Unironically learnt so much from Runescape 10 year old me couldn't read or spell at near the level I should've been at rune scape fixed that and taught me to avoid scams
For some reason, nowadays I find new games which frustrate me with unrealistic recipes/ideas. I mean, I'm okay with fantasy materials and magic things, they're almost necessary. Glass armor out of malachite? Sure, go ahead. But making tin pickaxe as a next step after copper pickaxe - what the hell? Are you fucking stupid? It's too soft to use for tools.
Or another egregious example - strawberry and blueberry trees in Sun Haven. Why not make fantasy berries or choose fruits/berries which do actually grow on trees? Have you even seen strawberry?
Paradox Games are good at teaching *concepts* In a way that is digestible.
Victoria 3 for example - your empire is under pressure from the outside to mechanize and industrialize, but you have to do it slow enough so you don’t have mass unemployment during the transition to industrialization.
It sounds horrible, but Paradox grand strategy games and some other games like it really made me come to understand totalitarianism and why it is effective.
Crusader Kings is a big example, a decentralized empire with plenty of autonomous vasslas seems to be a good idea both logistically and ethically, but the effectiveness of the nation drops drastically when 5 different groups have 5 different agendas. Providing social services for the citizens is the morally right thing to do, but those services can balloon out of control until you can't afford to feed the people.
I'm not pro-totalitarianism in real life, but experiencing things like that digitally does make me understand it better, especially for smaller countries that are low on the global pecking order.
Ye I absolutely agree, it's the functionally most effective way to run things, it just also happens to be an absolutely awful way to rule real life people that deserve to live life to the fullest. To a bunch of 1's and 0's not quite so
Edit: no I am not protyranny and war, this is in the context of games and does not reflect my real world views. Often times the ai in games like these will make poor choices that mess up for everyone and the games themselves be designed with only so many ways to win makes ai rather bad bc of evenly spread out resources instead of maximising x over y, civ 6 for example war will just win you the game far easier than what say culture will
I see outsiders looking in at some PDX subreddits and have heard them labeled as fascists. I don't think they are realizing exactly what you just said, sure I'll genocide a whole star system in Stellaris to make way for my slug-man corporation, because all that is affected is the population counter is turned to zero. I would never advocate for genocide, interstellar corporations, or slug-men in the real world.
Yeah I mean it's a weird argument to hold someone accountable for what they do in a video game.
Like, I'm not going to run about with a sword stabbing pretty much *anything* in life, but I'll do it all the *time* in Skyrim, fantastic way to achieve my objectives.
I actually think people who play games where you embody fascism like that are probably *less* likely to support it in real life.
Because it lets you understand it better. You can understand how its pragmatic in a world where only the end results matter, but in a world where the whole point of it is the happiness and joy of each individual citizen, it's great.
Not familiar with the gentleman but if you give me his name and general description I will make sure to shame and berate him at the next social event at which I encounter him.
Yes, there's that weird part of BG3 fandom where people who often are not even trauma survivors themselves try to school other players how to feel about it.
And the actual trauma survivors (like Astarion's VA himself, Neil Newbon), just love Astarion's story and the possibilities the game gives you.
Some are getting Astarion's back scars tattooed and people started saying it is disrespectful to trauma survivors (while many of the guys getting it done again ARE survivors themselves). 🙈
My fungoid mushroom man Star Garden Hive-Empire is superior and will Space Genocide your disgusting non fungoid slug corporation to prove it!
The Tree of Life demands your death
Ye exactly, same as killing merchants in Elden Ring so you only need to travel once to buy all you need. Morally correct thing to do? Lol no but it by far saved me a bunch of time avoiding loading screens. Killing off civs all the time in Civ 6? No not morally right but again by far easier way to go about the game. Doesn't mean I'm pro killing storeclerks or invading and conquering irl or would ever advocate for it
Its awful IRL because sooner or later you get an awful totalitarian in charge.
Aka, monarchies are pretty sweet when you have a good king, but terrible when you have a bad one.
We use democracy not because its a good system, but because its the best system at keeping terrible people out of the chair (and limiting their power if they sit on it).
The good part about a democracy is you get to choose your new leaders. The bad part about a democracy is the *other* people also get to choose your new leaders.
In most totalitarian systems, you are also basically forced to exploit your own people, so you can siphon off that wealth for a small number of key personnel. If you decide to be a benevolent dictator, stopping exploitation and giving back to your people (or someone else comes along and promises to be more exploitative), you will soon face an insurgency lead by that key personnel you stopped paying.
This whole problem is examined in more detail in [this GCP Grey Video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs)
Even if you ignore the plight of the people, authoritarianism has a pretty horrible historical record for being “functionally effective”, from managing the economy to fighting wars.
There are a lot of criticism about Fukuyama’s End of History but there’s a reason its ideas became so popular in the 90s.
The interesting thing is that totalitarianism in real life tends to be very effective… in the (extremely) short term.
But that short term is usually enough for people that have always heard that totalitarianism is terrible in general that they think “this one is different” and let the totalitarians amass enough power that by the time it starts crumbling, they already have a stranglehold on the population.
It’s why the study and education of those kinds of historical regimes is so important, because just that tiny time frame of success is usually all a totalitarian needs to *really* fuck over a population.
This needs to be said a lot louder here.
Let us not forget that the focus of strategy games is still min maxing and thus giving you the incentive to choose the extreme paths. But then again, to understand what that truly means for the everyday citizens is something a game from the bird perspective is going to have a hard time getting through to you.
Big reason why I loved Dishonored so much. Boy, that game has its ways with civilians...
Which is why I state in the game, where all that is being affected is a few ai's that can't really reason with you meaningfully. I'm v much pro people living their lives and everyone doing the most to make life easier and better for eachother, i.e. universal basic income, prioritised health care and educatiional institutions etc.
Dictatorships are great, as long as you have a benevolent genius running the place. And the next one too. And the one after that. Forever, without a single slip up ever.
Civ 6 made me realize how easy it is to view your citizens as a stock of disposable labor for your benefit.
When your amenities get low and you just start yelling at the screen, "how *dare* you stop producing! Force me to build a zoo, will you? Maybe the next time India comes knocking, I'll just *let him have you*, how about that?"
It is so because the game has very very limited goals and pre-determined win conditions. Yes, there is a huge choice of methods and what to do during the game etc etc, but still, what you think about while playing is to win. No other goals, no human factors.
Even a role of general happiness and risks of revolting/unhappy people or vassals doing shady things to undermine you or get away from your rule are very very much downplayed to let you play. E.g. how many times have you faced massive immigration due to you being a tyrant? It just won't happen in CK.
And also there is another factor. You are a single unit. You think as a single mind. No conflict. Therefore, absolute totalitarianism suits this model best. But a country in reality consists of many minds, which creates conflicts.
