The Back Room

[Leiana]

Archi [hide= ]I'm a bookworm. I started reading novels at the age of 6. I just avoid speaking to you guys about it (though i have brought up a few titles in the past) thinking no one would bother with modern titles. And since almost every member, presumably, of the tavern is older than me, it'd make more sense to bring up classical works which most likely has been read by someone here.[/hide]

 

Unfortunately, I dislike having to read Shakespearian works. They seem some slow paced, and characters seem to choose the harder path rather than the easiest solutions that don't result in death.

[Resistance]

What you do in your leisure time isn't up to me, whether it be talking to me or escaping burning buildings. The problem is that people seem to insist that books aren't leisure when they are just as much as games, probably even moreso. Yes, books are important but they're leisure.

[Alg]

What you do in your leisure time isn't up to me, whether it be talking to me or escaping burning buildings. The problem is that people seem to insist that books aren't leisure when they are just as much as games, probably even moreso. Yes, books are important but they're leisure.

Except when they're not. Writing is still a pretty good way to transfer ideas.

 

:twss:

[Resistance]

Oh, of course. Reading relevant materials like that you would need to read for a job or a course are not leisure at all. It's just that the three musketeers is.

[Alg]

Oh, of course. Reading relevant materials like that you would need to read for a job or a course are not leisure at all. It's just that the three musketeers is.

Not that simple. If English teachers are to be believed, the line between entertainment and education/social commentary/etc is very thin, especially when the author puts it in there intentionally. And that's not even getting into artistic value...

 

As with every medium, there are works that exist purely for entertainment too.

 

It's not like you have purely entertaining books on one side and purely educational/practical books on the other... But the same can be said for every medium. It's just that books have been around for longer.

[Resistance]

Psht, artistic value.

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84G6RRBnJEY

[archimage_a]

So your argument is:

Reading is unimportant, except when it is important, in which case it is important.

 

If you compare playing 12 hours of Call of Duty, to spending 12 hours reading a book (Lets say "The Spook's Apprentice" (In America "The Last Apprentice)), then, the number of situtations in which those 12 hours are of use to you varies greatly.

COD: You are challanged to a COD tournament, or asked to design a basic shooter.

Spook's Apprentice: You are playing any fantasy game, reading any fantasy book, writing any fantasy essay/book, and so on.

 

Very few games have transferable skills. The increased hand-eye co-ordination is largely a fallacy because it is only useful (usually) when playing that game, since most games have different levels of sensitivity. Very few games use more than a handful of keys on the keyboard so it doesn't really help with typing. The ability to assess situations is usually marred by the linearity of game, and reaction time usually is limited to jabbing the fire button...Not useful unless you are fighting with a mouse and keyboard, with a game that has known sensitivies.

 

Reading, by and large, is the only way to get new ideas into people's heads. You have talking, and games such as Bioshock, and occassional Documentaries, but 95% of the time those will have been developed from books.

 

It is not merely that books have 'been around longer', but that books form the basis for almost all knowledge.

 

Also in a computer game the background might be somewhat informative but can be easily glossed over/ignored by the designer/user. In a book the writer has included a number of important nuances which the reader then has the chance to pick up on.

Simple example, in Monty Python's Holy Grail there are no horses. All the carts are pulled by people. Yet we totally ignore that. However if it was written down in a book we could not ignore it as easily.

Similarly a computer game can have peasants wandering about outside the window, you see them and go 'huh'. A book tends to go into more detail, explaning why they are wandering around outside the window.

 

 

 

 

Ultimately a book has a considerably higher knowledge to time ratio. TV documentaries can deliver information faster, as it is easier to direct attention, but uptake is usually lower. Games have a very low knowledge to time ratio. In games like COD or Minecraft that ratio is almost non-existant...what there is is limited almost entirely to the game itself (Diamonds make pickaxes, and the like.)

[The_Mather1]

You can't compare COD to anything. Using COD as an example of a video game is like using a pop-up childrens' story as an example of a book.

 

And Minecraft:

You make bread using wheat.

Cooling lava causes obsidian to form.

You smelt sand to make glass.

Sugar is extracted from sugar cane.

You can make fire using flint and a metal.

Sandstone is compacted sand.

You can make charcoal from wood.

