Learning Kansas History Through Online Games, Essay Example

Just like any other games from frigging companies, the Kansas Symbols Game left me with multiple choices throughout. The Kansas game is not a game that required leveling and skilling up. Individual questions were dependent on their own answers. I had all the values and skills required, however, to tackle the questions. For instance, the very first four questions regarding the state flower, tree, insect, and bird for Kansas felt easy on me since I possessed the required knowledge to answer them. This was also the case for the last four questions regarding the song, seal, and nickname for the city. However considering I had no enough knowledge with me regarding the animals of the city, I had to surpass the questions. However, there was no such option as skipping a question so I had the option to choose a randomly generated answer regarding the amphibian, reptile, and March of the city. This, however, equipped me with new skills regarding the history of the city.

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The game felt easy with no chances of promoting violent behavior or raising the odds of re-enacting events from it. There was no interaction with real or unreal people in the game. All that was left when the game started was I and the knowledge I had. The game further felt more educative since every piece of a question to the end related to the history of the city. Evaluation for the game is also made at an individual level hence; there are no chances to compete. Therefore, any emotions developed while playing the game were at a personal level and could not be used against someone else.

The other game selected was the wheat game. The experience with the wheat game was totally different from that of the Kansas history. With the game, one step would build up to the last and an evaluation made regarding all answers issued. For my case, I offered a 2137 variety of wheat without herbicide in the year 1998. The final answer was amazing that I chose everything to the best of my ability. The choice of year, the choice of not using an herbicide and selecting the 2137-variety made me feel a winner. However, there were more options that when combined with another year would lead to the same answer. The experience, was, however similar to the previous game in that only short answers were required for a quick evaluation.

In a given gaming environment, the social behavior of a player in the real world can be significantly changed (Qin et al., 2011). Social behaviors were not also associated with the game. Any kinds of chatting, making friends, teamwork and role-playing were absent. For both games, the virtual world could, therefore, not be tied to the real society of the gamer. The social behaviors would have been significantly changed for the real world if the behaviors were related to the games. Behavior repetition could, therefore, not be encouraged.

Online games are also known to lead to addiction with later effects such as staying awake overnight (Lin et al., 2013). The two games were not addictive, besides being placed online. Throughout the play, there were no chances of being sucked into the social gaming atmosphere. I was quite sure that when repeating the failed questions, the knowledge gained would assist me to repeat the game and land into correct answers every time that happened. This would be the same case for the wheat game where after finding another combination, I would just leave it at that. The fact is that there are a limited number of options for both games.

References

Lin, F. L., Hsu, T. Y., Wu, T. S. & Chang, C. L. (2013). The Effects of User Involvement in Online Games, Game-Playing Time and Display Duration on Working Memory. Engineering Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics. Understanding Human Cognition, 58-67. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-39360-0_7

Qin, H., Rau, P. P., & Gao, S. (2011). The Influence of Social Experience in Online Games. Lecture Notes in Computer Science Human-Computer Interaction. Users and Applications, 688-693. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-21619-0_81