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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."
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!
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
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..