Personal Preferences in Gaming

After reading several articles on gaming, the Magnavox Odyssey stood out to me the most. In part because of its advanced features and technology for the day, but mostly because I had never heard of it before now. As a formerly avid gamer, I never pretended to be an aficionado. However, I did play a ton of games growing up; I realized this as I watched the history and evolution of gaming videos and recognized a vast majority of the games that were shown.

My favorite video games will go back to two: EverQuest and America’s Army. EveryQuest is an iconic video game that is still around and active, celebrating its 20-year anniversary this year; no, I do not still play that time-sink of a game. America’s Army is a video game sponsored by the U.S. Army. It is a first-person shooter that focuses on actual military tactics and real, modern tactical scenarios. I played competitively for several years and my squad was ranked in the regional competitions. We spent so much time memorizing and exploiting the maps that they were second nature. Aside from digital games, Risk is, by far, my favorite board game. Its simple design and competitive structure introduced me to strategy style of gameplay that I had not previously been accustomed to.

I am led to discuss if any of these games are educational. All games teach something so one would need to know what the learning objective is. If strategy and human mannerisms it the objective, Risk is a great resource. If modern military tactics, weapons, equipment, and strategies are the objective, then America’s Army is definitely a good choice to learn while gaming. If learning the history, culture, and layout of the fictitious world of Norrath is the learning objective, then EverQuest is the only choice. These styles of games could be adapted to learn STEM lessons or other K-12 objectives. However, in their current form, I don’t believe they are a great example of learning traditional academic objectives.