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G-rated Simulation Games?
jhl at school asks: "I am a Math and Technology teacher at a middle school, in rural Maine, where all of our 7th and 8th graders are given iBooks that they can use. What they are allowed to do with them is kept within strict limits, and it must be educational. I stay with then after school, and during this time they are allowed to use them for fun -- within limits (no violence, and nothing sexually explicit). I bought a copy of 'The Sims', at the kids' request, but the principal says it's too racy (polygamy is allowed, characters can climb into bed together, and so forth). What simulations our out there, where these kids can play in virtual environment, but keep it G-rated as my principal would like. Alternately, might there be some information to help the argument that 'The Sims' has educational value? I've found nothing I thought was objectionable - but this is a very conservative community. Thanks on behalf of my kids, who could use a little fun."
What about Sim City?
sneak more porn into future Maxis titles.
How we know is more important than what we know.
How bout Sim City 4? Other than the occasional fires, tornados and alien attacks, it's pretty passive and very educational.
Might I reccomend the Incredible Machine Contraptions? There is nothing remotely offensive about the game, it can be EASILY argued to have educational value (it's more or less a puzzle game, along with basic physics), and should be both cheap and easy on the computers.
You know you've watched too much pr0n in your life when you mis-read the title as "G-rated Stimulation Games."
Posted anonymously for obvious reasons...
Chromatron is a puzzle game of lasers (no, not the killing kind), optics, and geometry. It runs on Mac or Windows. The first 50 puzzle version is free, additional puzzles can be had for very cheap.
:) Give it a try.
It's also *challenging*. If you only have an hour or so per schoolday with the kids, this'll probably last until the end of the schoolyear.
Random and weird software I've written.
I'm getting a little tired of all these half-thought-out questions being posted to Ask Slashdot. We're willing to help provided you have a well-defined request.
I've found nothing I thought was objectionable - but this is a very conservative community.
Your first task is to more fully understand what is acceptable to this community. You clearly don't have a grasp on this, yet you ask us (who know even less about the community) for suggestions. Until you can come up with a detailed list of what is not acceptable, you're just wasting your time -- and ours.
Come back when you've done your homework. Then we'll be happy to help.
I think it's a fun littly game. I am 100% sure there is nothing objectionable in it, educational wise it teaches kids how to run a small business maybe? at the very least there is basic math in it you could point out.
Off the top of my head, some of these may be a bit dated.
Also from Maxis: SimCity, SimAnt
Something from the Test Drive series (its physics! You may want to avoid the "hot pursuit" series)
Conway's Game of Life
One of those universe/solar system simulations - I forget the name.
I'm sure there's plenty more out there. Good luck.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
We've got just the game you're looking for: tranquility.
It's totally abstract, non-violent and highly mathematical. We have several schools that play tranquility
as a group activity. Download the game and give it a try, then drop us a note on our site support form and
we'll set you up with free accounts.
You know, for kids!!
It almost makes me sick to think that school officials would have a problem with The Sims for those reasons.
I have never played, but the fact that they are concerned that characters 'may' do some things that aren't PC (that's politically correct, not personal computer) doesn't seem like such a big deal. The characters follow the players lead. If they are led to get in bed together, the player obviously had some idea what was going on before. It's not too likely that they would suddenly discover the existence of males and females who get into the same bed by playing the game.
Saying the Sims is harmful to the students is like saying that they are harmful to themselves. If they don't have dirty little minds, they won't run into these things. If they do have dirty little minds how does this affect them?
Children who grow up in a sheltered environment are often unable to properly adapt to the real world when they are forced into it.
Let the flames begin!
Hitchikers Guide To The Galaxy text adventure. Develops thinking skills?
I'd vote for Transport Tycoon. The lower skill levels are very weak AI (can you set the number of CPU opponents to zero?) but the integrated traffic management skills are still needed even there. It's perhaps just a little slow-paced, especially at the beginning, so takes a while to get to an "interesting" point, although you could always give them a saved game you prepared earlier.
Railroad Tycoon II has pre-set scenarios and perhaps looks better than TT, but I never got into that game quite so much.
Oh, if the Sims is too racy, good old SimCity might be OK - ISTR that there is specific educational information available for it.
I don't follow. The article said that the games couldn't be violent, ie. no shooting/killing.
I hope we all pray to whatever god we might or might not pray to that these administrators aren't letting them play Counterstrike, but have a problem with The Sims.
Railroad Tycoon 2, it's got a ton of history about railroad development. There are a bunch of tycoon games in this one's footsteps, some are better than others.
Alpha Centari, is a different take on civ, there is some battle, (not bloody as I recal but there is some fighting).