How logic circuits work.

 

You want an example of a game with even more? How about RuneScape? If you pay attention, it'll even teach you how to make Greek fire.

[Alg]

And Minecraft:

A lot of which is very simplified. When magma/lava cools that quickly, you get basalt rather than obsidian, and a lot of real-world crafting is more than "stick object in furnace, wait". That's not a bad thing, of course.

 

The whole "time" comment was that these mediums have their own advantages for the most part haven't developed them. TV and movies have the opportunity to slip something in the background that you'd notice instantly in a book (Like the horses thing, seeing it plainly in text would have ruined the joke). Games, on the other hand, are basically interactive books, but not many games take advantage of that beyond a gimmick or two.

[Resistance]

And Minecraft:

You make bread using wheat.

Cooling lava causes obsidian to form.

You smelt sand to make glass.

Sugar is extracted from sugar cane.

You can make fire using flint and a metal.

Sandstone is compacted sand.

You can make charcoal from wood.

How logic circuits work.

 

Took me three seconds to read all of that. In minecraft it would take me about half an hour.

[archimage_a]

You can't compare COD to anything. Using COD as an example of a video game is like using a pop-up childrens' story as an example of a book.

 

And Minecraft:

You make bread using wheat.

Cooling lava causes obsidian to form.

You smelt sand to make glass.

Sugar is extracted from sugar cane.

You can make fire using flint and a metal.

Sandstone is compacted sand.

You can make charcoal from wood.

How logic circuits work.

 

You want an example of a game with even more? How about RuneScape? If you pay attention, it'll even teach you how to make Greek fire.

Also, the idea that if you give wheat to two different cows in a field you get a baby cow.

All animals don't die, unless you kill them.

You can find all materials anywhere.

You can grow crops in the snow.

Lilypads will support a humans weight.

Making bread involves getting three bushels of wheat and laying them next to each other.

You can turn Iron Ore into Iron in the same oven that turns chicken into roast chicken.

Charcoal can be produced in less than a minute.

The world is only 256 meters from space to bedrock.

Lava only kills you if you fall in it.

 

 

You would have to be some sort of idiot not to know several of the things you mention...or to be suckered into any of the things I mentioned....

The exception being logic circuits, which are not really 'taught' by playing Minecraft, but in READING guides on how they work. 'Learning' how to get it to work using only minecraft is fairly laughable...not least of all because minecraft doesn't give you ready access to the items you need. Simply having redstone doesn't allow you to use logic, you have to craft torches and repeaters.

 

If you asked the majority of people who play games recreationally, which game they played, it would be COD...or Fifa.

If you asked the majority of people who read books, which book they read, it wouldn't even carry 1% of the vote.

 

Ergo most of the time people who play games are playing games which are the equivilant of children's pop up books.

Which is considerably less 'important' than reading proper books.

 

 

 

I have given an example of another game, Bioshock. I acknowledge that games can show you something about philosophy, games like Hearts of Iron can show you strategy and tactics, and games like Victoria can show you how economics works.

However they have strong limitations, one would not expect someone who has played Bioshock to be able to answer an essay on Rand, or to answer questions on strategy and tactics in the real world, or economics. All of them severly curtail the amount of knowledge you can acquire. Books don't really have that limitation, they do lack practical experiance of course.

[The_Mather1]

You forgot about creative. Playing with redstone there is as easy as reading about it, but you will actually remember it half an hour later.

 

Also COD may be the most played videogame, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a simplified piece of shit that targets people with half the intelligence of most actual gamers.

COD targets your regular joe douchebag who got a computer they barely know how to use from their parents and plays it because it's got guns, explosions and blood. Most other computer games target an audience which actually knows their shit, and has themes and lessons accordingly.

[archimage_a]

I have learned nothing from several hours of messing around with redstone...It is still as baffling as when I started.

[Alg]

I have learned nothing from several hours of messing around with redstone...It is still as baffling as when I started.

Yeah, you actually need to know how it works before you can start using it. Once you do, though, you get a free sandbox to play with it.

[The_Mather1]

All you need to know is that if you apply power to a redstone torch either by having a redstone wire leading to it from the block it's attached to or by powering that block, it will turn off, this takes one "tick" (aka. game engine time unit) to happen. With that simple NOT-gate, you have all you need to make a computer.