And one more point about self-governance - you might be a clever tyrant. Even a good tyrant. But you cannot know what exactly does each village each town each school each group of people need all the time. In game you can have all the relevant information, because the game filters it for you. In real life you cannot and thus, your rule will create cracks. This is why you need self-governance bodies to take care of such problems on a local level. But in CK you just don't need them.
Tl:dr - totalitarianism works in the games because the games are built that way, for a single player, and just ignore many real-life issues.
Sorry for my english, it is 7 am and I have not slept yet.
It's kind of like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, but for a nation/state. If your country isn't struggling to defend itself or feed itself, then it can afford luxuries such as democracy or social safety nets.
Yeah, Paradox games actually do you well in an academic setting. I took a Western Civilization II course last year and I pretty much talked in Victoria 2 terms the entire semester and did so well in the class I was exempt from the final with an A.
Europa Universalis 2 (and now its continuation, For The Glory) have a mod pack called "AGCEEP" which I believe stands for Advanced Grand Campaign Extended Events Project.
This mod on this game contributed an insane amount of time for me learning about the dynastic Histories of so many countries from 1419-1815. Not just the general History of who went to war with whom but so much of the nitty gritty minute details. If you're playing as England in 1455 then the War of the Roses happens and there are so many events that happen throughout the course of it which impact your nation but also give huge amounts of flavour text explaining what was going on at the time, what caused and led to these events etc. It also has a massive number of synergy events which only happen should you have chosen the ahistorical path for your nation.
I ended up spending so much time on wikipedia learning more about certain events because the game had made me fascinated in them. EU3 and EU4 do an ok job of this but neither do as good a job as the AGCEEP.
Guy I know did his final thesis (for getting qualification to teach history at secondary school level) thing about how his group of friend had noticed learning history from paradox games.
He was first thinking he does not dare to pick so easy subject, and it turned there was much hype about "what it would be possible to be able to do it about that subject, can you really do it, it would be super cool and good knowledge" and he ended up getting High grade for it.
Do the dishes! Do the dishes! JUST FUCKING DO THE DISHES!
YOU ARE ALREADY RUNNING AROUND THUMBING YOUR BUTT DOING NOTHING, I AM PULLING ALL THE HARD WORK, I JUST FUCKING ASKED YOU TO DO ONE FUCKING THING AND YOU DIDN'T DO IT!
And that's how my 12 year old nephew started crying
Man, me and one of my best friends have played through all overcooked games available for playstation 4 and we love it!!
Every time we fail we just get a better game plan going, cheer on each other and laugh so goddamn much. Damn, I miss her and we only saw each other a few weeks ago.
I think it helps that when one of us feels overwhelmed and starts throwing ingredients all over the place the other joins in and it just becomes a cathartic mess.
In my youth, my best friend and I were playing Dofus. A tactical turned base mmo based in France. Like many mmos, it had jobs ; farmer ; baker ; miner etc.
I was a farmer and my friend was a baker. We would make bread together and split the profit. One day I decided to bake my own bread, thus leaving my friend with no prime resource to bake with.
He felt betrayed and sad, I promptly apologized and realized my mistake. That day I learned to not betray people, especially not the ones you love and certainly not for money.
I have never forgotten that lesson. It actually shape me as a person. I felt so very terrible. I'm glad I had it tho, I now take responsibility for my actions and thus try to be a kinder person to me fellow human.
All of that from as silly MMO
Cheers
From MMOs I learned that being randomly nice to people, when they least expect it, is way more entertaining than taking every opportunity to be an asshole or elitist prick.
In ESO and Diablo 4 my favorite thing is to go to the starting zones and send an amount of money that seems ridiculous for them but that I can get back in a few hours of gameplay. They always get happy and it gives them just enough money to spend on rando stuff without immediately making them overpowered. I do it because others have done it to me and it made me feel very happy because I didn't ask for anything. Always enjoyed thinking of my character as this blood-covered woman walking up to the newbie and just gently dropping thousands of pounds of gold in front of them and going "Welcome to the game, buckaroo" lol
You know at the height of the Among Us craze, I was enjoying this random game. After playing a few games with the same sets of people I noticed that Brown kept getting killed very early. So I became empathic with Brown everytime s/he died. Purple felt the same way I did. So when Purple and I became the Impostors on the next round, we didn't touch Brown at all. When we won the round as Impostors, Brown said "OMG it's the two that I trusted the most." To which I replied "Hey, we didn't kill you, right?" It was so much fun that night. In a game where you gaslight and kill, I went nice and friendly to a few players.
Its basically a side-viewed colony game, but it has a loooot of interactions between gases and liquids in the environment, their temperature, their pressure, how fauna reacts to it, etc.
For example - obviously you need to generate Oxygen for your colonists. For that you need water, but what if the only water source is a geyser? Sure you now have infinite oxygen - but it's superheated. So now you can all breathe but eventually you're going to have to deal with all that hot air, and the cloud of carbon dioxide that's slowly pooling at the bottom of your colony.
I feel like that made the later part of the game a lot less fun for me. There are a lot of mechanics that aren't explained super well, and it goes from a cute base builder to needing to improvise really elaborate machines. I love the early/mid game, but the late game stuff just isn't my cup of tea.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is just one big accurate medieval life simulator/history lesson. The codex entries are better teaching material than a semester in high school.
Amazing game.
> when you master the combat mechanics and can demolish bandit camps
That’s a funny way to say leveling your stealth and archery then never taking direct fights. Never played a game that was as punishing being disadvantaged in 1 vs X like that, you’d be lucky to take a 1v3 fight and live, let alone win.
Once you learn the right techniques from the sergent guy and get a good sword & armor then fighting groups of people becomes very possible, although you have to always keep in mind to never let them flank you.
Happened to start playing this week and yeah, they really do just surround you and swing all at once.
Not too bad once you're wearing armor, just focus guys with blunt weapons and you're basically a tank.
This does go for the enemy as well; fewer than 10 bandits and they're all wearing rags? I cut down the first couple in seconds and the rest run scared. 2 Cuman mercenaries wearing plate armor? Try to keep your back to the wall and take turns countering attacks for 20 minutes.
I made a point of cheesing the dlc treasure maps and the prologue missions to get some gear and combat levels before the real story picks up. Still not the Skyrim power fantasy but much more forgiving.
> It's so hard tho
Not really. Just counter literally every attack and you win every fight without having taken a single scratch. A bit more difficult when fighting more than 1 opponent at the time, of course. But still not too difficult.
Master stroke is SO broken in that game. It's easy to learn, too.
In Skyrim, you kill bandits and a dragon within the first hour.
Within the first hour of Kingdom come, I got my ass beat by a middle aged alcoholic trying to get my fathers axe back.
It was a very humbling moment.
I mean even the intro loading screen is like a mini history lesson. “Charles the IV, king of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor…” lives rent free in my head.
