A teacher once in class made a claim that I thought was rather uneducated. She said that gaming will get you nowhere in life, and that is just useless. What do you guys think about that? I think that before she makes a claim like that, she should do her homework. She has no evidence to back up that claim. First of all, many people's jobs base around gaming (YouTubers, developers, etc). Secondly, I disagree that video games are useless. Video games is a source of media, just like books and movies. Video Games are able to tell a compelling story, inform you, or entertain you; just like books.
>yogscast >totally overrated non humerous douchebags with a silly accent Well, if you want to get into programming, this can get you real far in life, it's a rather well paid job and the need for them is always there (i so hope you don't live in the US, otherwise this may not apply to you and you're fucked anyway. Gaming on it's own is a field where you need really really much luck to come out good. And even when you're good it doesn't mean you can make a living.
How much money earns your teacher? Because I know an exemple of something you can earn while making a game: money.I know of some guys that made a game about cubes and stuff, it looks weird but they earned 200 000 000 dollars with that! You know their game? It's called "Minecraft" as far as I remember.... If you see what I mean
Yeah, but that's programming or game designing. Gaming won't get you far in life. The most common games are useless and offer no teaching at all. Call of duty is a good example of a brainless game. you dont need any skills to be good at it, you just run around and shoot. Minecraft doesnt help you in any way really. since most minecrafters just run around trying to get a diamond so that they can get more diamonds. Some games might help with memory ,quick thinking, strategy and stuff like that.. Gaming might help you make friends though, I guess.. But hardcore gamers dont have a lot of real life friends. So your teacher wasn't very wrong there. Gaming on its own will get you nowhere in life. but you can game and do something else..
Yeah, that's why they have over 2 million subscribers and have a whole office dedicated to what they do, right? Tell the people who run YouTube what you just said, I'm sure that the Yogscast aren't important to them. Gretar, did you even read the first post? If what you say is true, then (story) books and movies are also useless because they don't improve any skills or inform you about anything, they just tell a story. If anything video games are better than books and movies, since they give an interactive experience. And I'm not sure you know what the word "brainless" means, because there is absolutely no video game in existence that does not exercise your brain. I don't play CoD, but I can list three skills that I'm almost sure you can gain from it: hand-eye coordination, quick thinking, and problem solving (those skills can go with almost any FPS game). And I want you to go and find at least three Minecrafters you know that will admit that the only thing they care about in Minecraft is finding diamonds, and list them here so I can explain to them how to play a video game.
I'm sorry, are you being so defensive because i'm right?................ <--- that enough periods for you? Also if you really think the Yogscast is actually a Youtube channel that isn't extremely money hungry (which they are) and is also a good channel all around, you must have your head way up your own ass.................................. <---- is that enough periods yet? asshole.
I understand that, but the same thing could be said about reading. And reading isn't considered useless.
Everything depends on how each person interprets it. If I had never played any game, I wouldn't even know how to say "My name is Lucas" in some language other than portuguese.
Well that depends on the book; if I were to pick up The Cat in the Hat trying to get something out of it, it would be a waste of my time, but if I was to pick up an educational book then I have a chance to learn something(not to take away from the lessons learned in Dr. Seuss' books, but they just aren't all that useful to me at the moment because I already know them). This is the same with video games: FPS games in general are not all that useful in life, some people may say it improves your reflexes which, I think, does not matter to me in the majority of my life. Others may say they improve your ability to strategize on the spot, but, to be honest, all that is is "Which door will I go through to get to the enemy?" or "Shoot now!". Not very hard strategies to come up with. Now, if you play a game such as a physics game you actually have to put your brain to work and come up with solutions to a very difficult problem. As you may have noticed, the former is much more popular among the vast majority of kids so I can see why your teacher has this view of video games. Also, you may have noticed that a lot of people don't just play a video game once; they play it over and over again until they get good at it. Once you have played the game the first time you probably have already gotten the lesson, if there even is one, but you continue to play it because you don't care about the lesson. In a book, however, many people just read it once and are done with it so they get the message, learn new words, and move on. Playing most video games over is a waste of time education-wise and with books this time is cut out and replaced with time reading a new book and learning more and more. I'd have to agree with Gretar, most games won't get you far, if anywhere, in life and may have a severe impact on your social life if you play too much of them.
