Thats something else, i never saw a Game on a READING-list. And my teacher never told, so now you go to that Apple Lc2 and play some FlightSimulator, 2 good landings or you have to-do it as homework.
That's just semantics, but it certainly happened. It may have been more informal when I was growing up, but you still had to play games like "Midnight Rescue" as part of class work.
I do think it is silly to put it on a 'Reading List'. I prefer to create a new category.
No its not, its about learning howto think about war/extremism/politics and how it influences a society, its NOT a math game like Midnight Rescue. That is why it is on a READING list and not on a Math-Learning plan.
One of the most formative classes I took was in middle school- it was a general "engineering" class- we built balsa wood and wax paper airplanes, balsa-wood bridges, learned VB and made tic-tac-toe and backgammon, our teacher got every student copies of Neverwinter Nights and we used NWScript to make mods and learn simple stuff like for-loops. And he had a lab with Stronghold and Microsoft Flight Sim(with controllers) where we could hang out after school and play games together.
I was coming from a background where I wasn't eating every day, the only sport I could afford to do was track- and that was only because the track coach was gracious enough to take me to a running store and buy me shoes, I was spending my nights cleaning office buildings, spending my early mornings getting to school early to shower and cram in my homework for the day before class. I was at a private school, so there was no reduced or free lunch program, and I had a very hard time staying awake in class, except for his class. Partially due to un-diagnosed ADHD and a really terrible home situation.
That class gave me an attainable goal to work towards, and now I'm a programmer today. I had previously relegated my ambitions to simply surviving.
But again i thinks that's a first-timer having a game to understand War/History and Society (in a war situation). Sure games existed as playful math/engineering(FSims)/Programming helper and so on...but not in that context.
It is educational in the sense that literature is, putting yourself in someone else's shoes. That's what the humanities do at their best. IMHO it's an excellent example of a novelistic game for just that reason.
It is an educational game, if it was something else it wouldn't have been on the list.
Just because it's not classified as an education game does not mean it isn't teaching.
The article clear says
"“Of course, games are already being used in education for teaching maths, chemistry, and developing cognitive abilities, but I don’t think we’ve ever encountered a game being officially included in the educational system on a national level as a school reading,” said Grzegorz Miechowski, CEO of 11 bit studios."
They clearly say there is already games on the list, this is just the first time a game is classified or put into the "reading" category.
Which is cool, but I don't get why this is news beyond being a giant ad.
‘educational’ as in math blasters, so this war of mine is not ‘educational’
given that stream of thought u could also argue civ v or skyrim or any other game is an educational game. why, you are learning something while playing league, right?
it’s pedantic to claim this war of mine is educational when it was clearly meant for a general gaming audience. that is why it being on a reading list is significant.
I agree. It is laziness on the part of the educators. There is a trend in education where they try and make things “relevant” to today’s generation. In the process the actual material is lost.
You could maybe compare it to putting the movie Schindler's List on a reading list.
(Text)books can only take one a certain depth into understanding these parts of history. Visual media helps making the unimaginable imaginable. Interactive media allows you to immerse and get a small grasp of the impossible choices and consequences surrounding of life in wartime.
Give the article a read, or play the game if you have time - it doesn't make sense to compare the qualities of This War of Mine, educational or otherwise, to those of Math Blaster. The fact that it's on a "reading list" should be the first clue. It really is a pretty interesting decision.
Your comment sound better if you where not implying I did not read the article (because I did multiple times).
"It doesn't make sense to compare the qualities of This War of Mine, educational or otherwise, to those of Math Blaster. The fact that it's on a "reading list" should be the first clue. It really is a pretty interesting decision."
Is much better. People take away different things from articles all the time.
Obviously going to ignore the rather aggressive undertone. I clearly missed something in the article so I reread it. There is nothing wrong with that.
My comment was in reference to the guidelines, which clearly state
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
I think it's a bit different because the games that were put on your childhood computers are designed specifically for children to learn early years skills (mathematics, history, etc.) while something like "This War of Mine" is developed for a wide audience and has now been co-opted into an education system to teach children about refugees, etc.
Interesting move. Sadly kids nowadays (at least in Poland, where I live) don't like reading books and tend to skip even very important titles. This may be a good way to bring some interest in the history via a genuinely entertaining medium.
Not the GP, but I think that there are many such titles, that's why schools in Poland have mandatory reading lists :)
You cannot understand culture and tradition without reading some classics,starting with Bible, Homer's Illiad, or Shakespeare. And of course in Poland we mostly focus on Polish writers. You know, before journalism was invented novels served pretty much the same purpose as newspaper reports - there are the goldmine of information about how Poland looked like back in the day.
Unfortunately, contemporary students prefer to just watch movie based on a book than reading the source material.
I mean, reading / playing witcher you'd get better morale / class diversification understanding than reading Bible or Illiad, Shakespeare is definetely not for school readings, if you're not interested in the actual literature that book has no value in your life.
I, personally, love reading books. But forcing that material to 12-18 and saying read these classic ones just pushes back youth from reading at all. You either move forward and adapt with the current generation or you try to force old generation habits and slowly curse on the result.
Poland has a good literary heritage, which was partly responsible for the coalescing of Poland as a nation. So I suppose many of books and authors from that tradition could be essential reading for Polish young people..