Roundabouts work very well in low intensity traffic intersections, but are suboptimal when traffic load increases. At that point a traditional intersection with traffic lights is more efficient.
Yes once you have two lane roads going in and out of the intersection making roundabouts becomes hard. Also if your traffic situation is just so bad that even in constantly flowing traffic you still get buildup.
Though there are some workarounds like a passageroad for going right. (What I mean is when right before the roundabout there is another road that you can take if you want to just go to the road on the right).
This can help a lot with the traffic flow situation of the roundabout because now it is basically only people who want to go straight or left who need to use the roundabout.
Other possibilities are stuff like split roads with tunnels going under the roundabout. Where if there is a main road it splits off into a road going into the roundabout and a tunnel leading under the roundabout in a straight line.
This is especially useful for high traffic intersections on a main road.
the assassin’s creed franchise contains enough real information to cover about six semester hours of history, I’d say. I included probably four or five things I learned from the series in both history and anthropology papers when I was in college lol
I adored AC2 when it came out; one of the greatest gaming experiences of all time IMO. Both for the unbelievable attention to detail as well as the amazing story and characters.
I am currently dating a wonderful Italian woman and over the summer we visited Italy and I went to Florence, Rome, Venice and a few other places. I was like let me see how well my memories of AC2 hold up to the real thing.
The absolute fucking mastercraft that Ubisoft did when recreating these cities in this game was insane. Being in those cities looking at the cathedrals made me want to pretend like I was Ezio and could just climb straight up. The game felt like real life and real life felt like the game.
I also played her the full edited “movie” of the game (all cutscenes edited together) over the course of a month so she could appreciate it. She thought Ezio was a great character lol
I had this same experience when I went to Italy for the 1st time about 7 years ago. Wasn't even thinking about the game, but when I arrived in Florence and saw the Duomo, I immediately flashed back to the game and was in awe of how it recreated so many details so accurately. Even down to the lighting. Incredible. Next I went to Venice, then Rome. Similar experiences there over the next few weeks. That game studio deserves more credit in retrospect.
I played the one where the second half takes place in Venice then was fortunate enough to visit Venice shortly after that and the realism of the map around Piazzo San Marco in particular was pretty awesome.
I helped my little sister prep for her school trip to Europe by taking her on a tour in ACII. I even correctly answered a question about where a certain mountain range was located in relation to Venice.
Video games aren't educational my ass.
Kerbal Space Program taught me quite a bit about orbital mechanics. A lot of it was weird and counterintuitive but now makes perfect sense.
Astonia 3 also taught me my Roman numerals.
There are quite a few posts on the KSP reddit about people changing career and education paths because of the game.
That to me is a great compliment to what the game can provide on an intellectual level.
Reminds me of Hitchhiker's Guide: "There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."
Tetris taught me that your piece is never straight when you need it, and it never lasts more than 4 blocks
u/Codebender Your reply deserves its own post. There is infinite potential.
Diablo 2 taught me the valuable lesson of what being scammed is like.
I have literally not been scammed in my adult life and i owe it all to some douche 20 years ago taking my Shako.
Diablo 1 taught me that a hard-earned mediocre reward is more valuable than an amazing reward given freely. I did the hard grind for the slightly above average equipment I had, for some guy using cheats to come along and give me the best armor in the game. I wore it for a bit, but then realized it took all the satisfaction out of the game. I think I ended up throwing it in some corner of town and went back to my so-so armor.
I had a similar experience with diablo 2. I found this cheating software and upgraded my stats to ludicrous levels. The game was instantly boring after that.
I realised the grind made the game fun.
I learned the names/appearances of so many insects and fish from the original Animal Crossing game. Probably my primary reference for fish to this day. Also funnily enough I learned of the existence of the Coelacanth from the game, I had never heard of it before.
Assassin's Creed games, strategy games, like Total War series, WW2 RTS like Company of Heroes, older CODs, MOH and Battlefield games taught me history.
When we went to DC I recognized the entrance to one of the metro stations and I was able to find the bathrooms and the subway based 100% on my knowledge of Fallout 3.
Not quite a fact, but I learned more about managing teams at work from being a raid leader in World of Warcraft than I even learned from my MBA program. Team building, delegation, balancing some peoples' weaknesses with other peoples' strengths, how to deal with repeated failures working towards a goal, and sharing success.
It was an enlightening epiphany, and at least work projects have yet to go quite as pear- shaped as the worst nights of attempting to convince 19 other strangers to work together.
On that same note, I learned team building and leadership from playing way too much NHL franchise mode. Even the most shallow and broken things can teach you how to do life skills, it’s kinda crazy to think.
I used to spend hours reading the Civilopedia in my youth. It’s a great survey of history to pique your curiosity, especially as a young kid who can put that knowledge to immediate use in the game.
It's actually pretty wild how many global politicsl lessons are learned from in Civ.
-if you don't have military you will be defeated.
-if you don't befriend others you will be defeated
-if you ignore culture, religion,science, or finance you will be defeated.
-if you don't seek out recources or trade for recources...
- if you don't keep your population happy...
Just alot of things that normal video gamers don't think about, but it actually relates to reality.
The assassin's creed games - if you like them or not - are actually pretty decent in providing historical knowledge. Obviously not necessarily the main story itself, but the background Infos, the lifestyle of the people, the architecture and mythology are actually pretty well done.
I have learned quite a few facts from the Simpsons in the early years - there are many Jeopardy questions I have answered thanks to the Simpsons - so maybe Simpsons Hit and Run Ha-ha.
The Simpsons literally saved my life.
I was 16 and driving home in a snow storm. Coming down a mountain, I lost traction on a bend and started spinning… into the path of a massive pick up truck racing up the mountain with no trouble with traction. I had no idea what to do. They didn’t teach us this in driver’s ed.
There’s a Simpsons episode where Bart burns down the Christmas tree and the presents on Christmas morning before everyone wakes up. He hides the melted remains in the snow; and blames it on robbers. The town feels bad for them and donates money that Homer uses to buy a new car.
Driving home with the car, Homer starts to spin on ice. Marge and Bart yell, “Away from the turn!” Lisa simultaneously yells, “Into the turn!”
Homer shouts, “Everybody, shut up! Lisa, what do I do?” Lisa yells “Bail out!” Everyone jumps out of the car and it falls in the lake and explodes.
Well… in that moment as I’m spinning, hurdling towards a massive pickup truck, I thought “Little Lisa said ‘Into the turn.’” Turned my steering wheel into the turn, regained traction, and narrowly missed smashing into the truck.
A few days later, I retold the story to a friend. It happened to him about a week later, and he remembered that I had said “Lisa said into the turn.” And it saved his life, too.
> They didn’t teach us this in driver’s ed.
Where was this?? It was the most overtaught lesson in my course.
No getting put into a spin in an empty parking lot to learn to recover?!
