Games, Learning and Literacy

I'm not the kind of person that get into video games very much. Actually, I seldom play digital games. When I was small, it's not common to have a video game as it was so expensive. Now, if students don't have one in their home, they will be treated as abnormal! Although I'm not good at playing these games, still I remembered I was also affected by one or two.

The most remarkable one in my memory on THE SIMS!.

I think the game had a great success in the industry a few years ago. By having control in the virtual world, the game fulfill players' desire of making every decisions on our own as sometimes in  the reality, we don't even have a chance to make choice. The production company understood the thoughts of us and thus create this wonderful PC game. I like playing this game as I can control the people whatever I want. Of course in the past I couldn't think of anything of you asked me whether I can learn something in the game. I would just tell you it was so funny! However, the lecture on last Tuesday inspired me to think about it.

When doing the in-class assignment of which we was told to designed our own game, I realized all games are produced for a purpose. Therefore I think The Sims has got its purpose for the players. Players have to arrange things for the characters to do. Even tiny little thing like washing dishes and feeding dogs, they all have to be arranged by the players. It makes me think we need to have plan for our life in advance. If we always make ad hoc decision, we can't really make good use of our life. Moreover, we must have a goal for our life, otherwise we may not know what to do and even lose passion for doing anything. You may think that I think too much from a PC game, but it's true that I get such reflection from the game! Moreover, although in my view that I didn't acquire much about English when playing the game, when I tried to fond out more information about the game, I went online to search for more. Browsing the those related sites gave me more chances to read English! So i think ultimately I was equipped with better language skills by the Sims!

Here is the behind-the-scene video of SIMS 3. Enjoy! I find it's so interesting to find out how this wonderful game is produced!