A lot of people seem to be drawing parallels between mature video games and pornography and cigarettes and so on here. Surely a more obvious parallels would be the film industry. Children, in theory, aren't allowed in to adult films, and they're not allowed to buy adult videos. It just seems to make perfect sense to do the same thing with video games, rather than the over-the-top Australian "ban all mature video games completely" model we've got down here.
Think of the millions and billions that governments spend on (for example) the military, space programs, and (more specifically) inauguration balls and other celebrations. You could probably get $40 billion out of the richer governments' budgets fairly easily.
Actually, if all you had was $100 to your name, and you gave $1.50 of that to the homeless guy on the street, that'd strike me as pretty generous on your part, having only $100 to your name.
First off, Morpeth, you seem to be basing the educational value of games on pure literacy and creativity skills. With FPS's, and perhaps also MMORPG's, navagational skills is one of the most important things you might learn. RTS's would give you strategic and logical thinking skills. I can also think of two game genres that do give you literacy and creativity skills, although one is sadly a dying breed: The adventure game and the role-playing game.
Adventure games (especially interactive fiction) are often anchored to a literary base (this is truer of early adventure games) I got a lot of nifty vocab from The Case of the Rose Tattoo, a Sherlock Holmes adventure game. Creative thinking comes from lateral puzzle solving and, in the case of interactive fiction, imagining the scene presented in the text. RPG's, when they have a strong literary base, also give literary skills. Think Planescape: Torment. There's a game which can credit it's critical success to the fanastic writing in the game.
So we've got to keep an open mind about this one. Different genres can educate in different areas. I'd just be hesitant about relying completely on the computer game as an educational tool.
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A lot of people seem to be drawing parallels between mature video games and pornography and cigarettes and so on here. Surely a more obvious parallels would be the film industry. Children, in theory, aren't allowed in to adult films, and they're not allowed to buy adult videos. It just seems to make perfect sense to do the same thing with video games, rather than the over-the-top Australian "ban all mature video games completely" model we've got down here.
Think of the millions and billions that governments spend on (for example) the military, space programs, and (more specifically) inauguration balls and other celebrations. You could probably get $40 billion out of the richer governments' budgets fairly easily.
Actually, if all you had was $100 to your name, and you gave $1.50 of that to the homeless guy on the street, that'd strike me as pretty generous on your part, having only $100 to your name.
First off, Morpeth, you seem to be basing the educational value of games on pure literacy and creativity skills. With FPS's, and perhaps also MMORPG's, navagational skills is one of the most important things you might learn. RTS's would give you strategic and logical thinking skills. I can also think of two game genres that do give you literacy and creativity skills, although one is sadly a dying breed: The adventure game and the role-playing game. Adventure games (especially interactive fiction) are often anchored to a literary base (this is truer of early adventure games) I got a lot of nifty vocab from The Case of the Rose Tattoo, a Sherlock Holmes adventure game. Creative thinking comes from lateral puzzle solving and, in the case of interactive fiction, imagining the scene presented in the text. RPG's, when they have a strong literary base, also give literary skills. Think Planescape: Torment. There's a game which can credit it's critical success to the fanastic writing in the game. So we've got to keep an open mind about this one. Different genres can educate in different areas. I'd just be hesitant about relying completely on the computer game as an educational tool.