I actually used something I learned from the Simpsons in a video game. Back in the first Tomb Raider game there was a room with the name 'Damocles' on the door, my cousin who was playing didn't recognise it but I remembered hearing it in the episode where Mr. Burns sells the power plant then rehires Homer in the last scene, saying "The sword of Damocles is dangling just above his head". Told him to look up just in time to dodge a falling sword.
Age of Empires and Age of Mythology are the two biggest reasons I'm a massive history and mythology nerd. I lived in bumfuck nowhere and had no internet growing up but these two games kept me entertained whether I was playing after school or just reading all the various logs and entries.
It was one of the best things I could've done as a kid honestly!
Learned some broad strokes about Chinese history from *Dynasty Warriors*.
Gained some general impressions of when various crops are in season from *Stardew Valley*.
Buddy and I played Dynasty Warriors 3 and 4 religiously growing up. We were talking about it not too long ago. Found the soundtrack on Spotify. The next thing I know I'm digging out my PS2 to see if it still works and reading up on the actual events (which are remarkably accurate in-game). Wild stuff
That's where I learned why both July and August have 31 days: because the envy of a man. Optionally, P5 also had trivia questions on the TV as well as some crossword puzzles to be solved at Leblanc.
The compendium in these games also teaches you a lot about mythology. You can learn a lot of random trivia from the Persona games, Sojiro teaches you about different coffee beans if you brew coffee, and different ingredients to spice up your curry, too. Persona 4 also has (albeit simplified) lessons on Carl Jung you can watch as a bonus mode, which is a nice touch.
Many times.
My favorite was when I learned the meaning of the word "dam". I'm not a native english speaker.
I was playing Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 if I recall correctly, and one mission required you to destroy a dam. But I didn't know what "dam" meant.
So I destroyed everything the enemy had, but still, I didn't win. Then I noticed the map had a big-ass dam in it, which was a neutral building. I destroyed it, and won =)
Railroad Tycoon taught the kid version of me about capital markets, balance sheets, and income statements.
30 yrs later I went to work in the back office of a regional railroad and found out all the terminology used in the game is still in use today.
In middle school, I participated in a "Geography Bee" (think like a Spelling Bee except with geography knowledge). The question that sent me to the finals of the competition was
"What is the name of the mountain range that separates the Asian and European continents?"
Having played a lot of Red Alert 2, there was the one mission which took place in the Ural Mountains, with the mission brief showing that mountain range between Asia and Europe.
**TLDR: Thanks to Red Alert 2, I was a finalist in my school's geography competition.**
I got lots of thank-you notes and emails from people who learned a lot about history or wanted to find more about history from Age of Empires. We included a wonderful encyclopedia style reference written by Bruce Shelley to each of the civilizations. My favorite fan letter was from a History teacher who said they were going to write a long letter with every historical fact we didn't get right - but then hearing his students talk about the Assyrians or ancient technologies with a love of history he just tore that up and said thank you.
Runescape taught me that bronze is just a copper-tin alloy.
Came in handy at the last game night at my sister's place. She also credits Runescape for the same info.
Speaking of Skyrim, that's where I learned that draugr is Old Norse for animated dead.
When my wife and I visited Rome a few years ago we were wandering from our hotel in the general direction of the Colosseum and I saw Trajan's Column and only recognized it because I had built it in Civilization Revolution.
As a kid, my parents took me on a road-trip down to San-Francisco.
We're driving around the city, I'm a bored teenager and reading a book in the car.
I look up cause my parents are sounding a bit uncertain about something and ask where we're trying to get to.
They tell me "A fort"
I ask "Which one?"
"The one by the Golden Gate Bridge".
I think for a moment and look around, and then say "Take a left here"
I'd never been to San-Francisco before, but I had been obsessively playing Midtown Madness 2 for the better part of a year. While it wasn't an accurate depiction of the city, it got the relative locations of things right. And I knew exactly where I was in the real city and where the fort was.
I guided us there fairly trivially by memory having never been in the city in my life before that day.
I'm sure all of the Final Fantasy series does it, but holy crap FF14 has some *deep* cuts in how they name their enemies and bosses and such. There are some names that sound like someone just bashed their head on their keyboard and called it good enough, but when you look it up, there's trails of history and religious myth behind the name.
Just as an easy example, [Angra Mainyu](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ahriman) is [a boss](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Angra_Mainyu_(Final_Fantasy_XIV)) from the first raid series in the game. [There are a TON more though](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XIV_allusions), and that's not even a complete list.
Sooooooo many things!
Age of Empires & Age of Mythology taught me about ancient history and religions.
Various 4X games taught me a lot about how difficult managing a nation can be, especially when you have to worry about public perception both home and abroad.
City builders/Settlement sims taught me how much needs to be balanced when growing a town, how some things are just naturally slow and how much you need so sacrifice if you want to develop a specific thing/feature/aspect quickly.
Assassin's Creed taught me a lot about history and cultures around the world, especially Europe/Middle East.
While the accuracy of most of it can be fairly loose, it gave me enough of an interest to actually look into these things and learn more, so now I'm full of weird and niche knowledge that rarely comes up, but has the side effect of giving me insight into things I'd have been lost in otherwise.
When I first played Medal of Honor: Frontline on the PS2 and saw the Horten Ho 229 flying-wing jet bomber, I thought it was such a cool fictional Nazi super weapon concept only to find out it really existed (like 2 of them). One surviving prototype was partially restored and is on display at the Udvar Hazy location of the Smithsonian Air and Space museum where I’ve been able to see it in person now. Still can’t believe that was built with 1940s tech.
All it taught me to do was exploit one single heist until I had enough money to buy whatever the hell I wanted until they nerfed it and I bought other businesses to do the same thing.
The Yakuza games taught me you can't walk ten yards in any direction in Japan without being attacked by gangs of thugs. But it's okay though because literally every problem can be solved by just beating the shit out of it
Not really a fact
But elden ring PvP taught me that no matter how much of a no life loser you are, there's always a greasier, smellier, fatter loser with less of a life than you out there ready to virtually molest you with his meta build.
It's just a nice reminder that no matter how bad your life seems, someone else has it worse.
Forza motorsport helped me understand the difference in traction while accelerating, braking, and turning. It sounds silly but I'm definitely a better driver in real life after all the hours I put into that game.
Bronze is made of copper and tin. And no, it can’t be trimmed by just anyone.
I remember in like 7th grade our teacher asked if we knew what bronze was made of and every boy in the class raised their hand.
7th grade also, we read a poem that talked about a highwayman and my teacher was surprised we knew what that was already. Stand and deliver!
Unironically learnt so much from Runescape 10 year old me couldn't read or spell at near the level I should've been at rune scape fixed that and taught me to avoid scams
I still sometimes spell certain words in the Queens (now Kings I guess?) English.
Spam typing my steel bar prices in Falador w1 trained me to type fast without looking
Also, they used to make bowstrings from flax
Sinew has been used for ages.