I am not from Poland myself. Perhaps Henrik Sienkiewicz is one of those authors..
Perhaps they should prescribe the Witcher novels too.
What does this mean, exactly? And why is it valuable?
> You either move forward and adapt with the current generation or you try to force old generation habits and slowly curse on the result
The classics are thousands of years old and have served as popular educational material for centuries. Why is Gen-Z categorically different from all of the generations that have come before such that we should change? I'm not sure that Gen-Z is even different with respect to their ability to understand or appreciate the classics, and to the extent that they are, I suspect that's because (at least in the US) we've changed how we teach, de-emphasizing things like civics (probably in favor of an increasingly identitarian curriculum). Note that this isn't a defense of the classics--for example, this wouldn't rebut the idea that classics are overrated--it only challenges the specific idea that something abruptly changed such that the classics are obsolete.
I don't know which is Gen-Z but see my friends 5-6 year olds glued to their phones or tablets. They have the entire world of videos to watch at their finger tips. I'd argue they are in an entirely different situation than previous generations.
Even kids growing up in the 90s probably didn't have their own computer and the internet wasn't full of video entertainment and free games and kids growing up 2000-2010 didn't have phones and tablets.
80s kids had cable and VHS.
50-60-70s kids had TV
20-30-40s kids had radio
So personally I do think it's a big difference. I'm awestruck by what kids have access to today vs what I had access to growing up in the 70s, early 80s. Kids today can learn about any topic and anytime, anywhere. When I grew up if it wasn't in my family bookshelf or the library I didn't have access to it. Kids today can also watch almost all movies of the last 100 yrs on demand. When I grew up video wasn't a thing and cable didn't happen until I got to high school so all I had was the few channels on the TV and whatever they happened to be showing.
That difference has to mean something. Whether it means "classics" are still relevant or not I have no idea but reading of those arguably came from a time when content was scarce. It's not anymore.
Not to start a flame war over book choice but forcing kids to read the Bible, Homer's Iliad, and Shakespeare are probably what is causing such marked disinterest in the first place. There are so many interesting and valuable works of writing, fiction and non-fiction, that can captivate and entertain modern children that aren't unapproachable tomes translated from ancient, dead languages, or written in Iambic Pentameter.
One of the first plays I read that actually interested me in Theater was Waiting for Godot. Reading The Stranger in high school exposed me to so many new and complex ideas. Even extremely recent books like "Something that May Shock and Discredit You" by Daniel M. Lavery or "Trick Mirror" by Jia Tolentino are fascinating works of the modern American Canon. I'm not Polish but I'm sure there are equally relevant works in Polish.
If you think kids just prefer to watch a "movie based on a book" maybe stop making them read boring books that truly lack lots of meaningful relevance to their lives today.
And seriously, stop making kids read The Bible as a literary lesson. Nothing made me dis-engage in school like being told "I know you're Jewish and this feels like proselytizing, but I promise, this is purely a lesson in literature, nothing more". That is proven to be a lie when King James's edition is selected over an English translation of the Torah, and when no other non-Christian religious texts are selected for literary evaluation...
Where and when did you go to school such that you were given a Bible to read? I started school in the US in the 1970s and never saw or heard anything more religious than the Pledge of Allegiance or a Christmas decoration.
Still, to be fair, those are just short fragments of the Bible. Nobody asks kids to read the whole Bible. Also, at least when I was a child, we read Bible in comparison with other ancient texts. Last but not the least, so many books/poems are inspired by Bible, that's it difficult to understand them without at least glimpsing over the Bible itself.
Just because you never experienced Christian propaganda in your public school district in your state doesn't mean it doesn't happen. If your town is mostly religious, mostly Christian, and the oversight mechanisms for something like this happen require a complaint to be filed, who is going to complain? Saying "I never experienced this in my school in the 70s" is about as relevant to somebody else's experience of school in the early naughts as saying "I've never been to a baseball game, so I don't believe baseball actually exists".
> If your town is mostly religious, mostly Christian, and the oversight mechanisms for something like this happen require a complaint to be filed, who is going to complain?
As is the case in many of the landmark freedom-from-religion-in-schools cases, Christians.
See, the thing is, America (and even most—but not all, sure—small towns in America) have lots of different flavors of Christianity, and they don't agree on much (especially when you include the JWs and other groups that other Christians view as not-Christian rather than Christians-who-are-in-error). So, typically, sneaking in your brand of Christian propaganda pisses off all the other brands of Christians.
You're missing my point. Generalizing any one instance of one school district and one Christian sect's objection to their curriculum to all of the US just doesn't work. While I was of school age it was still the TX state curriculum to teach creationism as equally scientific as evolution. Saying "It hasn't happened in [this place] or in [my town]" is not evidence that it happens nowhere.
I never claimed it didn't happen, and I never claimed my experience was representative of the entire country. I asked a question and relayed an anecdote.
Fair enough. I went to school in a predominantly evangelical suburb in San Diego county. The same parents who staged a national day of prayer on public elementary school grounds were also in a group that sued the district over their morning yoga for children program [0].
Why was it important for you to verify my experience and the details of it and relay an anecdote that was counter to my own anecdote if not to implicitly refute my experience?
> Why was it important for you to verify my experience and the details of it and relay an anecdote that was counter to my own anecdote if not to implicitly refute my experience?