If you have an older group I'd suggest wall street raider, especially if they finish a unit on the stock market. Graphics are poor but the game is quite fun. There used to be an excellent risk like game with more updated country borders, the rest of the gameplay was very similar to risk, it was quite fun too.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Sheesh... not another one that just doesn't get it...
... Moron...
Allow me to spell it out for you: Killing and ultra-violence is a natural act, whereas human beings have to *learn* how to express kindness and love, and there are just some things we don't want to teach our kids.
So you're saying that OS X is too unlike Windows that it's irrelevant to use, even to launch a game or two?
Or that in 8 years when they hit the job market that they'll be tainted by that Mac exposure in grade school?
Or that in 2011 we'll all be running Windows 2012 on HyperPentium VII's so they need to start training now?
Lameness abounds.
It teaches you math. Fragging and Tking.
It teaches you history. Nazis vs. Allies.
It teaches you physics. Fire that panzer up close.
It teaches you physical Ed. Your wrist will be tired after 10 hrs of wolfing.
It teaches you art. Watch that blood splat.
It teaches you chemistry. Stab someone with that poision needle.
I mean, unless watching a few blocks representing a train plummet into a river counts as violent.
You could try MS Flight Simulator - the latest one has full video tutorials on every aspect of flying/taking off/landing etc.
Plus a whole host of aircraft to choose from including Boeing 747's.
Extremely educational but requires a bit of patience so don't know how well it will go down with kids that may have short attention spans.
You also missed:
I stay with then after school,
I've seen a few of the other Tycoon games mentioned but not Zoo Tycoon. Somebody picked it up for my son and it's pretty tame, but still pretty interesting. I guess that you can have troubles if you let the Lions live with the Antelope (somebody gets eaten), but I don't think THAT would spark parental/principal problems.
CharlesP
wordtrip.com
That would be a great title to let them play. Simulated theme parks which they can control and build new rides etc. Kind of like Sim City but on more of an 8th grade type level, they would love it. Click here to check it out.
Teach them how to use spreadsheets
Worried you might not keep your virginity forever? Try new Linux(TM), guaranteed twice as effective as LARPing
Sim Tower is kind of old but it's very good.
You optimize a building. you can put a hotel, restaurants, shopping mall, movie theater, subway stop, elevators, condos etc in and you get revenue streams from it. it's great for seeing who can make the most money and why. Of course, this is for bigger kids (2nd grade minimum, probably 4th grade is better).
The other one is Sim Safari, which optimizes a game reserve. you can put in a variety of animals, but you need to buy services of a game specialist, guide, build a hut, hire drivers, etc. The fun part is that you get to learn what animals can live together (it's designed to be very educational without being too in-your-face about it).
I liked it, too, but I liked sim tower more.
Sim city was pretty good. My dad was a city manager and he loved the idea of it because it simulated all the strange things that could happen in municipal planning. Of course, Godzilla walking thru town is possible in the game but not real life, but even in the game it is rare. Most of the problems are bad street design, lack of firefighters, etc.
The interrelatedness of things is a big thing to teach. The fact that any large system involving many competing interests has multiple solutions, and sometimes the fact that people disagree or that they don't work perfectly is normal.
Lots of uneducated people all around the world (not just in the U.S.) think that there are simple solutions to the world's problems, and the Sim games show that this isn't true and, intuitively, why not.
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
FreeCiv supports OS X with Fink. I would think this would be a great game for the kids to get together and play. It would teach history, let them learn about ancient technologies etc.
If you feel like paying money, you might also think about getting Civilization 3, I've never played this game myself, but I recall Civilization II had a lot of good historical information about various technlogies and epochs in history. I would assume that this version would have something like that as well.
If you have any windows machines you might also consider exposing them to Alice, not it's not American McGee's twisted (and quite fun) game, but a project from Carnegie Mellon to teach kids about 3D and Game Programming.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
Because The Sims isn't so much a simulation as it is a charictiture of it's environment. When I think of a simulator I think of a flight simulator such as Flightgear. I'm not sure flightgear would keep young ones entertained for very long. But if by simulation you mean something like The Sims, then just about any other Sim-related title should suit you. There's SimCity, SimAnt, SimEarth (might be a problem if you're in a state that forbids the teaching of evolution). Some open source alternatives would be: LinCity or Freeciv.
Educational, fun, and free!
What benefit has been actually observed in the students having the laptops?
What are they used for that could not be achieved another way (eg: a diary)?
I ask this as my children's primary school (K-6) has several computers (dells) in each classroom, but they are only used for kidspix or to type up compositions, which to me is counter productive, in that the final is submitted as type, not in hand writing, which is one of the things I thought they were supposed to be learning??? I have several PC at home at their disposal, but homework is always done with pencil & paper while the tools include dictionary & textbooks.
--
"we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.