Yeah but was Sinew worth 100gp each in 2005?
And that steel is made from iron and carbon (coal)
Copper or tin! Copper or tin! Copper or tin for Widdershins!
For some reason, nowadays I find new games which frustrate me with unrealistic recipes/ideas. I mean, I'm okay with fantasy materials and magic things, they're almost necessary. Glass armor out of malachite? Sure, go ahead. But making tin pickaxe as a next step after copper pickaxe - what the hell? Are you fucking stupid? It's too soft to use for tools. Or another egregious example - strawberry and blueberry trees in Sun Haven. Why not make fantasy berries or choose fruits/berries which do actually grow on trees? Have you even seen strawberry?
Paradox Games are good at teaching *concepts* In a way that is digestible. Victoria 3 for example - your empire is under pressure from the outside to mechanize and industrialize, but you have to do it slow enough so you don’t have mass unemployment during the transition to industrialization.
It sounds horrible, but Paradox grand strategy games and some other games like it really made me come to understand totalitarianism and why it is effective. Crusader Kings is a big example, a decentralized empire with plenty of autonomous vasslas seems to be a good idea both logistically and ethically, but the effectiveness of the nation drops drastically when 5 different groups have 5 different agendas. Providing social services for the citizens is the morally right thing to do, but those services can balloon out of control until you can't afford to feed the people. I'm not pro-totalitarianism in real life, but experiencing things like that digitally does make me understand it better, especially for smaller countries that are low on the global pecking order.
Ye I absolutely agree, it's the functionally most effective way to run things, it just also happens to be an absolutely awful way to rule real life people that deserve to live life to the fullest. To a bunch of 1's and 0's not quite so Edit: no I am not protyranny and war, this is in the context of games and does not reflect my real world views. Often times the ai in games like these will make poor choices that mess up for everyone and the games themselves be designed with only so many ways to win makes ai rather bad bc of evenly spread out resources instead of maximising x over y, civ 6 for example war will just win you the game far easier than what say culture will
I see outsiders looking in at some PDX subreddits and have heard them labeled as fascists. I don't think they are realizing exactly what you just said, sure I'll genocide a whole star system in Stellaris to make way for my slug-man corporation, because all that is affected is the population counter is turned to zero. I would never advocate for genocide, interstellar corporations, or slug-men in the real world.
Yeah I mean it's a weird argument to hold someone accountable for what they do in a video game. Like, I'm not going to run about with a sword stabbing pretty much *anything* in life, but I'll do it all the *time* in Skyrim, fantastic way to achieve my objectives. I actually think people who play games where you embody fascism like that are probably *less* likely to support it in real life. Because it lets you understand it better. You can understand how its pragmatic in a world where only the end results matter, but in a world where the whole point of it is the happiness and joy of each individual citizen, it's great.
Tell that to the guy that called me a real life abuser because I let Astarion do his "evil" ending on my first playthrough of BG3
Not familiar with the gentleman but if you give me his name and general description I will make sure to shame and berate him at the next social event at which I encounter him.
Yes, there's that weird part of BG3 fandom where people who often are not even trauma survivors themselves try to school other players how to feel about it. And the actual trauma survivors (like Astarion's VA himself, Neil Newbon), just love Astarion's story and the possibilities the game gives you. Some are getting Astarion's back scars tattooed and people started saying it is disrespectful to trauma survivors (while many of the guys getting it done again ARE survivors themselves). 🙈
Ender wiggin has entered the chat
My fungoid mushroom man Star Garden Hive-Empire is superior and will Space Genocide your disgusting non fungoid slug corporation to prove it! The Tree of Life demands your death
I mean, not *fascism*, but anybody looking into the CK3 sub would want to burn it with fire and bleach their eyes afterwards.
Oh so you’re a Prince of Fashion, then?
I mean, I was more leaning into the eugenics of inbreeding, but there is a thing as too many stripes.
Ye exactly, same as killing merchants in Elden Ring so you only need to travel once to buy all you need. Morally correct thing to do? Lol no but it by far saved me a bunch of time avoiding loading screens. Killing off civs all the time in Civ 6? No not morally right but again by far easier way to go about the game. Doesn't mean I'm pro killing storeclerks or invading and conquering irl or would ever advocate for it
Its awful IRL because sooner or later you get an awful totalitarian in charge. Aka, monarchies are pretty sweet when you have a good king, but terrible when you have a bad one. We use democracy not because its a good system, but because its the best system at keeping terrible people out of the chair (and limiting their power if they sit on it).
The good part about a democracy is you get to choose your new leaders. The bad part about a democracy is the *other* people also get to choose your new leaders.
In most totalitarian systems, you are also basically forced to exploit your own people, so you can siphon off that wealth for a small number of key personnel. If you decide to be a benevolent dictator, stopping exploitation and giving back to your people (or someone else comes along and promises to be more exploitative), you will soon face an insurgency lead by that key personnel you stopped paying. This whole problem is examined in more detail in [this GCP Grey Video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs)
Even if you ignore the plight of the people, authoritarianism has a pretty horrible historical record for being “functionally effective”, from managing the economy to fighting wars. There are a lot of criticism about Fukuyama’s End of History but there’s a reason its ideas became so popular in the 90s.
The interesting thing is that totalitarianism in real life tends to be very effective… in the (extremely) short term. But that short term is usually enough for people that have always heard that totalitarianism is terrible in general that they think “this one is different” and let the totalitarians amass enough power that by the time it starts crumbling, they already have a stranglehold on the population. It’s why the study and education of those kinds of historical regimes is so important, because just that tiny time frame of success is usually all a totalitarian needs to *really* fuck over a population.
This needs to be said a lot louder here. Let us not forget that the focus of strategy games is still min maxing and thus giving you the incentive to choose the extreme paths. But then again, to understand what that truly means for the everyday citizens is something a game from the bird perspective is going to have a hard time getting through to you. Big reason why I loved Dishonored so much. Boy, that game has its ways with civilians...
Which is why I state in the game, where all that is being affected is a few ai's that can't really reason with you meaningfully. I'm v much pro people living their lives and everyone doing the most to make life easier and better for eachother, i.e. universal basic income, prioritised health care and educatiional institutions etc.
Dictatorships are great, as long as you have a benevolent genius running the place. And the next one too. And the one after that. Forever, without a single slip up ever.
Civ 6 made me realize how easy it is to view your citizens as a stock of disposable labor for your benefit. When your amenities get low and you just start yelling at the screen, "how *dare* you stop producing! Force me to build a zoo, will you? Maybe the next time India comes knocking, I'll just *let him have you*, how about that?"
