us. Rather than passing them off as bad campaigning for them to be cut back, censored, we should be focusing on the good that is already done by video games and how we could continue to improve
Video games have been around about 50 years and they contribute a big part of the U.S. economy. People interact with video games every day throughout different ways, such as cell phone devices, computers, consoles or whatever which has a screen on it. In fact, it has always affected people’s lives. However, not so many people understand the benefits of video games. With video games, people can not only relieve themselves from stress and suffering, but it also improves people’s social experiences while they are exchanging and absorbing knowledge with other people; more than that, people can learn many other things from video games which can help them to achieve great things in lives.
There are several negative stereotypes associated with video games and those who play them; some of these may often hold true. However, there are plenty of learning opportunities in video games. While the direct purpose of some games is to educate or train, other games that do not directly have this purpose can still become a learning experience for the player. As Ntiedo Etuk, president of the educational video game company Tabula Digital said, “The traditional view of video games has been that they are distractions from the task of learning” (Electronic Education Report 1). Video games are an effective tool for learning and retaining skills both inside and outside the classroom environment. The basic cycle of game play--the introduction to the game, game play, collaboration, improvement of these between each round, and evaluation at the end of the game (Klievink and Janssen 159)--are nearly parallel to the traditional classroom learning cycle of reading a textbook or listening to a lecture, taking a quiz, studying, focusing on items missed on the quiz, and taking a test or exam. Within this cycle, there are many opportunities to develop and perfect both educational, life, and occupational skills.
Since the creation of video games, there has been a debate on wether violent video are useful or damaging to adolescents. Some of the concerns with the violent videos that it will bring more aggression to developing teenagers or will it set back their cognitive development. The trouble with this debate is that most information on video games containing violence gains a harsh reputation. One issue when it comes to judging this debate is that all children react differently to video games. There is research suggesting that particular parents will show concern about other children playing video game but show a more down to earth attitude towards their own (Taking Sides, Clashing Views in Adolescence, 2013, pg. 116). Can video games be used for power of good? Or even helpful?
Presently, video games aren’t merely toys that negatively influence the youth. They have become an alternative means for people to learn and train for work. Games teach values and essential information, and motivate its players to achieve goals. Soldiers and doctors benefit from video games as well. The collaboration of game developers and educators helps improve the quality of educational games. At present, as technology progresses, one can truly see that video games have become an important factor in learning.
Video games have been argued about for decades. Some people have argued that video games are linked to violence. However, new research shows that video games can be used for therapeutic purposes, exercise, stress relievers, positive interactive learning, hand eye coordination, and different types of patient treatment for people all around the world.
The experience of game play can be described as an activity in which the player is virtually embodied in the game world. Anyone who has experienced the world of gaming knows how the engaging experience can manifest itself with “sweaty palms and chills down the spine” (http://www.eludamos.org/index.php/eludamos/article/viewArticle/80/147) when coming face-to-face with alien creatures; or with the adrenaline rush we get when racing a high speed automobile head-to-head with a friend. Gaming is an excellent source of entertainment. It provides an opportunity for social growth, provides a meaningful form of exploring expression, and provides heightened sensitivity.
In our current education system, there is a concept called gamification which is rapidly growing from day to day. Well, what is gamification? Gamification is the concept of applying game like thinking to non-game applications to make them much more entertaining and immersive with students. It is an attempt to make things in school that are not very fun and engaging and applying qualities from games to make them that way. This paper will talk about the benefits that video games provide for a learning experience, why educators are cautious about adding in video game based learning, and the future potential of education through the use of gamification.