Maybe it was an expression of surprise and genuine interest.
The Bible, Homer's Iliad, and Shakespeare's works are some of the most important ones in Western culture. I wouldn't say they're unapproachable at all. They may be more difficult to read than a modern teen fiction novel, but they contain archetypes and language patterns that were foundational for works that came afterward.
Thinking about it now, Beowulf should be added to this list. That's another great way to teach students about the evolution of the English language.
I hated Shakespeare when I was forced to read it in my language, translation tried to keep the spirit of the language, but really made it just sound archaic and complete incomprehensible to us (high-school kids not really interested in the whole deal). Only many years later, almost by accident, I've discovered how Shakespeare's work was really meant to sound, making the story itself so much more approachable.
Is that from the work by David Crystal reconstructing the sound of Shakespeare? It's very interesting to listen to passages read out in that Original Pronunciation. There are several videos of it on YouTube. NativLang also did a video on Shakespeare pronunciation.
It's also interesting how the pronunciation is reconstructed. Looking at rhyming pairs that don't currently rhyme (e.g. loved/proved), looking at different accents of English (Irish, Scottish, American, etc.) to identify historic pronunciations, etc.
No, it's a case of much less profound details, for instance I literally had no idea that Shakespeare's works were even meant to rhyme in the original, because the translation that we've read in school didn't rhyme at all. Also the rhythm was completely different and the language was over-complicated by using archaic expressions to try to match Shakespeare's use of English, and so on. Of course, translations are an art form on their own, so perhaps it's a matter of taste also.
> but they contain archetypes and language patterns that were foundational for works that came afterward.
So what? Other works lack these archetypes? No, they don't. Literature at school isn't supposed to be courses on comparative linguistics and theory of literature. A short intro is enough. Then move on to modern works.
Bible is better suited to history lessons on history of religion alongside other religions.
And if one doesn't go in that direction (eg theater & film or literature) forcing them is not going to be very productive after all... This should exist for sure but only optionally for the ones highly interested.
Are you sure the inclusion of "The Bible" of which there are actually several has nothing to do with your own personal faith? How do you even go about that without dealing with issues of church and state? Whichever holy book you choose at least 50% of constituents will believe you chose the wrong one. If you teach it as history you will be doing a poor job of history without substantially more sources and discussing the inherent unreliability of historical sources.
If you imply that every word isn't the literal truth you will again have at people howling for your blood.
You can always analyze Bible as any other book. In Poland (which is mainly catholic) I've read Bible in school only:
1) to compare the description of biblical creation with the greek mythology (just comparative analysis, without implying the creationism, rather otherwise)
2) next to some famous poem based on the biblical story to understand what is the poem about.
I'm always surprised that any school would teach creationism. Even catholic priests don't preach creationism as an alternative to current scientific theories. USA has to be a strange place :D
"Are you sure the inclusion of The Bible ... has nothing to do with your own personal faith?"
Yes. Much of Western culture has been deeply rooted in The Bible, from its stories to its values.
I can certainly second the sentiment that having to read such titles results in hating reading.
When in grades 3-5 I read about 100 (Admittedly easy) books per year on average. After that we had to read books for school and it almost instantly caused me to drop my yearly amount of books to 10 AT MOST. Now that I am out of school I read a lot more again.
BTW: Shakespeare wrote plays, not books. So why force children to read it instead of watching it?
> Not to start a flame war over book choice but forcing kids to read the Bible, Homer's Iliad, and Shakespeare are probably what is causing such marked disinterest in the first place. There are so many interesting and valuable works of writing, fiction and non-fiction, that can captivate and entertain modern children that aren't unapproachable tomes translated from ancient, dead languages, or written in Iambic Pentameter.
The idea of mandatory novels isn't to entertain and captivate. It is to bring young people into the culture that they will live in, and it's done by studying the culture's roots. Having said that, I felt like a TON of that stuff just flew over my head when I was in school - I mean, literary experts discuss the meaning of for example Mickiewicz's work to this day, and I, a child/teen with no frame of reference, am supposed to get some of it? It would require highly talented teachers to pull this off.
Not only that but also special interest on your part. There are more gentle but effective ways to learn about one's culture. Choosing the hardest is not going to be very productive at all!!
>> Not to start a flame war over book choice but forcing kids to read the Bible, Homer's Iliad, and Shakespeare are probably what is causing such marked disinterest in the first place
In my experience what's causing young people disintrest in reading is that noone teaches the physical skill of reading correctly.
I mean, I never really took any speed-reading courses, but still, when I take a test my speed is usually 400-500 wpm. I read somewhere that typical high school student reads about 100-120 wpm. If I were to read a lenghty book, like any of Dickens of Tolstoy works at that speed I would probably also give up very quickly.
I would say that non-fiction books, giving a view on the past errors in the human history, should be considered very important titles. "A World Apart" by Herling Grudzinski was the most important book on the lecture list when I was in high school. I'm happy to see that "Conversations with an Executioner" has been included in the list recently. Humanity tends to forget the bad times far too easily...
Other than that, I believe it is important to know the roots of the modern culture and society, and classic literature from authors like Dostoevsky, Mickiewicz, Conrad, Prus, Bulgakov, Shakespeare, Orwell, Hemmingway, Schulz, Twain, Huxley and many many others. I've met all of them in my school years and I'm thankful for that.