Physicus is a kids adventure game, but was pretty fun to play when I wasn't looking for anything too challenging. All the puzzles in the game have some vaguely physics related theme, and there's a bunch of physics related info in the game encyclopedia too.
Definitely educational, and fun enough to play I'm keeping an eye open for Chemicus.
Viva Media are the publisher, and they do Mac as well as Windows.
Frozen Bubble and Enigmo aren't really simulations, but they're good, very G rated, games that are available for Mac. Frozen Bubble is freeware, Enigmo shareware.
Because he's asking for a game that 'E' rated. I have yet to see a modern FPS get rated any lower than a 'T' rating. If the question at hand was for 'T' or lower, then MAYBE games like Paintball would somehow pass through, but if its for 'E' (you can't get lower than that) you'd have a very very tough time picking out a good selection of games.
This might sound like a strange solution, but there were tonnes of good educational programs on some of those old 8-bit machines... especially the Apple ][ and even for the Commodore 64.
If you can fish some of these old-skool educational programs out and run emulators on your laptops, then you've got something at least.
Dunno about the legality of using old software on an emulator... but I doubt anyone will really care.
I remember playing loads of educational games on the Commodore 64 back in the day... "Rocky's Boots" and "Goldfields" were my favourites.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
was a frequent passtime of mine on the computer and in meatspace when I was in junior-high...
joelja
It's not. People like you just see some strange conspiracy. The majority of americans against showing their kids sexually explicit material are also against showing them graphic violence. If you read what the person asked, they want to see "G" rated games, not "Anything non-sexually explicit."
The more modern definition of "sim" that you seem to be using typically doesn't include anything of any redeming educational value. Most of the rules of the world are so simplified that behaviour within the sim is borderline random or very easy to effect by doing something seriously unrealistic. You'd get about as much educational value out of Monopoly as you would out of Railroad Tycoon. You could try looking at word and puzzle games. There's a "Wheel of Fortune game for the Mac, but I would imagine that a room full of kids would go through the library of puzzles pretty quickly.
My final suggestion might be a little out of your scope: Robocode or Corewars -- Kids develop their own little programs that battle it out in a virtual arena. The second is a little more abstract than the first. At the very least it will teach them how to program.
how about installing an easy to learn language such as Scheme or PHP and getting them to write text based adventure games ? ...where they engage in polygamy, have sex, lock the neighbors in their basement dungeons...
I stay with then after school, and during this time they are allowed to use them for fun -- within limits (no violence, and nothing sexually explicit).
Hmm, did you try pong? Actually lunar lander might be ok for them.
Demo and review
This game is so cute that even girls mock it!
No violence means AOM and AOE are "right out"
Games are rated-- it sounds like you want games rated eC or E. You can see full descriptions of the ratings on the ESRB site.
-m
I think the superbowl proves you wrong.
Ambrosia has a line of games that I think would be kid safe; Uplink is fun and challenging, and no violence or nekkid, but maybe it simulates "hacking" too closely. "Nova" is a Space Trader game, so simulates some economic theory. I don't recall anything offensive in it, but you have a pretty low bar, too.
There's also iConquer from KavaSoft, a RISK-alike that is very like.
Also try Apple's Product Finder; it reminds me that there's several good racing/skating games that aren't offensive, and lots and lots of strategy games. There's even a "kids" section from which too chose.
Good luck! And try posting to some of the Apple lists! I think many of us Mac IT folk are interested to know how this thing is shaking out in Maine.
--
$tar -xvf
This program is an excelent, free space simulator. Fly the Apollo 11 mission, launch the space shuttle and dock at ISS, or for real fun, launch a probe from earth, have it gravity assist around venus, and go out to the outer planets. The physics seems very realistic and real world. Math will for sure be a huge help in this. The main site is Here, and also check out Dan's ORbiter page, with many great addons and sound updates here. For a great video of orbiter in action (But without any view of the controls or the mathmatics involved) check out video 3 from this page.
Did I mention its all free as in beer?
As mentioned, SimCity would be a good choice. Also SimTower or even SimLife. A few more: - The online Yahoo! game Text Twist would be good for building vocabulary. - Oregon Trail is a classic. - Any of the historical strategy games (Civil War Generals 2, Empire Earth, etc.) - World War II Fighters is a good flight sim with a strong historical component. (And patriotic to boot!) - Number Munchers for math skills? FYI, I actually used The Sims to do a science project in middle school.
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If the truth scares you, cease asking scary questions
a Playstation and Grand Theft Auto III....
If you can't find any non-violent mods for Quake 3, have the students create one.
The could create the own map, their own non-violent weapons... You'd have to call them something other than weapons. Maybe a non-violent game of tag... Or water balloons.... The hand to hand combat could be pillows for a pillow fight.