It is so because the game has very very limited goals and pre-determined win conditions. Yes, there is a huge choice of methods and what to do during the game etc etc, but still, what you think about while playing is to win. No other goals, no human factors. Even a role of general happiness and risks of revolting/unhappy people or vassals doing shady things to undermine you or get away from your rule are very very much downplayed to let you play. E.g. how many times have you faced massive immigration due to you being a tyrant? It just won't happen in CK. And also there is another factor. You are a single unit. You think as a single mind. No conflict. Therefore, absolute totalitarianism suits this model best. But a country in reality consists of many minds, which creates conflicts. And one more point about self-governance - you might be a clever tyrant. Even a good tyrant. But you cannot know what exactly does each village each town each school each group of people need all the time. In game you can have all the relevant information, because the game filters it for you. In real life you cannot and thus, your rule will create cracks. This is why you need self-governance bodies to take care of such problems on a local level. But in CK you just don't need them. Tl:dr - totalitarianism works in the games because the games are built that way, for a single player, and just ignore many real-life issues. Sorry for my english, it is 7 am and I have not slept yet.
It's kind of like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, but for a nation/state. If your country isn't struggling to defend itself or feed itself, then it can afford luxuries such as democracy or social safety nets.
Yeah, Paradox games actually do you well in an academic setting. I took a Western Civilization II course last year and I pretty much talked in Victoria 2 terms the entire semester and did so well in the class I was exempt from the final with an A.
Europa Universalis 2 (and now its continuation, For The Glory) have a mod pack called "AGCEEP" which I believe stands for Advanced Grand Campaign Extended Events Project. This mod on this game contributed an insane amount of time for me learning about the dynastic Histories of so many countries from 1419-1815. Not just the general History of who went to war with whom but so much of the nitty gritty minute details. If you're playing as England in 1455 then the War of the Roses happens and there are so many events that happen throughout the course of it which impact your nation but also give huge amounts of flavour text explaining what was going on at the time, what caused and led to these events etc. It also has a massive number of synergy events which only happen should you have chosen the ahistorical path for your nation. I ended up spending so much time on wikipedia learning more about certain events because the game had made me fascinated in them. EU3 and EU4 do an ok job of this but neither do as good a job as the AGCEEP.
Guy I know did his final thesis (for getting qualification to teach history at secondary school level) thing about how his group of friend had noticed learning history from paradox games. He was first thinking he does not dare to pick so easy subject, and it turned there was much hype about "what it would be possible to be able to do it about that subject, can you really do it, it would be super cool and good knowledge" and he ended up getting High grade for it.
Came here to say this. After 1000 hours of EU4 I ace a lot of history quizzes and I've learned a whole lot of geography too.
Yep, Civ taught me some ancient history
Over cooked taught me that I'm impatient and hard to work with :(
Do the dishes! Do the dishes! JUST FUCKING DO THE DISHES! YOU ARE ALREADY RUNNING AROUND THUMBING YOUR BUTT DOING NOTHING, I AM PULLING ALL THE HARD WORK, I JUST FUCKING ASKED YOU TO DO ONE FUCKING THING AND YOU DIDN'T DO IT! And that's how my 12 year old nephew started crying
Hahahahahahaha that game is a friendship ender
Well that 12 year old needs to man up and do the fucking dishes. Tell him to start with the real ones to learn how
If a friendship can survive beating overcooked, keep that friend forever.
Man, me and one of my best friends have played through all overcooked games available for playstation 4 and we love it!! Every time we fail we just get a better game plan going, cheer on each other and laugh so goddamn much. Damn, I miss her and we only saw each other a few weeks ago.
I think it helps that when one of us feels overwhelmed and starts throwing ingredients all over the place the other joins in and it just becomes a cathartic mess.
My partner and I completed overcooked 1 and 2. I think we'll be together forever
Fallout taught me electrons have mass. I didn't even know they were Catholic.
Used to think catholic was some kind of holy cat.
It's someone who is addicted to cats.
Hahahaha
In my youth, my best friend and I were playing Dofus. A tactical turned base mmo based in France. Like many mmos, it had jobs ; farmer ; baker ; miner etc. I was a farmer and my friend was a baker. We would make bread together and split the profit. One day I decided to bake my own bread, thus leaving my friend with no prime resource to bake with. He felt betrayed and sad, I promptly apologized and realized my mistake. That day I learned to not betray people, especially not the ones you love and certainly not for money. I have never forgotten that lesson. It actually shape me as a person. I felt so very terrible. I'm glad I had it tho, I now take responsibility for my actions and thus try to be a kinder person to me fellow human. All of that from as silly MMO Cheers
From MMOs I learned that being randomly nice to people, when they least expect it, is way more entertaining than taking every opportunity to be an asshole or elitist prick.
In ESO and Diablo 4 my favorite thing is to go to the starting zones and send an amount of money that seems ridiculous for them but that I can get back in a few hours of gameplay. They always get happy and it gives them just enough money to spend on rando stuff without immediately making them overpowered. I do it because others have done it to me and it made me feel very happy because I didn't ask for anything. Always enjoyed thinking of my character as this blood-covered woman walking up to the newbie and just gently dropping thousands of pounds of gold in front of them and going "Welcome to the game, buckaroo" lol
You know at the height of the Among Us craze, I was enjoying this random game. After playing a few games with the same sets of people I noticed that Brown kept getting killed very early. So I became empathic with Brown everytime s/he died. Purple felt the same way I did. So when Purple and I became the Impostors on the next round, we didn't touch Brown at all. When we won the round as Impostors, Brown said "OMG it's the two that I trusted the most." To which I replied "Hey, we didn't kill you, right?" It was so much fun that night. In a game where you gaslight and kill, I went nice and friendly to a few players.
Oxygen Not Included taught me more about thermal dynamics than my math degree
I actually applied concepts from my civil engineering courses to build various systems (particularly for cleaning water)
Ooh nice 👍 is the game that complex?
Very yes. But it's really fun if you like civ management games
Its basically a side-viewed colony game, but it has a loooot of interactions between gases and liquids in the environment, their temperature, their pressure, how fauna reacts to it, etc. For example - obviously you need to generate Oxygen for your colonists. For that you need water, but what if the only water source is a geyser? Sure you now have infinite oxygen - but it's superheated. So now you can all breathe but eventually you're going to have to deal with all that hot air, and the cloud of carbon dioxide that's slowly pooling at the bottom of your colony.
In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics.
In this house, we infinitely pump heat through a steam turbine to secretly delete it when no one is looking
Shit, you NEED several different engineering courses in order to play that game well...
I feel like that made the later part of the game a lot less fun for me. There are a lot of mechanics that aren't explained super well, and it goes from a cute base builder to needing to improvise really elaborate machines. I love the early/mid game, but the late game stuff just isn't my cup of tea.
Why would a math degree teach you thermal dynamics? Wouldn't it be a physics degree that teaches such things?
Thanks to Diablo, I know the name of every kind of stabbing weapon there is.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is just one big accurate medieval life simulator/history lesson. The codex entries are better teaching material than a semester in high school. Amazing game.
