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Author Topic: Videogames are good for something  (Read 5853 times)

nerdpride

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Videogames are good for something
« on: April 10, 2008, 03:00:00 pm »

I was thinking about this the other day:

I should be spending more time studying (of course), so naturally I thought I should really stop playing games and get more serious.  And maybe I should play fewer games, but anyway!

That lead me to think about why playing games was such a bad thing.  It isn't altogether connected with real-world experience.  But, you know, maybe it is a little bit.

So, I have decided to compromise.  I will manage my studying like a fortress of the most elite dwarves-at-arms from the mountainhomes.  Yes, we will take experience from epic battles with demons, goblins, elephants, elves, and carp to the most extreme boundaries of learning possible!

That is all.

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GreyMario

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Re: Videogames are good for something
« Reply #1 on: April 10, 2008, 03:13:00 pm »

Someone did a study showing that World of Warcraft players were less stressed.

I then proceeded to shoot the idiot who said that, the idiot who performed the study, and then the idiot who invented World of Warcraft.

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Armok

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Re: Videogames are good for something
« Reply #2 on: April 10, 2008, 04:27:00 pm »

You want to know what computor games are good for?

Ask a non DF player abaut geology.

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Sowelu

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Re: Videogames are good for something
« Reply #3 on: April 10, 2008, 05:16:00 pm »

Ask a DF player about geology.  Like what gabbro actually looks like, or anything to do with layers shifting and stuff with tectonics, or what glaciers do to landscapes.  It's a starting point, nothing more...a very small starting point at that.

But I'd still love to get ahold of some of Toady's reference materials, since I love sciences in general.  :x

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Some things were made for one thing, for me / that one thing is the sea~
His servers are going to be powered by goat blood and moonlight.
Oh, a biomass/24 hour solar facility. How green!

nerdpride

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Re: Videogames are good for something
« Reply #4 on: April 10, 2008, 05:40:00 pm »

It's true that videogames don't teach much, but, it's hard to just start studying.

Fun stuff like videogames give more motivation for studying.  Physics suddenly isn't so much like torture and more like delicate screw pump design.  Math is more interesting too, maybe I could use vector calculus to give me a better idea of how to get haulers to get around faster (fat chance, but meh).  I'm not studying geology, but mining stuff has given me more interest in it than I ever thought I would have.

The important thing is:  DF gets me to think more about the things I'm studying in a lighthearted manner instead of an anxious one.  So, it's definitely worth playing it once in a while.

Especially in Pocket Worlds.  Oh thank you Toady for Pocket Worlds, it speeds up the save-load times so much.

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Forumsdwarf

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Re: Videogames are good for something
« Reply #5 on: April 11, 2008, 03:27:00 am »

There was a history lesson hidden in Civilization and an intro to philosophy course hidden in Alpha Centauri.
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McDoomhammer

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Re: Videogames are good for something
« Reply #6 on: April 11, 2008, 08:11:00 am »

Forgive my density- do you mean hidden as in easter eggs, or hidden as in playing attentively taught you rudiments of them?
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Okenido

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Re: Videogames are good for something
« Reply #7 on: April 11, 2008, 02:24:00 pm »

Well Dwarf Fortress did teach me what a thresher is.
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Keiseth

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Re: Videogames are good for something
« Reply #8 on: April 11, 2008, 02:45:00 pm »

Studying and learning in general is more fun when done through trial and error. A book can tell you which elements burn and melt and the colors they give off when they do, but it's a lot more fun to just light everything on fire and find out yourself.

Edit: Rubbing alcohol is flammable. Ouch.

[ April 11, 2008: Message edited by: Keiseth ]

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Sowelu

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Re: Videogames are good for something
« Reply #9 on: April 11, 2008, 05:28:00 pm »

quote:
Originally posted by McDoomhammer:
<STRONG>Forgive my density- do you mean hidden as in easter eggs, or hidden as in playing attentively taught you rudiments of them?</STRONG>

The latter.  Civ is kind of obvious in that, hey, tech progressions, observe what cultures used to be where, and wow food production was hard before refrigeration.

Alpha Centauri on the other hand, every time you get a new tech, you're rewarded by a snippet of a real historic book or relevant quote by some in-game leader:  Surprisingly these are awesome enough to keep you wanting to plow through the techs.  (And it is FUN tracking through Sister Miriam Godwinson's growth as a thinking human, as the game progresses.  From ultimate luddite and religious fanatic to one of the sanest people alive.  "Evil lurks in the datalinks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear, but it was never the streets that were evil.")

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Some things were made for one thing, for me / that one thing is the sea~
His servers are going to be powered by goat blood and moonlight.
Oh, a biomass/24 hour solar facility. How green!

Forumsdwarf

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Re: Videogames are good for something
« Reply #10 on: April 11, 2008, 05:54:00 pm »

And Lal goes slowly insane, loved that.

You could do worse than the Alpha Centauri reading list:

Thus Spoke Zarathustra
The Critique of Pure Reason
Baraka (the movie)
The Christian Bible
Nicomachean Ethics
The Prince
The Art of War
John Henry
Moby Dick
Xanadu
Utopia
The Republic

Oops I'm out of time ... that's just off the top of my head, but there are other nuggets of accumulated human wisdom in there, too.  They're rewards for achieving stuff in the game, so you kind of pay attention to them.