Or want about some non-violent mods for Never Winter Nights?
What, me worry?
I still wish I could play Oregon Trail every once in a while...
Although probably a bit more expensive then you were probably planning on spending, you might want to consider The Wild Divine Project.
From the site: The Journey to Wild Divine is more than a computer adventure. It integrates a personal spiritual quest with an innovative biofeedback interface and high-end multimedia production. The result is an unparalleled and fulfilling "Inner-Active" experience.
Basically, you explore the virtual world and learn to complete tasks that require you to learn to control your pulse and breathing rate using a biofeedback system.
I haven't played it... but it certainly looks cool
Fight or flight its all the same
Live to die another day
--Ryan
OK, they do "mate" but its about as asexual a mating as you can get (ok, they don't get "married" so I guess it will offend those who are easily offended). And the creatures aren't human and I'm not entirely clear on the specific doctrine of offense involved. Do these people require that chickens marry before they mate?
The players do get to raise the kids - and those kids are not always the best behaved of creatures so it can be an interesting process. Rather more demanding than the "carry an egg around for a week" type thing that has been popular.
Who knows - it is possible that if there are enough people who demand that everyone adhere to their particular mating rituals that maybe the makers would add in a "you must be married to have eggs" option to make using the game possible. Naturally (and I mean that word quite literally) that also raises the questions of the death of a partner, adultery, divorce and what not. Not to mention heaven and hell (and purgatory and beatrice and ...).
I have several PC at home at their disposal, but homework is always done with pencil & paper while the tools include dictionary & textbooks.
How quaint. Maybe they could also teach sundial reading and blacksmithing.
Now that's building character!
Sim Slashdot!
Maintain a minimum population of trolls!
Never ever lern 2 spel!
Praise shoddy design and white-heat-inspiration hacking as "visionary" and "wave of the future"! Imply that any project concerned about quality over features is "slowing down" and losing its developer base!
Find wildly biased opinion pages and report them as if they were news! Abuse your position as editor to add snide immature comments as part of the story!
Report them again a few hours later!
Isolate the only actual humor in the polls section!
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
This is a decent non violent tycoon style game, that has appeal to young teens.
You build a skateboard park and try to make it viable, once you've built it, you can actually take control of one of the skaters and skate around the park and put on publicity shows to earn money for your park (which makes the game really easy)
Whether or not it runs on a Mac is another question...
Congratulations, Operating_Thetan; you are now on the shitlist of /. plagiarists.
Here is the original post by wthynot, and your shameful copy.
So... periodically I will read through your latest posts and vigorously mod down any post that is also plagiarized, or can arguably be modded down just because it's crap on its own merits. I don't abuse the mod rights, because that would also be wrong. I just make sure that you get negative points whenever they're due.
If you don't steal other users' posts anymore, eventually you'll drop off my list, and you can work on building your karma using your own friggin' brains. But right now, you're on the top of the list, buddy. So post your home address -- I'll send you a certificate.
These independant game designers make games for MAC/PC/Linux.. very cool. I purchased the Bridge Construction Set. Go here: Garage Games
(1st sig) If this were a snappy sig, you'd be reading it right now. (2nd sig) I'm a karma whore. >Insert FUD here
Sorry, I don't think not being able to do simple maths without a calculator is quaint or character building, but YMMV...
--
"we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.
Whatever happened to Oregon Trail?? That was the hot game back when I was a kid (on the Apple II).
Read jack phelps dot net
Many games such as ET (or CS im my case) produce many admirable qualities in their users, such as decision making, quick thinking, situation analysis, and hand-eye coordination. But after my brother (Grade 5) played CS for a month I was amazed by some of the thing that came out of his mouth. Normally i am one to downplay the effects of games on people's behavior but for young, impresionable kids even the suddle morale influnces from a game like The Sims can have a long term effect.
With the moo and the cow and the fish. Minesweeper Record: 7 sec
Nope. That would put boys and girls together, which is just what he's trying to avoid.
If you can keep get rid of social and physical contact, cloistered with their own "safe" computers, you can turn every kid into a hideous prude like Michael Powell.
The Sims, bad for the kids? Puh-leeze! Just WHAT is that place? I'd hate to live there. Someone has to subvert those kids a bit, shake their heads so they don't end up as pathetic as the current generation of uptight, church-going, game-fearing adults.
Forget the games for now. Get them "Catcher in the Rye", "Cinema Paradiso", "Dead Poets' Society", "School of Rock", "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"...
Circumcision is child abuse.
Pretty much all the major non-military sims out there would work for you.
MS Flight Simulator
MS Train Simulator
The most violent you can get is crashing, but even so, nobody gets hurt. You see, that's the whole point of simulation!