Yes but the current power structure doesn't want woke citizens, it's been proven that they are much easier to control this way (it's all from the Soviet propaganda playbook)
I agree that electronic books are strangely expensive compared to the printed editions. As for the book market, it's in a terrible state given decreasing interest in reading. Second biggest bookshop brand went bankrupt not so long ago and nobody has been able to fill the void. Luckily, there are many small and great bookshops out there. I highly recommend Kurant (music-related) or Revolutionibus (more general) in Krakow ;)
> don't like reading books and tend to skip even very important titles
That's because the list of mandatory [1] reading in Poland is 90% haphazardly thrown together nationalistic martyrdom bullshit with terrible state-mandated interpretation.
I used to _hate_ literary analysis, partly because of the works we were studying and how we were forced to interpret them. Then, years after leaving school I've discovered that this can actually be interesting and intellectually stimulating, especially if you care for the work, and doubly so if you're actually explained the point of this sort of analysis in the first place. Every single peer of around my age that has gone through the same system has had the exact same experience, regardless of school or district.
Yes, same story in every country on the eastern European block which either creates nationalists for the ones who are okay with the material or makes students abhor literature analysis and even literature in general.
In your neighbouring country Germany some of the entries for our 8th grade group reading and analysis project were:
- book about an anorexic girl (which IIRC was assigned by the lottery to the recovering anorexic girl in my class)
- book about a teenage boy falling in love with a drug-addicted girl and falling down into that swamp as well (names "Einbahnstraße" => "one-way street")
- some other books about adipositas and fat kids/teenagers hating themselves for being fat (IIRC some even contemplating suicide)
+ a bunch of other books in the same vein
Needless to say that was a very fun few weeks while presenting the books and their analyses...
Our literature teacher did have some spare student-time to throw in some of her selected books (in 10th grade I think?), and one of her choice was ”Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo”. It was certainly a formative experience, so I kinda do envy the program you went through :).
> the list of mandatory [1] reading in Poland is 90% haphazardly thrown together nationalistic martyrdom bullshit with terrible state-mandated interpretation
I've experienced this about 30 years ago and I'm experiencing it now with my child, and I couldn't agree more with that description. In fact, it is the best summary of our reading curriculum that I've ever seen. Saving for later.
Fortunately not every teacher is like that, but having been exposed to a famously great literature teacher, finding out that a lot of "standard analysis" is not even state-mandated but essentially a bunch of shitty memes driven by people who need to cast shit in bronze... that was bit soul crushing.
In large part this is caused by the education system. Instead of promoting thoughtful reading, discovery and broadening horizons, it forces kids to read through literature classics that are boring and completely unrelatable to modern kids.
huh, I'm not shocked. The only book that I've found interesting out of those mandatory books was Ferdydurke ^^
>Gombrowicz himself wrote of his novel that it is not "... a satire on some social class, nor a nihilistic attack on culture... We live in an era of violent changes, of accelerated development, in which settled forms are breaking under life's pressure... The need to find a form for what is yet immature, uncrystalized and underdeveloped, as well as the groan at the impossibility of such a postulate – this is the chief excitement of my book."
“Kampf” means “battle” and can also have, like in “Mein Kampf”, the metaphorical meaning of “struggle”. “Krieg” means “war”. E.g. WW2 is Weltkrieg 2, not Weltkampf 2.
Having not played TWOM I don’t know which translates would be more appropriate. The GP is however most likely a joke (and not a bad one IMHO).
It about trying to survive in a city in a fictional country during a war (similar to the Yugoslav Wars). So I think that krieg is appropriate but I haven't taken German in nearly 30 years so I'm rusty!
unfortunately, i think you'll find that DX is far too edgy for any school curriculum because it's far too true to life.
school curriculums are not intended to capture the nuance of how a "terrorist" group like the NSF might gain popular support and even the moral high ground as a result of their efforts to reduce the inequality of vaccine distribution. an inequality of distribution that our society is all but destined to replicate, as soon as we have a vaccine for COVID-19.
nor are school curriculums interested in provoking critical thought by posing questions like "what if powerful groups of people are conspiring for their own gain, even when it results in mass misery?" this too we have already covered in the pandemic, when trump's political allies recieved preferential access to the right to sell protective equipment that was in short supply even when their need for it was minimal and the consequences of their greed was mass death.
put differently: school curriculums exist to prevent enlightened dissenters from existing, not to make more of them. i'd be all for having it be part of a course, but it's just too real.
I remember I gained a ton of interest in medieval Japan from Shogun Total War. No clue how historically accurate it was, but there are a lot of ‘period piece’ games that could really set the tone for a history course (Rome Total War, there’s a bunch for WW2, etc).
DX is one of the few games I've played through more than once. DX is a lot longer, and is fundamentally a FPS. It's a work of art of gaming, and were this a school on game design, I would absolutely agree with you.
TWOM is a work of literary art. If you haven't played it, do so, but be warned: it hits hard, emotionally.
I am surprised why it took school system so long. And despite the apparent collapse of traditional education, it is surprisingly resistant to change. I would also include some works from Demoscene, some newer electronic music (at least from the 80s :)).
