Analysis: The Challenging Lessons From Videogames

Nate Cowley

Professor Musgrave

ENGL 1302-83019

11 February 2015

The Challenging Lessons from Videogames Raising children can be a daunting yet noble task. So many little things have to be considered when taking care of children. Are they eating the right foods? Are they getting enough sleep? Are they learning well? What values will they hold to? How will they approach those values in their day-to-day lives? While those are all important questions, the last two are often forgotten. Those issues are sometimes left alone because they can be extremely challenging. Building character is a difficult thing to do. In past generations and even now, videogames are often viewed as mindless and useless for character development. Some games are

Don’t let that first sentence fool you. Dark Souls is not like a fairy tale. This is a game that I would not recommend for little children. I would say that the appropriate age to begin playing Dark Souls is roughly 14-15 years old. It’s a very challenging and mysterious game. As the assumed protagonist of the game, your task is to save the world by relighting an all-powerful flame. While most games are designed to be challenging but fair, Dark Souls strives to be unfair. This is where having and learning determination comes in. It takes great skill and planning in order to beat almost every boss. Even after having beaten the game multiple times, I still have a hard time beating certain enemies. For instance, in one of the boss fights, you wind up fighting two bosses at once. One of them is fast while the other is slow; but they both hit extremely hard. During the fight, you have to essentially watch one boss while mentally “calculating” where the other one is and when it will strike. Professor Michael Stroud from Merrimack College states that, “…the attentional and working memory demands of videogames can be much greater than other tasks.” (News) Usually, you’re focused on one while the other circles around you. The only way I’ve ever been able to beat them is by having a friend join in my game and help me with the fight. Also, making good use of your surrounding is actually quite

DoTA is an acronym for Defense of The Ancients. To put it simply, there are two teams trying to destroy the opposing team’s base; which is called The Ancient. Each team is made up of 5 “heroes” that are chosen from a pool of 109 unique characters. The idea is simple, but the execution is difficult. Every single character has a minimum of four distinct abilities with many characters having more. It not only takes a long time to learn all of these abilities, but it also means that you have to think about how they all work together for your team and your opponents. Naturally, this is a team game. I greatly enjoy playing this game with my friends, but I never, ever play it by myself. It’s hard enough to devise a plan with my friends, let alone total strangers! DoTA 2 combines an overwhelming need for communication with extreme trust in your team and considerable planning skills in order to create an excellent team-based strategy game. While team-building exercises may not be something that is taught as a separate subject, DoTA 2 sets a new standard for team-building exercises. Connie Yowell, who is an education director that participated in a project called GlassLab says that, “videogames turn the centuries-old model of learning on its head.” (Toppo) DoTA 2 is, in my opinion, an excellent tool for teaching children to rely on team efforts and develop grand