I'm sorry, but that's just not true. FPS games are all about strategy and technique, they're much more than just running around and shooting stuff. You have to think about how to use the environment to your advantage, how to get out of certain situations, how to take someone down, how to react to certain events, what you can and can't do with certain weapons, what your opponent is able to do... You do realize, the EXACT same thing can be said about books... If you sit in your house all day and just read books, you're not going to have much fun. But it can be very fun to play a good game with a few friends.
What you didn't say in the bullshit stuff up there is reading actually teaches you things that are useful in life, not many people will need any of the bullshit skills they will learn from playing video games.
Just because most people don't get anything out of a medium does not mean that the medium is worthless. To most people Call of Duty is a run-and-gun timewaster. To most people Apocalypse Now is just a weird hippie anti-war movie. Most people are stupid. Call of Duty is actually a strategy game, just like real combat; any thoughtless action will get you killed and intelligence combined with reflexes is king. Call of Duty is best played like a game of chess. A live action game of chess, but chess nonetheless. And don't get me started on story and plot. Just because most people are bad at chess does not mean that chess is worthless.
In my personal experience this was not the case at all. I was mostly referring to the most popular title of the genre: Call of Duty. I played a fair amount of this game in the past and I did fairly well essentially doing just that: running around and shooting people with little to no strategy involved. By fairly well I mean: I did better than almost everyone I played with/against consistently. I admit that there are other games that actually DO include a lot of strategy, but they aren't as popular as this particular title. So SOME people might learn useful skills from these games, but many do not. Yes, I do realize this and I never said it wasn't true, I said that it would be more productive to read a book rather than play a video game over for the 15th time in a row. We also were never asked about fun, we were asked about whether or not video games can get you anywhere in life. I also agree that it can be very fun to play a good game with some friends, but I was not talking about the casual gamer that just plays some games with friends occasionally, I was talking about a hardcore gamer who does nothing but play games all day.
The CoD servers try to place you with fairly similarly skilled players. If you were a new player, you were likely fighting other relatively new/non-hardcore players. Unfortunately most people will not engage in any medium to its true potential. The people that get the most out of something are those that go looking for it in the first place. Learning from something is entirely optional. The casual gamer gets as much out of games as the casual reader does of books. A person who only reads the most recent Barbara Kingsolver novel will get much less out of their reading as a person who reads Alexander Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo or Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. To say that either medium is better or worse in any aspect unconditionally, is succumbing to social hatred and bigotry about video games. In order to get something out of Call of Duty, one must actually try to get something out of Call of Duty. If you sit down with the expectation of taking nothing away from something, you probably won't. Also, check out the Modern Warfare storyline itself. If you play it from the beginning and pay attention you will not regret it. You might have a different view on morals and human nature afterwards, but you will not regret it.
I do not hate video games. I do not agree with a lot of the things people say about video games. I play video games whenever I can. I am simply saying that video games alone will not get you very far in life. You will have to use other methods in order to actually get far in life except in some special cases. I agree that video games can be a better method of learning for some subjects than books because they keep people more entertained for longer periods of time potentially teaching them more. My problem is not with how they teach something it is what they teach. The average person will not need to use combat tactics all that often. The average person will not need amazing reflexes. Coming up with solutions to problems presented quickly is the one useful skill I can see being taken out of the Call of Duty series. While this is a useful skill, you need to know how to solve the problem in order to use this skill. Video games will not teach you how to do your job, books and other people will.
Well really it just depends on the game. Different games teach you different skills and give different experience. I agree that video games are more useful when combined with other methods of learning, but they can still teach many of the things that other methods can. Also, I feel that Call of Duty may not be the best example, since many people who play it are just 6 year olds, so you might not have to use much of your brain to be good at the game.