This is amazing. There are other games of this quality and artistry, but IMO no other games with the kind of impact TWOM has. There's something special that happens when you play TWOM that isn't possible in other mediums. It manages to actually create circumstances where you feel like you're making hard choices.
IMO, only two other games accomplish something comparable. Portal (as a masterpiece of gaming in every respect) and Stanley Parable (as being another masterpiece that has a "message" inexpressible in any other medium).
If you'd add to that list, I could do with more maximum quality games to have played ;)
I'm glad to hear, but that's not a common opinion from what I've seen. Personally I thought it was clumsy and it felt like it wanted to be a movie more than a game.
I haven't played "Papers, Please" but I believe it has players consider equally hard problems in the vein of "This War of Mine" as well. If I recall correctly, you're given different criteria of things to look for every day, and something there's forgeries coming through and sometimes there's just honest mistakes. I think you're also timed and how many correctly documented people are let through ties to how much money you make, so you can starve to death waffling over whether someone is in compliance.
I haven't played This War of Mine, but "Papers, Please" is probably second only to "A Dark Room" in making me 'feel' something that could only have been achieved by masterfully combining gameplay with a clever theme/storytelling.
There are plenty of games that do a decent job combining gameplay with a particular theme or feeling or experience (Bioshock, Planescape: Torment, Thief, and a whole bunch more), but there's always some 'gap' between the two. But with these two games (and I'm sure there are others) both aspects elevate each other.
I’d definitely add The Beginner’s Guide, as a game with a message that would not be possible in any other medium. It’s from the same people as The Stanley Parable.
Papers, Please is my favorite example of how games can teach and inform by putting you in someone else's shoes. Especially because it is so simple and direct.
The education system, as always, sends the signal that should be received with great suspicion and scrutiny.
Here the case is slightly more complex: any game, however rich, is a closed system with predictable outcomes, while real life is all about choosing opaque options, rarely obvious.
Academia likes and itself all about first type: actually it is just another computer game, especially with recent remote/online movement. Surviving in real life situation like that, is nowhere near the computer game, but quite the opposite.
I think you're missing the point. That game doesn't teach you anything about survival nor does it aim to, I think. It's more like a book about the people who go through some hardship, you read about how they cope and maybe learn a lesson applicable in everyday life. That is the point with some narrative literature in the first place.
Respecting video games is great, but like you don't respect a movie as "the best meal I ever had", you also don't respect a game by putting it in a "recommended reading list".
Agreed. They probably maintained the term "recommended reading list" since people are used to it instead of inventing a new term like "recommended media" that wouldn't make for an exciting headline.
It's certainly a valid position to interpret games as text to be interpreted. In fact, if structuralism and semiotics have taught us anything it is precisely this.
In danish education we have the concept of an "udvidet tekstbegreb" that means any references to texts can also refer to any other kind of cultural medium.
If we look outside Denmark, the European institutions also have this view. If we, for example, look at the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages), they give us this exact definition of text [0]:
> Text is any sequence or discourse (spoken and/or written) related to a specific domain and which in the course of carrying out a task becomes the occasion of a language activity, whether as a support or as a goal, as product or process.
Playing "This War of Mine" was one of the most powerful and emotionally stirring experiences that I have ever had with a video game. It really is a beautiful work of art. Highly recommend playing it.
It's a different gameplay experience, but I highly recommend Valiant Hearts for another emotionally stirring experience about people going through war.
The thing that I found very important in this game is that there is no clearly defined end-goal like “survive for 100 days” - this really helps the game capture the feeling of “will this never end?”
Having a defined end date would make things easier psychologically.
This was a very difficult game to play. The difficulty was not in the gameplay, but in the emotional content of the game. If the other games help in escapism, this is the opposite where you can feel what the characters are going through in a war zone.
To be honest, when I first played This War of Mine, I wanted to throw the controller. The thing is, as your characters' health decreases, becaue they get wounded or the are hungry or sick, etc, they start dragging their feet- literally. They take ages just to go from one room to the next. So play suddendly morphs into long stretches of just pushing a stick (or a button, I guess) to advance at a snail's pace.
I fully appreciate that this is meant to get you into the spirit of the game, but in the end it just ends up breaking immersion completely and makes you wonder what the hell you're doing in your life, pushing virtual people around a virtual house for hours on end.
I gave up on playing the game after a few tries, when I realised this was going on. I picked it up again a few months later and I enjoyed it much more, precisely because for some reason I didn't experience the same slowdown. I don't know if the game changed, possibly I was more aware of the things that could make my characters slow and managed to avoid them- but I'm not 100% sure.
I've had similar experiences with other games. Sunless Sea, forced me to push a virtual boat around a virtual sea in what felt like real time, because it was the game creator's vision that travel should be slow and you should go over the same empty tracts of sea again and again and again and again, always at a teribly slow pace, even with the most expensive engine upgrades. I didn't pick that one up again, after I found out that this was actually a design feature (I think I read an interview with the creator, or some thread in the game's forums on steam?) (edit: I think this was the thread: https://steamcommunity.com/app/304650/discussions/0/14832329...).
Merchant of the Skies, that I've been playing a lot recently can also be tedious though, honestly, not that much. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, well I guess that was a walking simulator and it's my fault for playing it for as much as I play it. The list goes on for a bit.