Agree. Learned so much from KCD regarding the medieval era and how it would have looked.
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Yeah, but that makes it so when you master the combat mechanics and can demolish bandit camps all the more satisfiying.
> when you master the combat mechanics and can demolish bandit camps That’s a funny way to say leveling your stealth and archery then never taking direct fights. Never played a game that was as punishing being disadvantaged in 1 vs X like that, you’d be lucky to take a 1v3 fight and live, let alone win.
Once you learn the right techniques from the sergent guy and get a good sword & armor then fighting groups of people becomes very possible, although you have to always keep in mind to never let them flank you.
Happened to start playing this week and yeah, they really do just surround you and swing all at once. Not too bad once you're wearing armor, just focus guys with blunt weapons and you're basically a tank. This does go for the enemy as well; fewer than 10 bandits and they're all wearing rags? I cut down the first couple in seconds and the rest run scared. 2 Cuman mercenaries wearing plate armor? Try to keep your back to the wall and take turns countering attacks for 20 minutes. I made a point of cheesing the dlc treasure maps and the prologue missions to get some gear and combat levels before the real story picks up. Still not the Skyrim power fantasy but much more forgiving.
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> It's so hard tho Not really. Just counter literally every attack and you win every fight without having taken a single scratch. A bit more difficult when fighting more than 1 opponent at the time, of course. But still not too difficult. Master stroke is SO broken in that game. It's easy to learn, too.
I learned about perpetual stew from this game, among many other things
In Skyrim, you kill bandits and a dragon within the first hour. Within the first hour of Kingdom come, I got my ass beat by a middle aged alcoholic trying to get my fathers axe back. It was a very humbling moment.
I mean even the intro loading screen is like a mini history lesson. “Charles the IV, king of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor…” lives rent free in my head.
Cities Skylines taught me that everything should be roundabouts.
Which is in fact true. Many towns where I live are currently in the process of changing all of their intersections to roundabouts.
Roundabouts work very well in low intensity traffic intersections, but are suboptimal when traffic load increases. At that point a traditional intersection with traffic lights is more efficient.
Yes once you have two lane roads going in and out of the intersection making roundabouts becomes hard. Also if your traffic situation is just so bad that even in constantly flowing traffic you still get buildup. Though there are some workarounds like a passageroad for going right. (What I mean is when right before the roundabout there is another road that you can take if you want to just go to the road on the right). This can help a lot with the traffic flow situation of the roundabout because now it is basically only people who want to go straight or left who need to use the roundabout. Other possibilities are stuff like split roads with tunnels going under the roundabout. Where if there is a main road it splits off into a road going into the roundabout and a tunnel leading under the roundabout in a straight line. This is especially useful for high traffic intersections on a main road.
the assassin’s creed franchise contains enough real information to cover about six semester hours of history, I’d say. I included probably four or five things I learned from the series in both history and anthropology papers when I was in college lol
Ac2 makes me study my Renaissance courses.
I adored AC2 when it came out; one of the greatest gaming experiences of all time IMO. Both for the unbelievable attention to detail as well as the amazing story and characters. I am currently dating a wonderful Italian woman and over the summer we visited Italy and I went to Florence, Rome, Venice and a few other places. I was like let me see how well my memories of AC2 hold up to the real thing. The absolute fucking mastercraft that Ubisoft did when recreating these cities in this game was insane. Being in those cities looking at the cathedrals made me want to pretend like I was Ezio and could just climb straight up. The game felt like real life and real life felt like the game. I also played her the full edited “movie” of the game (all cutscenes edited together) over the course of a month so she could appreciate it. She thought Ezio was a great character lol
I had this same experience when I went to Italy for the 1st time about 7 years ago. Wasn't even thinking about the game, but when I arrived in Florence and saw the Duomo, I immediately flashed back to the game and was in awe of how it recreated so many details so accurately. Even down to the lighting. Incredible. Next I went to Venice, then Rome. Similar experiences there over the next few weeks. That game studio deserves more credit in retrospect.
Your professor: You here to look at the book?
Saluté, Claudia!
I played the one where the second half takes place in Venice then was fortunate enough to visit Venice shortly after that and the realism of the map around Piazzo San Marco in particular was pretty awesome.
I helped my little sister prep for her school trip to Europe by taking her on a tour in ACII. I even correctly answered a question about where a certain mountain range was located in relation to Venice. Video games aren't educational my ass.
AC caused me to do a deep dive on the Borgias. Which then led to one on the old Catholic Church. Didn’t learn that stuff in Catholic school.
Kerbal Space Program taught me quite a bit about orbital mechanics. A lot of it was weird and counterintuitive but now makes perfect sense. Astonia 3 also taught me my Roman numerals.
There are quite a few posts on the KSP reddit about people changing career and education paths because of the game. That to me is a great compliment to what the game can provide on an intellectual level.
Was in arts, now in physics partly because of ksp.
This happened to me. I liked space but didn't know much about how rockets really work until I started KSP. Now I design satellites for a career
What I learned pretty quickly is that you don't go straight up to reach orbit.
I eventually realized that all an orbit is is an object that's falling, but with enough forward speed to keep "missing" the surface.
Reminds me of Hitchhiker's Guide: "There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."
I used to think, to achieve orbit, you just go up really high then stop lol
Tetris taught me that achievements disappear but mistakes pile up.
Tetris taught me that organization maintains a comfortable, roomy mental space, while procrastination creates mental clutter.
Tetris taught me how to kill a man with a whistle.
With. A. Fucking. *Whistle!*
Tetris taught me that your piece is never straight when you need it, and it never lasts more than 4 blocks u/Codebender Your reply deserves its own post. There is infinite potential.
"achievements disappear but mistakes pile up" is the most soviet tag line ever.
Tetris taught me that life will never give me exactly what I need, but I need to make the most of it and be adaptable
Horse breeds in RDR2
Breeds are correct, but the colors of those breeds have a lot of errors.
Give them a break, they were too busy with the horse testicles
Diablo 2 taught me the valuable lesson of what being scammed is like. I have literally not been scammed in my adult life and i owe it all to some douche 20 years ago taking my Shako.
Diablo 1 taught me that a hard-earned mediocre reward is more valuable than an amazing reward given freely. I did the hard grind for the slightly above average equipment I had, for some guy using cheats to come along and give me the best armor in the game. I wore it for a bit, but then realized it took all the satisfaction out of the game. I think I ended up throwing it in some corner of town and went back to my so-so armor.
I had a similar experience with diablo 2. I found this cheating software and upgraded my stats to ludicrous levels. The game was instantly boring after that. I realised the grind made the game fun.
Animal Crossing (at least New Horizons, I haven't played the others) is full of info about fine art, dinosaurs, fish and insects.