This is all someone needs to learn before experimenting leads them to combine NOT-gates into OR, NOR, AND, NAND and XOR gates, or even FLIP-FLOPS and latches. Wait a few more hours and they'll be making the equivalent of ICs.

[Alg]

Are you assuming that this hypothetical person already knows computer science?

[Nexaduro]

For the merits of video games;

 

While I've not yet played it myself, I hear Spec Ops: The Line is a masterpiece of storytelling and depression inducement.

[The_Mather1]

Are you assuming that this hypothetical person already knows computer science?

Doesn't need to. To put it like this; anyone could see how one could use that principle to make something which requires two levers to activate. Then you expand on that and add one that stops it from activating, regardless of the other two. Expand on that and you've got something that does one thing with one combination and something else with another. Scale that up and you've got something like a binary to 7-segment converter. Add those principles together and you've got a simple math engine, add some latches (RAM) and you've got a calculator, scale that up a few hundred times and you've got a computer.

As long as you understand the fundamental principle, you require no further knowledge, just planning and patience.

[archimage_a]

Are you assuming that this hypothetical person already knows computer science?

As long as you understand the fundamental principle, you require no further knowledge, just planning and patience.

Translation:

Yes.

 

As far as I can understand redstone:

If you put a torch next to a piston it deploys. If you put less than 15 redstone dust between a torch and a piston, it deploys. If you replace the ltorch with a button/lever you can turn it on and off without breaking blocks. You can use a repeater to extend the redstone dust line by another 15.

That is the literal extent of my knowledge of redstone after several hours of using it.

 

As to experimentation....I have discovered that if you enclose a room in cobblestone, with a 16 meter diameter disk in the middle, with a water dispenser in the center, linked to a redstone trail, you can make a mob spawner.

I have found no use for a computer in Minecraft, nor for any number of gating methods, and so far as I can tell, neither has anyone else...Evidenced by the 'computer' never transitioning to actual gameplay, or being used for anything other than making videos.

 

I feel no compunction to find out about redstone dust mechanics because, with few exceptions (such as inverting the signal to turn one thing off while turning another thing on), the practical use in general gameplay does not exist.

As such its 'value' is in that of a simulator, not as a teaching mechanism, but as a lab to reinforce and give practical meaning to the things you have read about.

 

If, as doubtless you have, never used any sort of manual or advice, but learned entirely through putting bits of redstone down on the ground until you knew how to make a computer, then hats off to you...You have done something in a far slower, and far less productive way than the vast majority of people.

[The_Mather1]

Here's how you make a NOT-gate, it's a wonder you haven't discovered it yourself:

 

I also added another thing the repeater can do.

 

 

To make other gates or entire CPUs, just put a bunch of NOT-gates together.

[Seraphin]

>Not just playing Planescape: Torment to get the best of both worlds

 

Nothing says games and good literature are mutually exclusive. Well, perhaps literature cannot also be a game, but games can certainly also be literature.

 

PS. Nobody plays games on the assumption that the time spent playing will be of use in their future endevours. They play them for fun, and because they felt like it, not because it is the most efficient use of their time.

[archimage_a]

They play them for fun, and because they felt like it, not because it is the most efficient use of their time.

 

Hence distinguishing them from books.

[Corvus]

Mather, generally when arguing about something being educational it is assumed that it teaches you something that is actually usable outside of the context of teaching it otherwise you are just wasting time. For example, Redstone logic has no actual use outside Minecraft as the process involved violates so many rules that attempting to implement a redstone logic circuit with real parts would at best crash and burn (literally). Also if people need to be pointed to videos demonstrating stuff its not really the game doing the teaching, its more the videos doing it.

[The_Mather1]

It teaches you how to use logic circuits; how the different gates work and how to apply them in order to get them to do what you want. Logic circuits are among other things used in automation an electronics, and the principle is used in programming.

 

And the video was just me showing how to make a NOT gate, which is essentially the complex circuit equivalent of a single bit compared to a file.

[Alg]

Hence distinguishing them from books.

I must be reading the wrong kinds of books, then :razz:

 

But then, I also have an irrational hatred for books that stop the story to tell me what the author thinks about a particular topic.