In my day, it was all about Where in the USA/World is Carmen Sandiego and The Oregon Trail on the Apple IIe's we had in the computer lab. I think we also used Logo for a while.
Although, judging from today's anal society, I'll bet your principal would have an objection to the 2-bit hunting scene in Oregon Trail.
Just as a note... there are ways in The Sims, through patches or cheats (not sure) to make all of the sims nude. I'm not sure that that would be very good. If you want to get a game that has "sims" in it, try SimGolf. It includes little people that interact as they play golf on your course. Great game.
With the moo and the cow and the fish. Minesweeper Record: 7 sec
Ah man transport tycoon is the best game ever. I spent so many hours playing that when I was supposed to be studying. Transport Tycoon Deluxe has a more advanced traffic system though and it starts out faster. You could probably download it off the internet now and no one would care. I don't know if they have an apple version, why'd they give everyone ibooks, wouldn't it be cheaper to get normal laptops?
Hi, I'd highly recommend you check out Bridge Construction Set by Chronic Logic. There's a free demo available for Windows AND Linux.
(Lifted from the website)
In The Bridge Construction Set(aka Pontifex II), Building a bridge that doesn't break is what its all about, although watching your bridge creation break and plunge a train into the watery depths below can be half the fun. In the Bridge Construction Set you design and build bridges and then stress test them to see how your creations hold up under pressure. If when test vehicles pass over your bridge they make it safely across you know you've succeeded. If they plummet into the river you know you need to go back to the drawing board.
The robust physics deployed in the Bridge Construction Set let you build a wide variety of bridges that can span the river. The 3D graphics allow you to view your bridge from any angle including a first person train view - its like being strapped to the front of the train when your bridge is first tested (if this happened in real life I think we might have engineers checking all their bridges in a simulator).
The Bridge Construction Set includes many types of bridge building levels in varying degrees of difficulty from simple to complex with a tutorial section to get you started. A Level Editor is also included so you can create your own levels and trade them with others.
Michael C. Hollinger
I'm not sure if they are still making these or may heve updated them in recent years but I always loved:
Oregon Trail
Where in the World/Time/the USA is Carmen San Diego?
O'Dell Lake
Lemonade Stand
That game's "puzzles" are way too obscure and almost illogical. If you haven't read the books, it's hard to figure out what you're supposed to do or look at in some cases.
ZORK is a better choice.
Did you check out www.logofoundation.org ?
They have quite a bit of links to some good software and even more links to other pages.
AccountKiller
get soldier of fortune 2 and one of the several paintball mods. pretty colors and no real deaths. use one machine as the server and let them lan!
this is not a Sig.
A non-violent multiplayer game. Quite fun. Plenty of opportunities to learn from the other players.
If I recall correctly the age limit for this game is 13 and older, with parent's permission. Unfortunately your students may be too young.
Gameware Development
Without music, life would be a mistake. --- Nietzsche
?But that isn't g-rated since you can kill Bambi.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Huh. They let us play Counterstrike at my school, not online, but still.
Please flee in terror in an orderly manner.
Note that I'm not considering OS in this. These are general suggestions.
* Anything in the "programming game" genre. When doing this, a player designs a robot to go through some kind of puzzle or challenge (or theoretically fight, though as much of this is rather abstract, it may work under your violence issues). The original game in this genre is "Core Wars" (despite the name, if you consider this violent, I will be impressed), where little bits of code struggled desperately to try to control more memory. There are other games in this genre, like "Mindrover". I found a quick list of games in the genre here
* There are a number of simulation games that would work. Most games in the sim genre really *are* okay. The SimCities have been in the educational market forever for a good reason (makes me realize how dated my educational software knowledge is, though). For Linux, Lincity is good -- plays quite different from SimCity, with distribution of goods and power more of an emphasis than utilitiy coverage.
* Many puzzle games can be considered educational. Go to Info-Mac or another Mac software site and look under "Puzzle". I'm personally rather fond of sobokan and clones, where one pushes boxes around in a "warehouse" into proper locations. It's untimed, but fun.
* The Simple End User Linux (SEUL) project maintains a lot of links to software (including educational software) for Linux. Open source software has a way of getting ported, and I suspect you'll find that a fair amount works on OS X. Take a look here
* Ultimately, I'd say that web-browsing can be an awfully educational experience (seriously, I've learned so much of what I know from the Internet that it's nuts -- almost anything you want to know is out on the Web somewhere), more so than most "educational" games. If they have a laptop, they can browse the web, no?
I never thought much of the whole brand of "educational" software. The ones that simply included some interesting facts, like Oregon Trail or Sim City, seemed to provide a relatively low amount of knowledge for the amount of effort that gets put into them. The ones that made you do math quickly to play the game just doesn't seem to help real-world math skills much. When I learned to do math rapidly in my head, it was not using a video game.
