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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."
How many schools actually have computers that are good enough to play Unreal Tourney or Age of Empires?
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.
or at least the CS dept.
S C- fa01/
The local ACM chapter sponsers gaming events every so often where we take over one of the labs and have people play lan games. usually tournament style.
we even take pictures. here are some from a starcraft tournament we held.
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/acm/pictures/gaming-
I believe that stragedy games would be the most accepted all around. As a parent I think that some of the more violent first person shooter type games should be limited to the home and not at a school sanctioned game night.
Nothing is impossible. It just hasn't been figured out yet.
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..
Death and poverty like me so much, they've brought friends!
I think it's nice to see somone that says "do something for the kids" as opposed to "Blame the video games, TV, blah, blah blah". Tie game night to grades. You get good grades you get more LAN party time! How's that for an idea??
cluge
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
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
Need a UNIX/Linux/network guru in the Boulde
When you consider that these kids are going to do this anyway, it's better IMHO to have them do this in a social setting where they are actually talking to each other face to face in the lab between sets.
You can develop good social skills when you get to talk face to face over the pizza and trade "How did you do that" stories.
And if you are really worried about the blood and gore, use the paintball simulators...a FPS where no one gets hurt, or the Nerf Game based on the Unreal engine.
If they sit at home and play these games, there is very little interaction, but in a lan party, it's more akin to a RPG session where at the seventh inning stretch you can talk
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
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'.
RTS games like Starcraft, Total Annihilation, and so forth are always popular, and shouldn't raise too much concern with parents. As for choosing the games themselves, why not just let the students vote on it? Buy a new game every Christmas for the lab, either with school funds or by "game-lab dues" paid by the students.
Simulation games will be moderately popular too, but multi-player games are usually nicer.
I actually think that adding a few select FPSs (like Tribes) that emphasize wouldn't be a bad idea, but I agree that that probably wouldn't fly too well with the parents.
As a third option, you can load SDL on all of the programming course machines and encourate the students to write their own game(s). This wouldn't replace store-bought games, but would be a neat side project that the students would be enthusiastic about and would learn a lot from. I know I had a lot of fun doing this in my high school days (wrote a Tetris clone and a version of Battleship that worked multi-player by using files in a shared directory to communicate).
I actually think that adding a few select FPSs (like Tribes) that emphasize teamwork wouldn't be a bad idea
:).
Figures I'd screw up the one time I decide not to preview
At my workplace, which is a private K-12.
It was a class even.
Title: The Jollity of the History of PC Gaming
Synopsis: Promoting learning of games through looking at how games have
evolved in terms of development (wads replaced with pk3), what goes into
game creation (gameplay, AI, graphics, multiplayer, etc.), and explore
the mirth of the games themselves. We will look at multiplayer games in
these terms, as well as in terms of game genre, to better organize the
learning experience.
* Exploring the evolution of game development and what games are
compossed of (WADS to PK3, sprites to models, etc.)
* Looking at how game series have progressed and changed betwee
each sequal and the kind of thinking that goes into early stages of game
planning (gameplay, graphics, multiplayer support and the like)
* Discuss how game mods have helped progress game development and
help shape the gaming industry, as well as how game modifications occur
I and three student leaders worked on the structure, and we did it for 4 days. Quake3, UT, some Red Alert 2.
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.
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).
Long, cute, or funny Sigs are just another form of over compensation, used by geeks, nerdz, etc.
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..
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Here in Peoria, IL, we had a dance club for teens called Revelations -- up until last year. The name isn't suggestive; the owners were Christians and their motive in providing the club was exactly that. Dancing, peers, and no alcohol even available. But the community had concerns about adults being allowed in and dancing with teens, as well as the subtle nuances of curfew violations for different age brackets.
Eventually the place closed, although this year a different group of Christians -- teenagers, this time -- organized a replacement called Club Saturn. It takes place in a building on the riverfront intended for private group meetings once a month, charges admission to cover the cost of renting the place, and has plenty of chaperones on duty to make sure the dancing isn't too lewd and that nothing unconscionable happens on location. Curfews are enforced.
