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Paradox games are actually great educational tools

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I'm actually working on getting a paper published on this topic right now.

I definitely believe that Paradox's games are great educational tools that promote tangential learning.
 
tapewormlondon said:
EU3 and CK2 have really stoked an interest I never knew I had for history. Many an hour I have spent Wikipedering certain countries or characters to see what they were like.
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This.
PI-games + Wikipedia has given me more knowledge in history, religion and geography than the Swedish school managed. Add some odd forum discussions to that and you have an education :p
 
Sejm said:
This.
PI-games + Wikipedia has given me more knowledge in history, religion and geography than the Swedish school managed. Add some odd forum discussions to that and you have an education :p
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If they didn't spend the whole class fiddling with their dumbphones tweeting or checking facebook, they might actually learn something.
 
GreatSlayer said:
If they didn't spend the whole class fiddling with their dumbphones tweeting or checking facebook, they might actually learn something.
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Tweets and mobile phones capable of anything apart from calling and texting where in the distant future when I went to school... man do I start to feel old now.
 
As a teacher, I can say that games are a great way to get kids interested in the stuff they're about. The difficulty of teaching certain curriculum can drop silly dramatically if a game or television series about that subject gets popular. For example, it is definitely easier teaching feudalism in middle school now that everyone and his mom loves Game of Thrones. Back when Sailor Moon was popular, elementary school students knew their planets before first grade.

But especially a paradox game would make a terrible education tool. It's the kind of game that pretty much requires you to be invested in it already before you play. They have steep learning curves, uninviting UI (compared to mainstream games), and take a lot of time to play. I'm pretty sure their target audience is like 25-50, too. Sure, the nerds that play them probably get motivated to learn more about history, but that's a tiny percentage of your audience in education.

CIV 5 is a way better education tool. It's on console with an easily interface to navigate, simple enough a 10 year old could have fun playing it, and I think it even has a glossary of history that they can read by pausing the game.
 
Mafia_Puppet said:
As a teacher, I can say that games are a great way to get kids interested in the stuff they're about. The difficulty of teaching certain curriculum can drop silly dramatically if a game or television series about that subject gets popular. For example, it is definitely easier teaching feudalism in middle school now that everyone and his mom loves Game of Thrones. Back when Sailor Moon was popular, elementary school students knew their planets before first grade.

But especially a paradox game would make a terrible education tool. It's the kind of game that pretty much requires you to be invested in it already before you play. They have steep learning curves, uninviting UI (compared to mainstream games), and take a lot of time to play. I'm pretty sure their target audience is like 25-50, too. Sure, the nerds that play them probably get motivated to learn more about history, but that's a tiny percentage of your audience in education.

CIV 5 is a way better education tool. It's on console with an easily interface to navigate, simple enough a 10 year old could have fun playing it, and I think it even has a glossary of history that they can read by pausing the game.
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You're saying Sailor Moon, Game of Thrones and Civ 5 are better educational tools than PDS games? Sure, the latter have a steep learning curve, but it offers far greater educational value than say, Civ 5. Civ 5 has nearly no basis on reality, whereas PI games are very much more realistic. For example, nearly all major PDS games have a geographical basis on the real world. It also better simulates how a huge country like China, was so backwards in the 19th century compared to the West, how revolutionary fervor begins to spread, etc. things impossible to simulate on Civ 5 where you see an archipelago-based, Muslim Byzantine Empire fighting Sikh England in a perpetual war that spans centuries from the industrial era to postmodernity. Fun, but not realistic :p

V2 offers great insight into such things as how classical liberalism vs socialistic economics affected industrial development in many countries. EU shows how religious conflict was devastating in the early modern period as well as how colonialism made the West far wealthier. HoI teaches how WW2 era military tactics and strategy work together in an intuitive manner.

All it really takes is a teacher who is also familiar with these games to explain the concepts :p
 
I had a minor interest in history all my life, but I really got into history with PDS games when I opened up the start screen in MEIOU and saw the explosion of colors that was Europe. In America we had never been exposed to any serious European history, and every game I played led me to new information.
 
Carbon said:
You're saying Sailor Moon, Game of Thrones and Civ 5 are better educational tools than PDS games? Sure, the latter have a steep learning curve, but it offers far greater educational value than say, Civ 5.
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No, but as he said, they inspire interest in certain facets of education. GoT, for example, created an interest for feudal history, since kids mostly only relate feudalism with keywords such as "serfs" and "kings". They usually don't relate with the political climate, or the nature of inheritance and intrigue. But now, that they carry that interest from the series with them, it's easier to flesh out and discuss it.

Sailor moon created a genuine interest in astronomy (though more like astrology, but teachers could use this to peak interest in astronomy), and a somewhat interest in Japan.
But games don't teach history, and are terrible didactical tools, as used by my earlier example in this thread. What they can do is create an interest in history, and in that regard, Civ V, total war, and paradox titles can all inspire such interest. IF you have kids in the class that are gamers, and they play these games, it would be cool to challenge them to produce a game session where they try to follow history as much as possible.

But education must be equal, so it makes it hard to find reasonable alternatives for those who don't play. Because gaming in class is out of the question. But it surely is helpful in nurturing interest in history when they are at home, and encouraging them to share their experiences from their gaming with historical based games is definitely something I probe my classes for. Because then we can bring it up for discussion with the class.
 
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I don't think Paradox games are good for teaching people anything other than geography (and the handful of things which are correct in the various start dates, like wars and rulers). If anything they can distort people's perception of history into thinking things were more like the game than they actually were. Where Paradox really shines though is in getting people interested in learning. When they see something in the game that catches their eye it may lead to them reading a wikipedia page and then a book, which results in true knowledge.
 
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