The Web is a fantastic research tool -- boy, it's irritating when teachers try to discourage students from using any Web sources. As a matter of fact, I'd consider having a web browser always available to be one of the most valuable educational resources available. When I didn't know what a word meant, my mother always tried to train me and my siblings to go find a dictionary and look it up. The problem is that it's a real pain in the ass to do so, especially if I'm comfortably reading a book. If I have a nice, fast, stable-and-not-swapping system with a web browser up that doesn't need to run through a modem (most people used to get this in university for the first time), I'd very inclined to look up words and concepts that I'm interested about. Just recently, I read an article on "The Onion", a decidedly non-educational piece of satire that alluded to the Dauphin, some sort of French nobility. I got curious. I never, ever would have done this if I had to use paper encyclopedias, because of the effort involved, but I read up on the Dauphin, and ended up reading for much of the day about French political and military history.
May we never see th
Pangea Software have a lot of fun games for kids. Take a look at Enigmo , it's a great puzzle game.
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There is also The Incredible Machine but it may only works on OS 9.
If you want something a little more "arcade", you can find on GarageGames Marble Blast
And FroGames will soon release a fun racing game : MiniOne Racing . (ad)
I didn't know that, How did the principal find that out? Did he try it? If so, what does that make the principal? Hmmm...
;-)
[/joke] It was probably just written on the back of the box or something.
The sims risque??? I've seen more risque things in music videos ... not to mention jerry springer.. ie primetime television. I think the sims is a great tool and game. Besides, how old are these kids? 13-14?? ... I thought we were taught sex ed back in the 2nd grade (tho it was optional). Have things changed that much since the 80s??? (education-wise).
If anything, the sims could easily be used as an educational tool for parents who are iffy when it comes time to explain the birds and the bees to their kids.. I think kids these days are pretty smart, by grade 6-7, they've already been exposed to a lot more than just pixel sex.
*604x
As ALWAYS, it's adults who read sex into everything, not kids.
Polygamy isn't racy, either. It's been one of the most traditional, normal forms of marriages throughout world history. What it is, is different from the current Western norm.
They claim they're afraid this generation might grow up and be twisted or violent because of this exposure, but what they'd really be afraid of is if these sims players grew up and re-legalized polygamy, or heck, maybe even took a cue from the 60s and ditched monogamy and marriage altogether.
It's much cheaper to nip a revolution like that in the bud at 6th grade than it is to create a designer STD to stop free love, right government?
Myst, Riven, Myst III, and Uru. All can be educational, fun, and void of violance and pr0n.
Where does the white go when snow melts?
The superbowl? ROFL Actually, it doesn't!
Anyone remember SimEarth and SimAnt? Both of these were educational, fun, and appropriate for all ages.
There was even a cheat in SimAnt to become the spider and go raid the rival ants' colony.
I don't know how easy they would be to come by these days though. You could look on some of the abandonware sites:
http://mac.the-underdogs.org/
- Vincit qui patitur.
Teaching your kids about love and sex has nothing to do with exposing them to graphic sex scenes in games and movies though. Banning The Sims might be going a little too far, but anyway... There are only a couple (and I can't even think of the names) R rated movies, and no games that I know of.. That actually show love and SAFE sex. In most R rated movies, the characters know eachother for like 5 minutes before jumping into bed together and of course they rarely even hint at using protection. If you want to teach your kids to 1) Not get pregnant at a young age and 2) Not be afraid of the opposite sex... You're going to have to do something other than sit them down infront of sexually explicit movies.
Any of the Citybuilder games from Impressions might fit the bill; Caesar 3 (Ancient Rome, obviously), Pharoah/Cleopatra (Ancient Egypt), Zeus/Poseidon (Mythic Greece), and Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom (Ancient China).
Yes, there's war, but it's bloodless in depiction.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Check out Mind Rover,Its a very slick game where you build a robot and "program" it, (using a slick gui) to perform tasks like go through obsticle courses, go after other robots etc etc.
ok, i think that the value of simulation games for kids is very imporntat, why? because the kid can learn risky thing without getting harm i have two little brother they are 5 years old and i get mad at my mother when she just tell 'em not to do it you have to actualy teach the kid why he should not put his finger in the flame of the stove or why he should be more careful while playing with the cat a simulation game like the sims for kids with a world like this and letting the kid go alone and do _whatever_ he wants around a house can be very formative for the kid i would like to see a game like this any time soon because when i was a kid i actualy had a lot of accidents hahaha and my mother was always worried with me i kinda grew up by my own, ok getting offf the point, a teaching simulation game for kids actualy sounds like a good idea! anyway
pz!
highly addictive, fantastic game.