Nevertheless, the city had a bone to pick with them, too -- this time about the money issue. It seems to be cleared up, at least for now, and Club Saturn continues.
However, it makes me wonder if there's a general stigma about teens in this city having any kind of publicly-advertised party. I'm not even sure it's parents of the kids involved that are concerned; it's probably parents and adults without interested kids who make the noise. Then again, that's just the way people are.
My point here is that if you want to have a LAN-party club at a high school, you'll probably have to observe a few rules:
The best way to avoid any "Columbine" concerns is to keep it open to parents, monitored by adults, and free of profanity and virtual blood. You'll probably still catch flak, but at least you'll be able to deflect it.
Yes, but maybe they're not into sports. Maybe the school should actually make an effort to cater to what they like instead of telling them what group activities the school feels they should do.
Your's is the same mentality that led to Columbine. We a have a generation of educated, talented children that are being told if they can't dunk or throw and 80 yard pass they aren't worth shit in high school. The people that will one day run everything are the nerds and geeks of high schools today, and the star high school athletes will be the guy installing my pool or re-shingling my roof in 10 years.
I for one, harbor a deep hatred towards the way schools treat atheletes vs. the way they treat scholars. When I was in high school, I was using a 15 year old math book and then went to assemblies where all the cheerleaders had new uniforms. The chemistry equipment was so old that the reminents of 1000 past experiments were stuck to beakers, leading to some rather bad, unforseen chemical reactions. But what do you know? They just installed new tennis courts and an olympic swimming pool..good for them.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Unless you are playing free as in beer games, who pays for the licenses? Do the students bring in the games and delete them when they are done? Have fun but watch your back :)
prosebeforehos.com
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?
When I was in High School, we played Doom II, Descent, and Duke Nukem in our programming class. We had people working on levels for Doom that looked like the school. We had a bunch of really crappy old 286s, but we had a few Pentiums that could handle it.
In Middle School, we played Sim City 2000 and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis in homeroom, science, and English.
In Elementary School, we played Wolfenstein 3D, Nibbles, Gorillas, Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, Carmen Sandiego and a whole bunch of pirated Apple II games in various classes.
We never had a game night, instead we had teachers who would not care about what we did, or who would let us play every once in a while, or who would make us play educational games.
t'nera semordnilap
If the school has sufficient funds for computers of this calliber, then perhaps it has spent funds poorly. Give the teachers a raise. Learning typing, word processors, spreadsheets, or programming requires far less capable computers.
I would say that if a school doesn't have computers better than these requirements, then it spends funds poorly:
Starcraft/Broodwar:
Windows 95, 98 or NT 4.0
Pentium 90MHz or higher
16MB RAM
80MB of free hard disk space
DirectX compatible SVGA video card
2x CD-ROM drive
Mechwarrior IV:
Pentium 2 300MHz processor
Windows 95/98/ME/2000
64Mb ram
650Mb hard drive space
8xCd rom
Age of Empires:
Windows 95/98
166Mhz Processor
32MB Ram
4X CD-ROM Drive
200-300MB free HD space
16-bit PCI/AGP Graphics Card
16-bit Sound Blaster compatible Sound Card with Speakers
256 Colour Monitor supporting high colour(16-bit) at 800x640 resolution
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
"The people that will one day run everything are the nerds and geeks of high schools today, and the star high school athletes will be the guy installing my pool or re-shingling my roof in 10 years."
Arrogance and ignorance go hand in hand.
[o]_O
So go and chess aren't addictive games? Funny, cause some people spend their life playing them.
All games are addictive. "Having fun" is addictive. Should everything that is addictive be considered bad? What would be left? Even work is addictive to some people.
True warriors use the Klingon Google
Baseball and Basketball: /. who complain about never getting laid probably never exercised in high school.
1) Exercise. Believe it or not, people are healthier when they exercise. People who exercise regularly have lower incidences of more diseases than I care to enumerate here.
2) The self confidence gained by being in shape. All the geeks on
Chess and Go:
1) These are well researched games that have stood the test of time. Computer games only last until the next 'it game' comes out. By learning to play chess or go, you learn a skill that you'll have the rest of your life. Also, once you reach a certain skill level, you need to start researching documented theory on the game. For example, there are entire books that are devoted to a single chess opening.
