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."

Comments

Civilization III

[mesozoic]

It's less violent than most games kids play these days, it requires a fair amount of real thinking (as opposed to just running around and shooting anything that moves), and it's more addictive than heroin.

No Game Nights, but hacking was allowed..

[feydakin]

We didn't have a 'game night'.. But I did have 3 seats set aside purley for hacking and experimenting.. They were allowed to try to break the school network, write their own code, and generally be geeks without fear of getting in trouble for violating the school code..

The only rules were that you had to use those 3 seats (where I could easily see them) and if you cracked my network security you had to show me how you did it, and no DoS attacks on the school servers..

FreeCiv!

[Olinator]

This is a perfect opportunity for FreeCiv, which is not only a helluva lotta fun, but also

• somewhat educational/thought-provoking in a how-did-the-world-get-to-be-this-way kind of sense, and
• free (speech and beer.)

Re:Inappropriate

[Gorbie]

Playing Chess, spades, cribbage, etc. online is just as addictive. My 65yo neighbor spends her entire life in her office playing solitare.

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.

There are many things that can be done to stimulate thnking in the game community, and many things that are better for just blowing off steam. Trying to compare quake to chess and go, or even a more modern game like Warhammer 40k isn't a good comparison. Different games use different skills...but all use skills to play well.

Seeing schools promote games is good. It's a fun way to think. Some games like Warhammer and Warhammer 40k even offer multiple aspects for development. First, the models have to be assembled and painted, then the rule books have to be read and understood, and then that understanding has to be applied to a high level of strategic thinking. I think this sort of thing would reap huge benefits if it were embraced by more families and communities. Don't like the genre? Use civil war minis and reconstruct some historical battles. See if you can beat General Lee. Heck, a kid might even voluntarily pick up a history book to learn more about it...ie. reading the historical excerpts in Civ III.

Parents are biggest threat

[clark625]

I personally don't have a problem with this, but my neighbors would. I think it's wonderful that your school can do this, but understand that it may only be temporary. Parents can threaten everything inside a school, no matter how good the intent or results.

The current political climate doesn't bode well for schools (no, I don't mean vote for Reps/Dems/Greens/etc). Schools are constantly being told what they can't do by parents, by the board, by courts, and by state and federal governments. It sucks. Much more time gets spent on what is wrong with our current education system than what's right and what will work in the long-term. Those are big political issues.

You are likely going to soon face some disgruntled parent who wants your gaming (with his/her tax dollars being used) to end. This person could be quiet about that, but likely the principle will get a phone call. And then if it doesn't end, the board of education will consider the matter. And they will kill it because by this point the initial parent got 100 other parents upset because the games being played are "evil and detrimental" to kid's development.

Mind you, the initial parent upset won't have ever let his/her child go to one of your gaming nights. Actually, this person is a terrible parent but likes to believe that he/she is a wonderful parent and thus has the right to tell every other parent how they should raise their own kids. That's just how these things work.

Really, though, I'm supportive of you. I wish we could do something like that here in my hometown with the HS kids. I think this could even be a neat way to get kids to interact with college students in CIS, engineering, etc as well as others in the tech industry. But it won't ever happen here--not on public grounds.

Oh--and you might want to find a few other games that are considered "non-violent". All the ones you listed involve some type of guns/missiles/bombs and the destruction of other's in the game. Obviously, first-person shooters are out--but maybe Civilization or Starcraft? Yeah, I know these have war as part of the game--but the goal could be considered as more constructive than simply shooting others. Heck, even silly computer card games could be "options" but not played--so at least students would be given a choice (might help when that parent complains).

One school's experience

[mcc]

Another use for programs such as this one:

At the private high school i previously attended, they had something kind of like this. Every friday afternoon after school, the lab administrator would stay a few hours late and allow the "game club" to meet. "Game club" basically consisted of, they set up a special NT user named "games" that could only log in to the school network between 3 and 8 PM on a friday and that had special permissions to run nonstandard programs. The kids would bring in games and leave disk images of the CDROMs on the games account's network drives.

So, when game club started, all the kids that liked computer games would come in to the computer lab, install the game they decided to play that day off the network drive, have a little LAN party for a few hours on the school's really very fast computers, then delete the game off the hard drive and go home. It was fun. (They usually played Counterstrike.)

Why did they do this?

Because before the creation of games club, they had a real problem with kids coming in to rooms with school computers that had been left unattended, or the terminals in the corner of the library, and playing computer games. So the lab admin guy decided to implement a no-computer-games rule, and set up the game club as a safe-zone time the kids could just cut loose and play whatever they wanted.

The trick was, his condition was that he would only run game club if everyone agreed to follow the no-computer-games rule the rest of the time. Game club was the kids' reward/bribe for ensuring compliance.

This turned out to work beautifully. The lab admin guy couldn't be everywhere at once and police every computer, but now suddenly he had the game club-- which consisted of the school's most computer-saavy users-- doing the policing for him. If some new kid came in and started playing games, the other kids would notice and make him stop, because they were afraid of losing game club.

Unfortuantely, the year after i left, the lab administrator guy was moved to the local middle school and replaced with some new guy. The new guy didn't like the idea of game club, and ended it. I am told that in the time since then, it has become invariably true that if you go into the non-monitored computer lab during lunch, there WILL be kids playing networked computer games.. :)