Just, don't take away from my time to live and give me nothing back in return, mkay?
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 175 ms ] threadPutting a game on a school reading list when there is already 100's of games on there, is not really news.
Kind of just seems like a ad than anything else.
I do think it is silly to put it on a 'Reading List'. I prefer to create a new category.
No its not, its about learning howto think about war/extremism/politics and how it influences a society, its NOT a math game like Midnight Rescue. That is why it is on a READING list and not on a Math-Learning plan.
What else would you put in this category?
I was coming from a background where I wasn't eating every day, the only sport I could afford to do was track- and that was only because the track coach was gracious enough to take me to a running store and buy me shoes, I was spending my nights cleaning office buildings, spending my early mornings getting to school early to shower and cram in my homework for the day before class. I was at a private school, so there was no reduced or free lunch program, and I had a very hard time staying awake in class, except for his class. Partially due to un-diagnosed ADHD and a really terrible home situation.
That class gave me an attainable goal to work towards, and now I'm a programmer today. I had previously relegated my ambitions to simply surviving.
But again i thinks that's a first-timer having a game to understand War/History and Society (in a war situation). Sure games existed as playful math/engineering(FSims)/Programming helper and so on...but not in that context.
But this game (War of mine) is fantastic!!!
EDIT: Well one time it worked, but that was in florida, so i don't count that.
Just because it's not classified as an education game does not mean it isn't teaching.
The article clear says
"“Of course, games are already being used in education for teaching maths, chemistry, and developing cognitive abilities, but I don’t think we’ve ever encountered a game being officially included in the educational system on a national level as a school reading,” said Grzegorz Miechowski, CEO of 11 bit studios."
They clearly say there is already games on the list, this is just the first time a game is classified or put into the "reading" category.
Which is cool, but I don't get why this is news beyond being a giant ad.
given that stream of thought u could also argue civ v or skyrim or any other game is an educational game. why, you are learning something while playing league, right?
it’s pedantic to claim this war of mine is educational when it was clearly meant for a general gaming audience. that is why it being on a reading list is significant.
you should try the game
I guess I strayed away from my original point, that this reads more like an advertisement for the game than a revolutionary teaching tool.
But I digress.
Maybe your are halfway truth your thinking WHY it's actually a interesting decision....but just halfway...
(Text)books can only take one a certain depth into understanding these parts of history. Visual media helps making the unimaginable imaginable. Interactive media allows you to immerse and get a small grasp of the impossible choices and consequences surrounding of life in wartime.
"It doesn't make sense to compare the qualities of This War of Mine, educational or otherwise, to those of Math Blaster. The fact that it's on a "reading list" should be the first clue. It really is a pretty interesting decision."
Is much better. People take away different things from articles all the time.
Obviously going to ignore the rather aggressive undertone. I clearly missed something in the article so I reread it. There is nothing wrong with that.
My comment was in reference to the guidelines, which clearly state
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
You cannot understand culture and tradition without reading some classics,starting with Bible, Homer's Illiad, or Shakespeare. And of course in Poland we mostly focus on Polish writers. You know, before journalism was invented novels served pretty much the same purpose as newspaper reports - there are the goldmine of information about how Poland looked like back in the day.
Unfortunately, contemporary students prefer to just watch movie based on a book than reading the source material.
I, personally, love reading books. But forcing that material to 12-18 and saying read these classic ones just pushes back youth from reading at all. You either move forward and adapt with the current generation or you try to force old generation habits and slowly curse on the result.
I am not from Poland myself. Perhaps Henrik Sienkiewicz is one of those authors..
Perhaps they should prescribe the Witcher novels too.
What does this mean, exactly? And why is it valuable?
> You either move forward and adapt with the current generation or you try to force old generation habits and slowly curse on the result
The classics are thousands of years old and have served as popular educational material for centuries. Why is Gen-Z categorically different from all of the generations that have come before such that we should change? I'm not sure that Gen-Z is even different with respect to their ability to understand or appreciate the classics, and to the extent that they are, I suspect that's because (at least in the US) we've changed how we teach, de-emphasizing things like civics (probably in favor of an increasingly identitarian curriculum). Note that this isn't a defense of the classics--for example, this wouldn't rebut the idea that classics are overrated--it only challenges the specific idea that something abruptly changed such that the classics are obsolete.
Even kids growing up in the 90s probably didn't have their own computer and the internet wasn't full of video entertainment and free games and kids growing up 2000-2010 didn't have phones and tablets.
80s kids had cable and VHS.
50-60-70s kids had TV
20-30-40s kids had radio
So personally I do think it's a big difference. I'm awestruck by what kids have access to today vs what I had access to growing up in the 70s, early 80s. Kids today can learn about any topic and anytime, anywhere. When I grew up if it wasn't in my family bookshelf or the library I didn't have access to it. Kids today can also watch almost all movies of the last 100 yrs on demand. When I grew up video wasn't a thing and cable didn't happen until I got to high school so all I had was the few channels on the TV and whatever they happened to be showing.
That difference has to mean something. Whether it means "classics" are still relevant or not I have no idea but reading of those arguably came from a time when content was scarce. It's not anymore.