2) Ever known anyone to get carpal tunnel from playing chess?
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
do you have liceneses for all the games? or ensure that the students bring them? otherwise you're up a shit creek (sp?)
-- Note: These Comments are Generated by ME! Not You! ME!
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
After Columbine in April 1999 (I think), we quietly put a stop to the games for the rest of the school year, and the kids were surprisingly understanding. They really didn't protest much, and a couple of them really agreed with us putting a hold on it, because a number of these guys fit the Trenchcoat Mafia profile, if you know what I mean.
That May, we passed a $40M bond issue and immediately upgraded that computer lab to 40 Dell P3/450's running NT with 128 megs of ram. Of course, we didn't get the machines until June, but it was a pretty high priority to the district to get that lab up and running so they could show it off to the taxpayers (smart idea). Instead of hiring some consultants to come in and set up the lab, and instead of doing everything with my dad (who's the building tech coordinator), we contacted these kids over the summer and told them the machines were in. About five of them showed up at nine in the morning (which is a serious accomplishment for any male high school geek in the summer) and spent the next two days setting up machines, throwing away packaging, illegally dumping cardboard in nearby recycling containers... willing to work their asses off because they knew, when the lab was set up, they were going to have an unbelieveable LAN party on machines that were (at the time) much better than anything they had seen before. And we did, and it was great.
What we (my dad and I) realized is that not only can high school students have incredible technical abilities (which we already knew), but many of them are willing to bust ass for the benefit of the school if they have some sort of ownership in the situation. Our school's tech support is largely done by students from my tech classes during periods when they'd normally have study hall, and not only do we save unbelievable amounts of money (we have over 600 PC's running the whole variety of Windows - our tech support issues are constant and almost overwhelming), but the kids who are doing the work are learning skills they can actually use at home and quite possibly in a job some day.
So, to get back to the original question - I would recommend making sure that if you let these kids play games, get some work out of them in return! The best way to justify letting them play games is to tell your critics, "Hey, I'm letting these kids play Unreal Tournament because they spent the last week fixing machines and installing software for us, and that saved the district time and money." If you play it off as a reward, you can do a lot for those kids (our principal at the time bought a new motherboard for the kid who programmed our attendance system) and few people will complain. Also, always get the blessing of your principal before you do anything, and you might want to consider having another teacher or even a parent chaperone around so you don't get accused of being a pedophile trying to keep young boys at the high school until the wee hours of the evening.
Incidentally, we tried to put together a Quake II tournament in our high school two years ago where the kids would have to pay a couple bucks, and half the money would go to the winner while the other half would be used to purchase new equipment, but we couldn't get enough kids that were willing to put up the money (like $5), and a couple higher-ups balked at the idea of students participating in a "deathmatch" tournament. So, it didn't happen, but I bet I could have pulled off a StarCraft tournament this year if I'd had time.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
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..
One more reason why I've never been to a "class reunion" - how they treated us geeks.
I for one, harbor a deep hatred towards the way schools treat atheletes vs. the way they treat scholars.
It's funny you should say this - when I was on my high school's Academic Decathlon team, our principal and our main coach decided to applaud us with letter jackets at a mandatory pep rally, before our big state competition. We did appreciate the sincerity and thoughtfulness of those adults, but when we walked into the gym, people booed and hissed, some team of jocks (who were losers competitively as well as academically) were openly making fun of us as they left the floor, and the cheerleaders just couldn't stop giggling enough to really cheer us. For the rest of the year I got teased a bit about where my "letter" was for my letter jacket, and what sport I played, etc. At least they were good for showing off to the other geeks that "our school cares." (Yeah, right!) But if I hadn't made other memories outside of school with that jacket later, i'd have put it in a homeless shelter donation bin long ago.
Oh, yeah, the next year (after I graduated), the team won the national competition - but I didn't hear of them getting much more respect, then, either... but how about that golf team!
Get off my launchpad!
