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Games in High School?
Joe Griego of Bishop Union High School, CA asks: "I'm the Director of I.T. for a small school district, and we've implemented a 'Game Night' for our kids. We open the lab once or twice a month, and let the kids sign up for the lab computers (we have 34 of them), and play LAN games until the wee hours. It's a lot of fun for the kids, and I enjoy seeing them use the computers for recreation, as opposed to purely academic purposes. However, my question would be - do other high schools even do this?" Judging by the post-Columbine reactions from the government, parent's groups, school systems, and the media, if a school is doing this, it's probably on the QT. Personally, I think this is a great idea, it keeps kids off of the streets and their parents know where they are. What do you think?
"I'd like to know what sorts of games would be best for this activity? We play Age of Empires II, Starcraft/Broodwar, and MechWarrior IV. I would have liked to include first person shooters (for the gameplay), but I'm limited by parental concerns, and perceptions in the community. As a school administrator and parent, I understand these concerns in a way the kids perhaps do not.
Are there other games that would be suitable for a school sponsored event? I'd love to hear about experiences at other schools."
It's going to be fun watching Jon Katz's brain melt when he reads this article.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
As a parent, I can say that "more addictive than heroin" may not be considered a selling point.
Nevertheless, I have to say (as I did further down) that Civilization is perfect!
when i was in high school we played doom on the school network. except we didn't call it 'game night', we called it 'AP Comp Sci'.
These are high school kids. If you want to give them free beer, you're going to have to do it behind the 7-11.
-prator
On the otherside, when I was on the chess team in H.S., I played 2-3 hours per day. Nobody complained about it, maybe because the graphics weren't as good
Whaddaya mean? With features like: Nearly Infinite Resolution(TM), Ultrareal 3D(TM), Force Feedback(Patent pending), Texture Feedback(U.S. Patent 4242424242) and the fact that it is ultra-low power design makes Real Chess(TM) the most realistic simulation of a board game yet. Real Chess, it doesn't get any more real than this!(TM)
Seriously, you DO know that you can play Solitare and Freecell with real cards, right?
We play Age of Empires II, Starcraft/Broodwar, and MechWarrior IV.
These are clearly bad games for high school students to be playing, here's why.
Age of Empires II:
This causes kids to think they can become a King and run a monarchy. Eventually they will build farms, trade pottery with other local towns and gather up hoards of archers and sailing vessles to take over the world.
Starcraft/Broodwar:
This will make high school students think that breeding hoards of zerglings or refining their psionic attack powers will be a solution to all their problems.
MechWarrior IV:
I shouldn't even have to talk about this one. The last thing we need is 15 year old johnny thinking that jumping in the 10-story-tall 2 legged family war machine is a good way to vent daily frustrations.
Instead you should be teaching kids to play things like football. Kids need to be taught that they will never be able to accomplish anything in life if they can't physically tackle someone to the ground or body slam another student. Also, kicking an oblong sack between two vertical posts is the only way a kid will know that he will be someone important someday...
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
We downloaded some games on the computers at school. (sans teacher permission of course..) Eventually the hard drives started getting full and we had trouble logging on. The tech guys (who absolutely hate us now and talked about how they wanted to "break our [expletive deleted]ing necks" Right in front of us too...) took about 3 days to go to all the computers and clear them out. So basically if we were to ask for a game night they'd probably castrate us on the spot. Good thing school's almost out and I can play Jedi Outcast at home whenever I want..