Teaches you micromanagement.
Gratuitous not-quite-G-rated Link
The guy who wrote Porrasturvat ("Stair Dismount") now has a version with trucks. It will definitely keep their attention for a day or so, and it uses a very realistic physics model.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
"I am a Math and Technology teacher at a middle school... What simulations our out there..."
It's a good thing you're not an English teacher.
What simulations our out there...
Oregon Trail was one of my favorite games when I was younger. It's definitely considered educational. You learn how to plan for the future, and have to make decisions weighing time, health, and money. Also, from reading the Amazon review, I see that it builds reading skills - amazing the things we take for granted.
You *a* copy of Sims for HOW many kids?
Don't mod this funny, the BSA will render it 'insightful' soon.
The latest Slashdot meme.
Grand Theft Auto...it's realistic, so it will teach you young punks how to live in a big city. It will give you a real world education. If your principal doesn't allow it, just do what Tommy Vercetti would do - hit him over the head with a baseball bat.
Some friends of mine and I built a great puzzle game a few years ago, called Rich Diamond. Even though we never made enough money to pay our expenses, I'm still pretty proud of it. We have a few fans who have been playing it for years. And it definitely is appropriate for kids.
There's a downloadable demo at the Rich Diamond site.
Check out the Daily Puzzle too, an online version.
And the characters don't give a flying about gender, either. That's something the designers put into the game, being free-spirited SF Bay Area types, after all.
If you put a guinea pig into your game [d/l or expansion pack], be sure to take care of it.
"You might as well get your son a ticket to hell as give him a five string banjo." -unknown minister
Gotta agree, I spent so may hours learning all the tricks in that game, and pushing the system. I even remember coming up with a way to make intelligent switched multi-track networks despite the game's limitations.
:P
My roommate I've been living with for about 6 months used to be a Sim City 2000 junkie. I turned him on to TTDX and he's been playing that ever since
And no, I don't think you can play without an opponent, but the AI usually doesn't cause much worry early on in the game. As for the slow start, you can speed things up by increasing the starting loan and increasing industry density - this makes it easier for both AI and humans.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Kind of, yes. It's mouse-based for exploration, with finger sensors that monitor galvanic response and pulse for mini-game kinds of things. Sadly, the idea is cool, and the implementation is solid, but the game's whole theme is ass -- the New-Ageyness of the whole thing is omnipresent and treacly-sweet, which gets very old very fast. Myst For Retards. It'd probably go over OK with kids, I guess, if the finger sensors will even fit kids' hands. (Not at all certain about that.) On the other hand, the hardware is nifty. It gives me evil thoughts about a WindowMaker dock app for biofeedback...
The "G-Rated" restriction cuts out almost everything that attempts to model the Real World, seeing as it includes procreation and death by nature. Thank goodness the children can be protected from education about real world problems [note: this is sarcasm].
SimCity is obviously a good candidate (though you may need to disable the in-game disasters, depending on how strict you want to be).
Tropico would run a very close second in my book, excepting that you're a dicatator and can issue some serious edicts (including arrest, the death penalty, contraception bans, heretic branding, and religious inquisition). If anything, it's more educational than SimCity, for these very reasons.
Civ and the like are basically out. This is unfortunate, as Galactic Civilizations is great, and offers ethical choices similar to those in Tropico (though less direct, they're mostly of the "what do you do with the locals where you're colonizing" variety, as well as intergalactic warfare).
It has always struck me as absurd that the name of the game is "Civilization", while the object of the game is Conquest.
Capitalism and its kin can offer some very good business/economic simulations. Railroad Tycoon is a great game (and since v3 is out now, v2 should be dirt cheap - it's the one I have). Some of the other "XYZ Tycoon" games may also apply, but I haven't played them.
Some flight sims, sports, and puzzle games may also be appropriate.
The Stair Dismount game is a great educational physics sim, but it's a little bit violent. Likewise, Carmageddon 2 has imbued me with a healthy terror of automobiles.
West Point Bridge Design had them gleefully ripping out their own hair trying to match the posted records.
Life & Death II: The Brain has medically-sanctioned violence.
SHAMELESS PLUG: My personal favorite is WordWars, a nice vocabulary-building game with mild cartoonish violence, if the administration can handle that. It's my favorite, naturally, as I wrote it. :D
Mutant Freaks of Nature: "Frighteningly Addictive"
The player has to balance the actions these Sims (individual people) take over the days and weeks in the game. You have to make sure they go to work and get paid, so that they can eat and pay the bills. They have to do a certain amount of socializing and fun activities or they become unhappy and do badly at work. If the Sims don't clean up their garbage, and the house gets messy it negatively impacts the mood of the Sims. The better you manage your Sim the better they do at work, and then they get promoted if they do well there. The player also has to manage the relationships of their Sims with each other. If the Sims don't keep up a friendship by inviting one another over, playing games, and talking on the phone then the friendship can end.
