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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."
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.
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.
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!
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"
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
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.
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?
Thats great. Too bad the students have iBooks that are missing both the requirements for Window OR Linux, and the intel or AMD procerssor. Nifty game but useless.
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Open Source Sysadmin
highly addictive, fantastic game.
Teaches you micromanagement.
Uplink isn't really hacking though, it doesn't teach you anything about system manipulation (and how boring that can be). It's more a problem solving game. You have a set of tools and you need to figure out the best way to do a project ... I only played the demo though, although I enjoyed it quite a bit.