A word about Fund raising. And a disclaimer, disclaimer first: I was on my highschools Academic Bowl team, in the Technology Student Association, a member of the Strategic Gaming Club, a Tutor for elementary school students, and a Wrestler, so I had experience with all of the various types of organizations at the school.
The Football team was allowed an unlimited number of fundraising events as well as their ticket sales, etc... As wrestlers we were allowed 2 fund raisers per year, as was Band, cheerleading, etc... Academic Bowl was allowed 1 fund raiser per year, TSA was allowed 0, the gaming club was allowed 0.
In Academic Bowl we were using a buzzer system that was 15+ years old and frequently didn't work properly, in TSA we had incredibly outdated equipment and very very limited tools. Wrestling hadn't had new equipment in 4 years because the money from Wrestling, Cheerleading, etc... went into a global 'Sports Activity' fund that was doled out mostly to the Softball team, which was part of that group and allowed only 1 fund raiser.
The Strategic Gaming club used chess boards, go boards, cards, etc... donated by the members or brought in to use for the sessions. We had 0$ from the school in the way of funding. When my younger brother founded the Chess club my parents paid for every chess board they had. Even when they took 12th out of 50 or so schools at the State competition, the school didn't even consider giving them any money for anything. They were allowed 0 fund raisers.
So the system whereby clubs in MY old high school were allowed to raise money for themselves was SERIOUSLY weighted against the intellectual groups and even the lesser sports. And highly skewed towards the football team. So even if we wanted to go out and try to raise money for our Gaming club, we weren't allowed to. Sucks eh?
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
15 years ago, the C64 was still king. Every classroom in my elementary school had one. Many kids had a stack of games that their siblings/cousins/parents had "copied" using Renegade or whatever, but no computer. We would trade disks and hop over to a friend's house to play.
The school held an "activity" period three days a week in which children were allowed to stay after class. Those activity periods became our game time. Soon as classes were over, we'd hunt for a free machine while another group of kids would find the school's joystick. Soon as we found them, we'd LOAD "*",8,1 and start playing. Summer games. GI JOE. Airwolf. We got so many kids staying after that teachers set up reserve sheets for the activity period and we would assign different games to the machines.
Sure, we were playing stolen games. Sure, we probably shouldn't have been doing it in school. But the enthusiasm we had for the computers continued into adulthood. One of our charter members runs a Windows CE contractor in Georgia.
I'm a big supporter of games and their ability to teach. You want to play UT? Well, it'll help you a lot if you first learn how to network some computers, and to know a little about hardware. Playing games encouraged me to learn how to program -- in fact, my first program ever was to make a couple animal sprites dance in a piece of software called "Logo."
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Make sure the parents are not only allowed to come in anytime they want to see what the kids are doing, but that they can sit down and play with their kids if they want to.
It may not be very "cool" for some of the kids, but it will get the parents on the good side ("quality time") and they will almost never really do it anyway.
And get games that parents would be hard-pressed to disapprove.
Civilization and Alpha Centauri have already been recommended, but that cannot be emphasized enough. Show any sane parent the Civilopedia and he will fall in love with the game.
Chess is an obvious necessity. Partly because of legitimacy, and partly because if you get some kids interested into chess you will have them competing over the network and improving in no time. Hard to disapprove of that.
Playing chess (or Go) with the adults may prove to be an event that involves the parents and actually doesn't suck for those involved (there would be some Freudian satisfaction in defeating your parent at chess, and those adults willing to play chess with their kids will probably be respectable opponents).
SimCity is also a great game to encourage. Almost any good Sim-style game is a good idea, even Tropico (as a Latin American, I find it hilarious). RailRoad Tycoon is a very good Sim-business game with a historical background...
Sports games are usually accepted by parents even if they don't understand or encourage strategic games, simply because they are an extension of real-life games they approve. It's also a good way to get kids unfamiliar with computers to look at them without the geeky label.
The idea is to get parent support for the stuff the parents don't understand, through stuff they do understand.
An exmaple of things they don't understand but would be a good idea:
Install level-editors/scripters/whatever for all the games you can find them for.
If you let the kids play with Mods or whatever, you can get some of them familiarized with programming, 3D modelling, graphic design, or all of them combined. This is a good thing.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...