As for the content being inappropriate, there are several factors. 1) Although two people can get in bed together they have to be in love to do this. Once in bed they are only allowed to sleep, no hanky panky. 2) There are love relationships and the player can have two Sims who are in love kiss. Nothing beyond kissing goes though, and in 7th or 8th grade some kids do kiss. This brings me to 3) The polygamy bit, is not really polygamy, it is 'cheating' meaning one Sim has two or more loves. If this cheating is found out the cheater is rebuked by the cheated and their relation ship is trashed. (Some times the male is slapped by the female I think.) So there are consequences for this cheating and it is not condoned.
All in all to really understand this game, as for any game, you should actually play the game yourself. Maybe have one of the students help teach you to play.
I think parents who are concerned about what games their children play should play test the games. Meaning: play the game themselves. If the parent has a hard time playing the game have the child show you how to play while you are at the controls. Even if it is not interesting to the parent or teacher, show interest because it is interesting to these kids!
Since SimCity 4 seems to be covered already, I'll throw in my 2-cents for one of my favorite games of all time. Pharaoh (and it's expansion, Cleopatra) is a very challenging, educational and fun game from the city building series created by Impressions and published by Sierra. There is some violence since the game tries to combine RTS games with Sim games, but the majority of game play is city building. (It's pretty hard to get away from violence 100% in historical games.) I'm not sure if this game was published for the Mac OS, but its predecessor in the series (Cesar) is defiantly available for Mac 9 and is a decent substitute. The later games in the series (Zeus, Poseidon, and Emperor) have more of a cartoon look and feel, making them less historically interesting and changes in the game rules make them less challenging.
As for defending the Sims, I recently attended a lecture on story telling through video games at Stanford University. One of the professors there was extolling the virtues of the Sims as a teaching tool. Apparently one of the term projects for the freshman humanities class at Stanford is to create a Shakespeare play using the Sims. Will Wright (the creator of the Sims and Sim City) was another one of the lecturers there. He said his philosophy behind creating games is to create the environment for player to create their own stories. As I see it, that is what he has done, thus creating games that are not inherently anything. The Sims is a means of letting a user tell a story and is no more risque than MS Word. It is important to remember that even though characters are allowed to sleep in the same bed, no characters in the Sims are allowed to engage in sexual activities. I feel the real danger for children from the Sims comes from it's online version, since all online communities have their share of predators. Sticking to the off-line version may also further your case. That's my opinion at least. Hope this helps.
-j
"Like most of life's problems, this one can be solved with bending."
How about licensing them a copy of FruityLoopz or some music creation program.
I had a blast in junior high and highschool with incredibly basic music programs like windows sound recorder and effects.
Then again, I didn't get laid until I was 21.
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
They don't... you're a teacher you should know this! Read some studies and then let the kids play what they want. I've grown up with violent video games and I'm the most docile person in the world. Sure I could identify any gun placed in front of me but I'm not obsessed with them and if you handed one to me and told me to shoot someone. Nobody would be shot.
Be sure and check out Enigmo, at Pangea
:) Also Zoo Tycoon, published on the Mac by Aspyr is pretty un-offensive I'd think.
It's a puzzle game, and highly addictive.
Also, it's pretty unoffensive, but involves some good strategy play, Spaceword Ho! at DeltaTao Software
pop-pop is a great knockoff of the classic breakout, at Ambrosia Software
And of course, as people have mentioned, there's always Sim City
All these companies, with the exception of Aspyr (who publishes a lot of the triple-A ports), have pretty much exclusively G->PG-13 titles. But the ones I mentioned pretty much are lacking anything I can think of that could possibly offend.
Transport Tycoon Deluxe is awesome. I still play it occasionally.
But make sure you get the unofficial patch. It fixes bugs, extends limits that were mostly in place for memory / resource reasons, and adds some gameplay improvements (all of which can be turned on or off).
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
I know the interface may be a little hard to grasp for children, but with a little /.-style experimentation (totally kid-safe, of course) and a patient teacher who has looked it over you could try Furcadia. The style resembles stripped-down Sims (but with anthros, I mean c'mon, kids love animals =P), but every player can create a customized multiuser-accessible "Dream" as well as collect items, quest, and socialize within a G-to-PG rated world.
pretty funny to read that video games in which going to bed together (afaik everything "bad" that happens after this process is blurred/pixeled out in the sims) are kind of banned... okay, it's a country where the government gives away the same amount of money that could safe some third world countries from suffering on some anti-sex-campaign - so you don't have to wonder...
Those kids can see the world with this classic series. All ages are recommended!