What Video Games Have Taught Me That School Could Not Have (Part I)

I’m such a little troublemaker…

Please note that this is not a justification for replacement, certainly, but a mere observation about my own life.

First, I want to start by describing exactly which videos games I am referring to, although I will go into some detail about most genres. My first and foremost educational video game has to be the simulation genre, also known as the “tycoon” series of games. For me, this was Roller Coaster Tycoon, hands down. One, two and three. With all of the expansion packs. These are the games I lived off between the ages of seven and seventeen. They taught me valuable things that I haven’t found elsewhere yet:

• Money management. My mother is a well respected financial planner, and both parents are very successful entrepreneurs, so I receive a lot of this training naturally through them, but I will say that is’ been magnificent to have the hands on cause and effect simulation of money managing. In the case of RCT, you manage everything from advertising to admissions, paying back loans with interest over time. I failed a lot, but grew better by learning and trying. I learned that you can charge a lot of money for one thing and sell it a couple of times, or charge little for the same thing and sell thousands of them. This can be graphed in the form of a parabolic curve, which I learned in about grade 10 math class, roughly five years after I figured it out for myself playing video games. But other than that and CALM‘s futile attempt to teach finances, we’ve really received no such training in the school system. That’s bleak.
• Supply and Demand. Similar to the above, it’s learning economics at it’s most fundamental level. We started that in about grade 9 social, but really only got into it in grade 12. Me? at least six years earlier.
• Build Order. This is more prevalent in RTS (real time strategy) style games (which I’ll cover after) , but should be mentioned here as well. To build a successful park, you need to start near the entrance with things like merry-go-rounds and small burger stands. Eventually you’ll move up bigger and bigger until you can afford to build a roller coaster. I’ve had many a park die because I blew my entire initial budget on one roller coaster that couldn’t keep up with my expenses with it’s measly ride price. You can’t go all out immediately.

There are others yet, smaller things like business vocabulary (I remember, actually, in about grade 4 looking up the word “scenario” because I didn’t know what it meant.)

First Person Shooters:

Probably the most debatable of them, these do actually have significant advantages that cannot be found in school environments:

• Team building. I don’t mean that you don’t get this at school altogether, but I’m saying that schools (in the academic environment, not counting recess) don’t encourage team work. They call this cheating, and it’s not allowed. Perhaps the most backwards part of the schooling process, since once everyone goes out and gets jobs, they need to be able to collaborate. It’s not cheating in the workplace when you’re all working on the same project for a client, so why don’t they encourage teams in school? FPS games are brilliant for bringing people together for a common goal, typically “capture the flag“. But it isn’t all mindless, there is actually a lot to be said for team strategy in these games. You need to flank and communicate and work together in a high stress execution of plans. School? Very segregated desks with no common goal and no teamwork. Bleak.
• Friendship making. I’m not sure why people see video games as anti-social. It’s different, sure, but it’s hardly anti-social in a day and age of interconnected gaming. There are few games these days that you play completely by yourself; almost everything is socially driven. Interconnection will lead to meeting people, and will lead to people finding other people who they like and dislike, people who can be complete strangers but clump together because they find a common bond – friendship.
• Maturity. OF course there are a lot of immature people in the world. This isn’t video game exclusive. This isn’t school exclusive. Everyone everywhere is immature at that age. But just like the school yard, social gaming gives kids a chance to learn to defend themselves, and also stick up for one another in a perfectly open environment. On the school yard, it’s hard for a third party to break up a fight because they don’t want to be seen as uncool or lame, so they rarely do anything. In a faceless game lobby, people who disrespect others get shut down really fast: “Dude, don’t say things like that, you’re making yourself look bad”. If they continue being rude, the other players can kick him out easily, with no fear of social consequences. This is actually a point where video games are better than the school yard socially. Imagine that, grandma.

Part II to come.