Education and Gaming

http://www.onrpg.com/MMO/Battlefield-Heroes/video/Battlefield-Heroes-Trailer
Of all the MMO's, this is making me geek out the most.

You remember Beowulf in your senior year of High School, or one of your college classes? I do. I remember being so excited about reading Beowulf, after so many years of hearing about it, and I remember loving every minute of studying it. But I'm weird like that, and I do admit, there were parts of studying Beowulf from an academic standpoint being rather droll, but I nerd out on literature, particularly important stuff like Beowulf. But I also remember my classmates moaning and grumbling as we went through that section. (Not to mention my, “Why don't you like this? Come on, this is some of the most important writing in the history of the English language! This should be fun!”)

I got to thinking last night, during the period of 11-1:30 where I roll around in my bed, try to sleep on the floor as I wait for the house to cool down so I can sleep (We have a really good woodstove where I live.) And as I was thinking, I realized that most literature that we learn from school is presented in a boring, academic manner, when things like Beowulf really are good stuff. If people don't learn to appreciate its significance, or, at least, its story, then Beowulf will be forgotten. For those unfamiliar to Beowulf's importance, without it, Lord of the Rings would have been vastly different, and it is one of the earliest examples of written literature.

So, we have something like Beowulf, which is rather important to all English-speaking people, and we have students who just don't really get it, and the approach to learning it for so many years just doesn't work. Now, with science, you can go out and touch it, record it, and feel it. You don't need someone to explain it to you. Literature can be a little more difficult, because you can't hold it in your hand. You can't really see how it affects your world. What can we do to help students understand not just its relevance, but also the story itself?

One part of Beowulf that is more commonly known is the relevance of boasts. Several characters in the epic of Beowulf made extensive boasts. One famous one is the serpent boast, where Beowulf, while explaining why he lost a swimming match, tells of how he slew several sea serpents using only a short sword and his bare body while in the open sea, using up his energy in the process, and therefore losing the match. In the CGI movie, this is one of the gorier scenes, for those who have seen the movie, but not read the epic.

So while my fellow students were able to regurgitate the importance of boasting, stories, and retelling, they didn't seem to really understand. So, while I was doing my heavy duty thinking, I thought of a way to explain why they made such big lies to glorify themselves:

Counter-Strike.

Or Halo, or Team Fortress 2, whatever. A multiplayer game, essentially, but Counter-Strike really stuck out for me, because the game is simple, with only a handful of weapons and simple controls, and I have my own story to tell that would work as an example. But using such games would help students experience boasting, by being in a combat situations (of which the people of that region and era were quite fond of) and making yourself look good.

So, let's put it into context. Teacher brings the class to the computer lab, which has Counter-Strike up and ready to go. The students are a bit confused, but after walking around and firing their guns for a bit, the students get used to the premise and controls. And they play for some time, and when you play most video games, you end up with some pretty cool “you had to be there” stories. (CAD's Rob comes to mind.)

As their assignment, each student has to retell an experience from their session, and they have to make it interesting. And not everyone is very video-game savvy, but their stories have to be interesting. Now, I am a student, not a teacher, so this is speculation from the perspective of one, and would be most effective working on gamers.

But let's take an example roughly based on one of my own experiences in Counter-Strike (changed 'cause it involved an asshat Admin) and how this exercise might work:

Student (We'll call him “Mike” because I have met way too many “Mikes” and it seems like a good generic name) decides to buy a Scout and hang back and snipe the enemy on CS_Assault as a Counter-Terrorist. Clearly, not a CS veteran. Well, he's not very good with the thing, and only does a bit of damage with it (Again, this is based on my personal experiences, and I've never been a very good sniper in Counter-Strike.) So his team all goes in and gets themselves all killed, and there's a bit of a standstill as the game hasn't ended, yet there aren't any CTs for the terrorists to kill. So they leave the base, leaving a handful of guys behind to protect the hostages.

Mike, of course, completely freaks out and hides from the emerging Terrorists, occasionally getting spotted as he tries to nail a headshot once in a while, and all the Terrorists leave the base, hunting him down. Mike decides that his little Scout is completely useless and switches to his sidearm, actually getting a kill, but then promptly getting shot in the ensuing firefight.

Well, since that's really the only notable event Mike can think of, he decides to tell that story, but knows that “I was the last on my team and I had a sniper rifle and I didn't kill anyone with it and so I used my other gun to kill someone and then got shot” isn't interesting. In fact, it makes him sound precisely like the noob that he is.

Mike then embellishes his story, telling how his opponents were like ninjas, only being spotted for a moment, so he is unable to get a shot off with the weapon on any of his enemies. After a long and grueling period of pinning down the enemy, they finally got too close for him to use the Scout, so he tossed it aside and drew his sidearm, ducking from cover to cover, playing cat and mouse with the terrorists. There were just moments left in the game for him to slay his enemies, and he eventually engaged them in a bloody firefight, taking numerous wounds, but capping several of his enemies, about ten, and picking up a SAW in the process, allowing him to lay down a hellfire of bullets. Desperate, the terrorists all attacked him firing their weapons, further wounding him. With just a little bit of health left and no hope to win the match, Mike wanted to go down in a blaze of glory, and threw a frag grenade at his feet, taking out the entire Terrorist team, as well as himself, denying them their kill, and ensuring that freedom would continue.

'Course Dave, who actually shot Mike in that match (I've met a lot of 'Dave's, too), goes “Nuh-uh! Here's how it really went down:” and then goes onto tell of how noobish Mike really is. Of course, Mike's best friend, Jordan (Again...), doesn't want to see his buddy get jeered for being so outlandish, and objects, telling on how Mike really WASN'T the last one, but rather Jordan, himself (despite having been the first one to die), watched the whole thing, and had taken out a half dozen or so terrorists that would have overrun Mike. After Mike's grenade went off, the match continued, as there was one last Terrorist, the one who had been left behind so that any other survivors wouldn't get their hands on the hostages. Jordan goes on to tell of the epic struggle between them, and how they fired every available round they could, picked up from the guns of their fallen enemies and comrades, until all they had left were their knives. Jordan's enemy hadn't fought at all in the match until they fought, and so he was at full health, whereas Jordan had lost most of his health throughout the match, and the ensuing knife fight ended in Jordan's death and the Terrorists' victory.

So while this is a speculative example, it does illustrate, through experience, the role of boasting in the Scandinavian cultures of the Dark Ages and in Beowulf, which is a better premise to build an understanding of the literature than simply force-feeding. If I were a teacher, the role of video games would play a big part, if I had my choice. They'd be playing all sorts of stuff, and all of it connected to the material in one way or another. There was an article, or perhaps it was a quote (I think from George Carlin) that said education has taken a backseat to entertainment, and there's just no way for it to compete (It's a paraphrasing.) But I look at the massive amount of material in all sorts of games, and realize how easy it is for some gamers to remember the tiniest detail about a universe, or could explain the relevance of the Star Wars franchise to gaming as a whole, yet couldn't tell you why the works of Shakespeare are in iambic pentameter. That's because we've been presenting such works in such an uninteresting manner, that the education system, which is inherently flawed, can't keep the students' attention to understand and appreciate what it is that they're studying.

In an unrelated thought, wouldn't a game based on some of the stuff from the Tempest be awesome as a game?