Gotta go bye

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McDoomhammer

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Re: Videogames are good for something
« Reply #11 on: April 11, 2008, 07:03:00 pm »

It's funny, I always played as the University.  And yet a couple of weeks ago, apropos of nothing, I was thinking about the game and I had this odd urge to go back and play AC again as Miriam.

It's a pity I can't run it any more.

And Lal going insane, I seem to have missed something.  Now I really want to play again.

[ April 11, 2008: Message edited by: McDoomhammer ]

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Sowelu

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Re: Videogames are good for something
« Reply #12 on: April 11, 2008, 07:36:00 pm »

Huh, I thought it was just me.  Does he really go insane in canon?  I'd forgotten...mostly because in the last big multiplayer game I was playing, I was playing as a slowly going insane Lal.   :D

Claiming vast swaths of land with no real reason except the UN mandate and "peacekeeping"--a hundred years after planetfall...  Committing to nonviolence, secretly trading arms to non-allied factions, and putting one new colony under the control of his daughter--which, to all observations, seems to be a sudden and surprising military powerhouse of a base.

Meanwhile, Santiago--his only real ally--was allowed to expand unchecked into Yang's territory, and Dierdre (ally in name only) was suspected of building up a massive hidden fungal army.  The University, another "ally" kept getting chastized by the UN for his ongoing war against you guessed it Miriam...  Pity the Morganites, sharing a peaceful trading border with Lal, who are going to be the first ones to fall once the Great Peacekeeper snaps like a twig.

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Some things were made for one thing, for me / that one thing is the sea~
His servers are going to be powered by goat blood and moonlight.
Oh, a biomass/24 hour solar facility. How green!

Forumsdwarf

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Re: Videogames are good for something
« Reply #13 on: April 12, 2008, 07:57:00 am »

Right around the time it becomes possible for him to clone his deceased gf, Pria, I think, yeah, he goes a little nuts.

Imagine the poor girl -- her entire existence is for the purpose of recreating an old man's romantic resurrection fantasy, a kind of Frankenstein-meets-Persephone sex slave.  I expect he starts hitting on her when she's around 14-15 or so, and what's she going to do?  He's a faction leader and she's a clone of his ex-, denied even her own identity.

That she has none of Pria's memories and no doubt finds Lal utterly repulsive probably pushes him over the edge, as he can't bring himself to actually use force against "Pria" (who at this stage of her life probably has more in common with Anne Frank than Lal's dearly departed).

The way I envision the story from there, rather than commit rape -- statutory or otherwise -- Lal goes on a military rampage, attacking anyone who "violates the ideals of the U.N.," which is pretty much everybody by the time Santiago's building the Cloning Vats and Zakharov's conducting retroviral engineering experiments in the servants' kitchen.

"Pria" changes her name to "Starr", defiantly individualist if a tad overbalanced, escapes to University territory, and lives to write the following graffito on the inside wall of a Hab Dome:

quote:
I sit in my cubicle, here on the motherworld.
When I die, they will put my body in a box and
   dispose of it in the cold ground.
And in all the million ages to come, I will never
   breathe or laugh or twitch again.
So won't you run and play with me here among the
   teeming mass of humanity?

The Universe has spared us this moment.



After a brief career as a lesbian rock musician she meets "The One" -- much to her surprise -- and settles down.  "Biology is destiny," and Starr is the marrying kind, though she would poke my eyes out for saying it.  Her band plays at her wedding, but none of the groom's guests get lucky, because the rest of the band really are all lesbians.

Err, some other factions did some stuff, too, but nothing as interesting as Pria's clone ...

I picture Yang becoming a control-freak isolationist largely averse to outright war who falls behind technologically and fades into obscurity.  Mandarin China all over again.

Santiago goes slowly sane -- the nutball who mutinies on the Unity isn't the same person who launches Planet's first satellite into orbit.  She gets her butt kicked by Deidre, though.

Deidre's conversations with Planet I gather lead her to lose more and more of herself to the Planetmind until she finally Transcends and merges with the beast.  Then it's pretty much game over for everyone else.

Who's left ... Morgan and his people make a huge pile of money, but before he can put his plan for economic domination into action he steps on someone's toes -- I'd guess Santiago -- and folds like wet cardboard.

Miriam fights Zakharov for a while but after some early victories is eventually forced to mellow as Zak repeatedly defeats her.

Zakharov races Deidre to Transcendence until the Lab Three Incident drives him mad with anger toward Planet, at which point he digs up every cap, stalk, and rhizome of fungus within his territory and, ignoring the Centauri fork entirely, researches the Singularity fork instead.  He's in the best position of the game, militarily, technologically, and economically dominant, when Deidre pulls the rabbit out of the hat and transcends.

Is that 7?  Yup.  That's how I see the story going down, and AFAIK it agrees with the bits from the game.

And Alien Crossfire NEVER HAPPENED.  Those factions were totally gay.

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McDoomhammer

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Re: Videogames are good for something
« Reply #14 on: April 12, 2008, 06:45:00 pm »

What's the source for all this?  I remember some associated fiction-- in the manual, I think... but it's all rather fuzzy.
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