RPG and How they Help Learners

Role Playing Games and Reading Comprehension

When I was a kid at home, I played RPG games. Some of my favorite games included Final Fantasy, Lufia, Chrono Trigger, and Breath of Fire I. I loved playing these games. I can honestly say that they helped me learn how to read. They were supplementary to my homework.  If I kid said that these days, it would be acceptable. When I was a kid, most of my teachers would not believe it. RPG games went just games. They were adventures. They were engaging. They were a way to escape reality and plunge into a world of wonder.

RPG's link to school more than we sometimes realize. I listed the classes and the explanations below:

We learned geography.

Geography: We learn how to read maps. In every RPG I have ever played, there was a map. You needed to know north, south, east, and west in order to travel to and from each location.

Here is a map of in Final Fantasy I.

English: Every game has characters and supporting characters but RPG's get into character development more than most games back in the day. In other games at the time, like Mario and Zelda, you got a basic story of save the princess. In RPG's like Final Fantasy, you have to save a princess, defeat a vampire, collect four crystals, and defeat the dark knight Garland. That is epic stuff. Now other gaming genres, tap into more engaging character development but right now remember I am talking about RPG games. I do recognize that you do the same thing in Zelda but Zelda has limited dialogue in the early games. That is another important aspect of learning, which I will get to in another blog.

Math: Characters have statistics and hit points. Players will learn addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

here is the main character in chrono trigger, Chrono and his stats in the character menu. As you can see,  there are a lot of numbes here. I will translate for you if you are not aware of what each number stands for.

HP- Hit points. How much the character can take damage. If this ummner drops to zero, your character gets knocked out.
MP- Magic points. How much magic a character has. If this number drops to zero, the character cannot use magic.
The (sword icon) - Attack. How much damage the character can.
The (shield icon) - Defense. Lessens the amount of damage.
Time- how much time spent playing the game.
G- Gold pieces/money.
PWR- How much power the character has. this is different than attack points by adding to the power of an attack rather than the damage.
SPD- Speed. This is how fast it takes your character to take his or her turn.
HIT- Hit. How successful a character hits the target.
EV- Evasion. Characters percentage of dodging attacks.
MAG-How much magic attack power the character has.
STAM- Stamina. how much stamina the character has.
M DEF- Magical Defense
EX- Experience points. How much experience a character has in battle. Once they reach that number, they will level up.
NEXT- Next time the character levels up.

As a younger kid playing Chrono trigger, I learned a lot about these stats and later understood statistics a bit more. Though I was never good at statistics, it was still a good way to introduce these concepts to kids. Most RPG's in general had these or similar stisticts. Sometimes I would caculate how quickly I could slay a boss monster by estimating the numbers and figuring how many hits it had left. I did this all the time when I faught the Atmaweapon in Final Fantasy 6.

This boss was crazy hard. I remember the first time I played got to him. I had to fight him twice before I created a combination of skills and timing before I beat him.

Anyways, I think I made some points about RPG's and learning. I would like to move on to another topic for now. I will come back to this again at some point and make a Part II in the near future. I hope I at least brought some nostalgic memories back at the very least.

Mario Teaches Typing

Today I waned to write about a game I played in 5th grade called Mario Teaches Typing. I loved this game. It was a fun way to learn typing while playing as your favorite Mario characters and familiar levels.

Background:

Created by Interplay, this game was a way to get kids excited and want to learn how to type. The game play featured Mario, Luigi, and princess toadstool (now know as Peach).

Like standard typing games, it starts out with a few keys and then move up to advanced key strokes. This game however uses characters from the series in an attempt to make typing more like a videogame and less like well typing exercise... for awhile anyway. Typing games generally become repetitive which can be fine for kids but sometimes even with Mario, can become dull and forgettable.

My experience:
As a 5th grader we had two computers in the back of the classroom. I think we had about 20 students in the class so we had to sign up to use the computers and we usually played with another students so everyone can play at least once a week. When it was my turn, I usually played with two other students and we would play Jeopardy. When my teacher installed Mario teaches typing, I would play with my two friends and we would take turns playing each level. Since the game was 1 player, I played a few turns and would move so my friends could play. While I played I can honestly say that I was more about making Mario live then learn typing.

As a 5th grader in the 90s, this was a difficult level which is sad because it is level 1. But that is the fun of learning how to type.

 

I also found that for me, all the repetitive typing and lack of computer knowledge, I ended up giving up and playing Jeopardy with my friends and soon no one played Mario Teaches Typing again.

Overall opinion:

I am looking back on a memory of this game and say it was harmless fun but would a kid really learn typing from it? I can say that I would have if I had more time playing the game by myself much like I did with Type to Learn which I will talk about later. You can play it online currently. Simply Google Mario Teaches Typing and you can either download it or you can play it online through a site. I would recommend checking it out and seeing for yourself if it holds up.

Ahh, The Oregon Trail

Oh no!

 

Oregon Tail is an example of a game where it can become both educational and entertaining. It can also be an example of what aspects are being used and what is not in a game that make it memorable.

I remember the first time I played Oregon Trail. I was in 1^st grade which was in the late 80s and video games in the classroom was starting to pick up in the classrooms. I know in the 70s they had video games to, but the industry of video games was trying new avenues by incorporation games into schools until the 80s. When we had free time from class, I would go to one of the 5 computers we had in our classroom and play this game. The game was on an Apple 2 so no blast processing for this system. It would have been to rad for it.

Such a beast! I can't believe the cost was $2638 when it first was released!

Anyways, I remember one time me and a friend playing. We both would skip the text dialogue and go straight to the hunting part of the game. We would also try to ride the rapids every time we got to a river and sometime crash it into some riverbed so we can write on the tombstone when someone died. The popular etching on the stone was something along the lines of the commercial Tombstone pizza stating "Here lay’s pepperoni and cheese, his favorite topping" or something similar to that statement.

 Love this commercial!

Now that I’m older, I played the iPad version of the game and surprisingly it hold up. I miss the 8 bit version sure, but the newer version has a better text layout, colorful design, and a variety of choices with decent animations.

I don’t know if kids are playing it as much as I did back in the day, nevertheless with the updated graphics and animations, they are getting more out of the journey than just hunting and purposely killing their wagon mates for kicks.

By the way, hunting in that game is just as amazing.
 

Introduction

Hello all! This blog is a way for me to formulate an idea for a doctoral thesis on video games and education. I wanted to study instructional/ educational video games and their effectiveness in the classroom because in my educational experience, I played a lot of educational video games in the classroom and they played a very important part of the learning process for me.

As I started looking into the available research, I found their is not enough substantial research on why the games are beneficial. Sure, there are plenty of articles and blogs but here are little academic journal entries on the subject.

Other times in this blog, I will be observing trends in video games industry and making notes on my feeling on what is going on in the world of gaming.

Lastly, I will blog about my experience with educational games and hopefully this will provide some insight into my research and reflections that will help me stay on track and motivated to achieve my goals.

Thanks,

Nicole