One of the first plays I read that actually interested me in Theater was Waiting for Godot. Reading The Stranger in high school exposed me to so many new and complex ideas. Even extremely recent books like "Something that May Shock and Discredit You" by Daniel M. Lavery or "Trick Mirror" by Jia Tolentino are fascinating works of the modern American Canon. I'm not Polish but I'm sure there are equally relevant works in Polish.
If you think kids just prefer to watch a "movie based on a book" maybe stop making them read boring books that truly lack lots of meaningful relevance to their lives today.
And seriously, stop making kids read The Bible as a literary lesson. Nothing made me dis-engage in school like being told "I know you're Jewish and this feels like proselytizing, but I promise, this is purely a lesson in literature, nothing more". That is proven to be a lie when King James's edition is selected over an English translation of the Torah, and when no other non-Christian religious texts are selected for literary evaluation...
[1] - “Biblia: stworzenie świata i człowieka oraz wybrane przypowieści ewangeliczne, w tym o siewcy, o talentach, o pannach roztropnych, o miłosiernym Samarytaninie” ( https://isap.sejm.gov.pl/isap.nsf/download.xsp/WDU2017000035... )
Just because you never experienced Christian propaganda in your public school district in your state doesn't mean it doesn't happen. If your town is mostly religious, mostly Christian, and the oversight mechanisms for something like this happen require a complaint to be filed, who is going to complain? Saying "I never experienced this in my school in the 70s" is about as relevant to somebody else's experience of school in the early naughts as saying "I've never been to a baseball game, so I don't believe baseball actually exists".
As is the case in many of the landmark freedom-from-religion-in-schools cases, Christians.
See, the thing is, America (and even most—but not all, sure—small towns in America) have lots of different flavors of Christianity, and they don't agree on much (especially when you include the JWs and other groups that other Christians view as not-Christian rather than Christians-who-are-in-error). So, typically, sneaking in your brand of Christian propaganda pisses off all the other brands of Christians.
Why was it important for you to verify my experience and the details of it and relay an anecdote that was counter to my own anecdote if not to implicitly refute my experience?
https://www.npr.org/2013/01/09/168613461/promoting-hinduism-...
Maybe it was an expression of surprise and genuine interest.
Thinking about it now, Beowulf should be added to this list. That's another great way to teach students about the evolution of the English language.
It's also interesting how the pronunciation is reconstructed. Looking at rhyming pairs that don't currently rhyme (e.g. loved/proved), looking at different accents of English (Irish, Scottish, American, etc.) to identify historic pronunciations, etc.
So what? Other works lack these archetypes? No, they don't. Literature at school isn't supposed to be courses on comparative linguistics and theory of literature. A short intro is enough. Then move on to modern works.
Bible is better suited to history lessons on history of religion alongside other religions.
If you imply that every word isn't the literal truth you will again have at people howling for your blood.
I'm always surprised that any school would teach creationism. Even catholic priests don't preach creationism as an alternative to current scientific theories. USA has to be a strange place :D
When in grades 3-5 I read about 100 (Admittedly easy) books per year on average. After that we had to read books for school and it almost instantly caused me to drop my yearly amount of books to 10 AT MOST. Now that I am out of school I read a lot more again.
BTW: Shakespeare wrote plays, not books. So why force children to read it instead of watching it?
What the fuck, high school. Why? Why?
The idea of mandatory novels isn't to entertain and captivate. It is to bring young people into the culture that they will live in, and it's done by studying the culture's roots. Having said that, I felt like a TON of that stuff just flew over my head when I was in school - I mean, literary experts discuss the meaning of for example Mickiewicz's work to this day, and I, a child/teen with no frame of reference, am supposed to get some of it? It would require highly talented teachers to pull this off.
In my experience what's causing young people disintrest in reading is that noone teaches the physical skill of reading correctly.
I mean, I never really took any speed-reading courses, but still, when I take a test my speed is usually 400-500 wpm. I read somewhere that typical high school student reads about 100-120 wpm. If I were to read a lenghty book, like any of Dickens of Tolstoy works at that speed I would probably also give up very quickly.
Other than that, I believe it is important to know the roots of the modern culture and society, and classic literature from authors like Dostoevsky, Mickiewicz, Conrad, Prus, Bulgakov, Shakespeare, Orwell, Hemmingway, Schulz, Twain, Huxley and many many others. I've met all of them in my school years and I'm thankful for that.
No wonder there are so many illegal sources for epubs.
I hope it won't be 20 years again. I plan to go there for that light show on the river next time it'll happen with my gf.
That's because the list of mandatory [1] reading in Poland is 90% haphazardly thrown together nationalistic martyrdom bullshit with terrible state-mandated interpretation.
I used to _hate_ literary analysis, partly because of the works we were studying and how we were forced to interpret them. Then, years after leaving school I've discovered that this can actually be interesting and intellectually stimulating, especially if you care for the work, and doubly so if you're actually explained the point of this sort of analysis in the first place. Every single peer of around my age that has gone through the same system has had the exact same experience, regardless of school or district.
[1] - as I've experienced it 10 years ago
Unrelated: I still have your Arduino knock-off which you lent me back during our days in a company related to a certain fruit.
- book about an anorexic girl (which IIRC was assigned by the lottery to the recovering anorexic girl in my class)
- book about a teenage boy falling in love with a drug-addicted girl and falling down into that swamp as well (names "Einbahnstraße" => "one-way street")
- some other books about adipositas and fat kids/teenagers hating themselves for being fat (IIRC some even contemplating suicide)
+ a bunch of other books in the same vein
Needless to say that was a very fun few weeks while presenting the books and their analyses...
I've experienced this about 30 years ago and I'm experiencing it now with my child, and I couldn't agree more with that description. In fact, it is the best summary of our reading curriculum that I've ever seen. Saving for later.
I'm fairly confident this has been a staple throughout most of the world, and, if I had to wager, time.
huh, I'm not shocked. The only book that I've found interesting out of those mandatory books was Ferdydurke ^^
>Gombrowicz himself wrote of his novel that it is not "... a satire on some social class, nor a nihilistic attack on culture... We live in an era of violent changes, of accelerated development, in which settled forms are breaking under life's pressure... The need to find a form for what is yet immature, uncrystalized and underdeveloped, as well as the groan at the impossibility of such a postulate – this is the chief excitement of my book."
I've got a few days off work this week so need to give it a shot. I was never sure looking at videos and screenshots what sort of game it actually is.
Having not played TWOM I don’t know which translates would be more appropriate. The GP is however most likely a joke (and not a bad one IMHO).
Also, "Kampf" would be active fighting, and this game is about people who are in the opposite situation and become subjects of violence.
school curriculums are not intended to capture the nuance of how a "terrorist" group like the NSF might gain popular support and even the moral high ground as a result of their efforts to reduce the inequality of vaccine distribution. an inequality of distribution that our society is all but destined to replicate, as soon as we have a vaccine for COVID-19.
nor are school curriculums interested in provoking critical thought by posing questions like "what if powerful groups of people are conspiring for their own gain, even when it results in mass misery?" this too we have already covered in the pandemic, when trump's political allies recieved preferential access to the right to sell protective equipment that was in short supply even when their need for it was minimal and the consequences of their greed was mass death.
put differently: school curriculums exist to prevent enlightened dissenters from existing, not to make more of them. i'd be all for having it be part of a course, but it's just too real.
Very underutilized.
TWOM is a work of literary art. If you haven't played it, do so, but be warned: it hits hard, emotionally.
IMO, only two other games accomplish something comparable. Portal (as a masterpiece of gaming in every respect) and Stanley Parable (as being another masterpiece that has a "message" inexpressible in any other medium).
If you'd add to that list, I could do with more maximum quality games to have played ;)
A good story has shades of gray, and Detroit fell short there for me. There were clear "good" guys and "bad" guys (or gals).
Disco Elysium is a narrative masterpiece.
Outer Wilds has the most balanced story/exploration loop I can think of.
Baba is You because it screws with your brain nicely.
Spoiler:
-- when you realise your actions carry over across reloads
Perhaps the author could edit the comment and add a warning?
There are plenty of games that do a decent job combining gameplay with a particular theme or feeling or experience (Bioshock, Planescape: Torment, Thief, and a whole bunch more), but there's always some 'gap' between the two. But with these two games (and I'm sure there are others) both aspects elevate each other.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photopia
The Talos Principle - a puzzle game that looks promising and it's on my list since after I heard some in game dialogue. Touches on identity.
Academia likes and itself all about first type: actually it is just another computer game, especially with recent remote/online movement. Surviving in real life situation like that, is nowhere near the computer game, but quite the opposite.
In danish education we have the concept of an "udvidet tekstbegreb" that means any references to texts can also refer to any other kind of cultural medium.
If we look outside Denmark, the European institutions also have this view. If we, for example, look at the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages), they give us this exact definition of text [0]:
> Text is any sequence or discourse (spoken and/or written) related to a specific domain and which in the course of carrying out a task becomes the occasion of a language activity, whether as a support or as a goal, as product or process.
[0]: https://rm.coe.int/1680459f97, pp. 10.
I would really love to have a save feature in TWoM, I feel like its sorely missing.
Having a defined end date would make things easier psychologically.
There is also a board game (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/188920/war-mine-board-ga...) that I’ve heard good things about.
I fully appreciate that this is meant to get you into the spirit of the game, but in the end it just ends up breaking immersion completely and makes you wonder what the hell you're doing in your life, pushing virtual people around a virtual house for hours on end.
I gave up on playing the game after a few tries, when I realised this was going on. I picked it up again a few months later and I enjoyed it much more, precisely because for some reason I didn't experience the same slowdown. I don't know if the game changed, possibly I was more aware of the things that could make my characters slow and managed to avoid them- but I'm not 100% sure.
I've had similar experiences with other games. Sunless Sea, forced me to push a virtual boat around a virtual sea in what felt like real time, because it was the game creator's vision that travel should be slow and you should go over the same empty tracts of sea again and again and again and again, always at a teribly slow pace, even with the most expensive engine upgrades. I didn't pick that one up again, after I found out that this was actually a design feature (I think I read an interview with the creator, or some thread in the game's forums on steam?) (edit: I think this was the thread: https://steamcommunity.com/app/304650/discussions/0/14832329...).
Merchant of the Skies, that I've been playing a lot recently can also be tedious though, honestly, not that much. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, well I guess that was a walking simulator and it's my fault for playing it for as much as I play it. The list goes on for a bit.
Just, don't take away from my time to live and give me nothing back in return, mkay?