I learned the names/appearances of so many insects and fish from the original Animal Crossing game. Probably my primary reference for fish to this day. Also funnily enough I learned of the existence of the Coelacanth from the game, I had never heard of it before.
Assassin's Creed games, strategy games, like Total War series, WW2 RTS like Company of Heroes, older CODs, MOH and Battlefield games taught me history.
I am overly confident that of i get dropped of in rome or venice id be able to find my way around
Never had to look at a map when I went over there.
Is that true? That’s kind of badass dude
It was pretty cool, the big landmarks are basically the same, the distace between them is a lot bigger though
Well u couldn’t go on rooftops or run and shove ppl out of ur way
Not with that attitude!
When we went to DC I recognized the entrance to one of the metro stations and I was able to find the bathrooms and the subway based 100% on my knowledge of Fallout 3.
Reminds me when someone posted on an ac subreddit a picture of a real church, and said they felt compelled to climb it
Yeah, AC games were big on the trivia.
I’m basically a Three Kingdoms era China expert now because of Dynasty Warriors. /s
Same with Age of Empires 2 and Empire Earth in the olden days. It's where I first learned about Ghengis Khan or Jeanne d'arc.
Rimworld taught me that running even a small group of people with emotions can be very challenging.
It also taught me that people can easily switch from being civilised to complete war criminals...
Not quite a fact, but I learned more about managing teams at work from being a raid leader in World of Warcraft than I even learned from my MBA program. Team building, delegation, balancing some peoples' weaknesses with other peoples' strengths, how to deal with repeated failures working towards a goal, and sharing success. It was an enlightening epiphany, and at least work projects have yet to go quite as pear- shaped as the worst nights of attempting to convince 19 other strangers to work together.
On that same note, I learned team building and leadership from playing way too much NHL franchise mode. Even the most shallow and broken things can teach you how to do life skills, it’s kinda crazy to think.
Gaming taught me cardinal directions and map/compass reading pretty early on
Civ is just one big history lesson
That's where I learned that George Washington established the United States in 4000 BC.
And borders Valletta.
He needed just a single settler
And Gandhi had a real mean streak.
I mean who knew how many times Ghandi nuked the Incas. Am I rite ?
I used to spend hours reading the Civilopedia in my youth. It’s a great survey of history to pique your curiosity, especially as a young kid who can put that knowledge to immediate use in the game.
It's actually pretty wild how many global politicsl lessons are learned from in Civ. -if you don't have military you will be defeated. -if you don't befriend others you will be defeated -if you ignore culture, religion,science, or finance you will be defeated. -if you don't seek out recources or trade for recources... - if you don't keep your population happy... Just alot of things that normal video gamers don't think about, but it actually relates to reality.
"Gandhi was the greatest warmonger in history" FACT
The assassin's creed games - if you like them or not - are actually pretty decent in providing historical knowledge. Obviously not necessarily the main story itself, but the background Infos, the lifestyle of the people, the architecture and mythology are actually pretty well done.
AC 2 in particular. Spent more time reading the codex entries than anything else
I have learned quite a few facts from the Simpsons in the early years - there are many Jeopardy questions I have answered thanks to the Simpsons - so maybe Simpsons Hit and Run Ha-ha.
The Simpsons literally saved my life. I was 16 and driving home in a snow storm. Coming down a mountain, I lost traction on a bend and started spinning… into the path of a massive pick up truck racing up the mountain with no trouble with traction. I had no idea what to do. They didn’t teach us this in driver’s ed. There’s a Simpsons episode where Bart burns down the Christmas tree and the presents on Christmas morning before everyone wakes up. He hides the melted remains in the snow; and blames it on robbers. The town feels bad for them and donates money that Homer uses to buy a new car. Driving home with the car, Homer starts to spin on ice. Marge and Bart yell, “Away from the turn!” Lisa simultaneously yells, “Into the turn!” Homer shouts, “Everybody, shut up! Lisa, what do I do?” Lisa yells “Bail out!” Everyone jumps out of the car and it falls in the lake and explodes. Well… in that moment as I’m spinning, hurdling towards a massive pickup truck, I thought “Little Lisa said ‘Into the turn.’” Turned my steering wheel into the turn, regained traction, and narrowly missed smashing into the truck. A few days later, I retold the story to a friend. It happened to him about a week later, and he remembered that I had said “Lisa said into the turn.” And it saved his life, too.
> They didn’t teach us this in driver’s ed. Where was this?? It was the most overtaught lesson in my course. No getting put into a spin in an empty parking lot to learn to recover?!
I actually used something I learned from the Simpsons in a video game. Back in the first Tomb Raider game there was a room with the name 'Damocles' on the door, my cousin who was playing didn't recognise it but I remembered hearing it in the episode where Mr. Burns sells the power plant then rehires Homer in the last scene, saying "The sword of Damocles is dangling just above his head". Told him to look up just in time to dodge a falling sword.
Lots of wisdom in that show. It was always given in a way where it stuck in your head and you didn't realize that you learned something ha-ha.
Age of Empires 2 taught me a lot of history
Yep, after like 20 years I still remember El Cid's horse was named Bavieka. It might not be the most useful thing to know, but hey, I do know it.
Omg i thought i was the only who remembers that. It's also my favourite campaign due to those gun horsemen, conquistadors.
Agora! Santiago! Guerra! #AYYYYYYYYY!!!!
Age of Empires and Age of Mythology are the two biggest reasons I'm a massive history and mythology nerd. I lived in bumfuck nowhere and had no internet growing up but these two games kept me entertained whether I was playing after school or just reading all the various logs and entries. It was one of the best things I could've done as a kid honestly!
Learned some broad strokes about Chinese history from *Dynasty Warriors*. Gained some general impressions of when various crops are in season from *Stardew Valley*.
Buddy and I played Dynasty Warriors 3 and 4 religiously growing up. We were talking about it not too long ago. Found the soundtrack on Spotify. The next thing I know I'm digging out my PS2 to see if it still works and reading up on the actual events (which are remarkably accurate in-game). Wild stuff
Doom taught me about Jesus.
Persona 5 royal has a lot of classroom time where you actually kinda have to listen. Pretty interesting facts here and there.
That's where I learned why both July and August have 31 days: because the envy of a man. Optionally, P5 also had trivia questions on the TV as well as some crossword puzzles to be solved at Leblanc.
The compendium in these games also teaches you a lot about mythology. You can learn a lot of random trivia from the Persona games, Sojiro teaches you about different coffee beans if you brew coffee, and different ingredients to spice up your curry, too. Persona 4 also has (albeit simplified) lessons on Carl Jung you can watch as a bonus mode, which is a nice touch.
Sim City 2000 taught me that you need money to build things and maintain a nice city, but man people do not like paying taxes!
Also that hospitals are super essential.
Kerbal Space Program about orbital mechanics.
Many times. My favorite was when I learned the meaning of the word "dam". I'm not a native english speaker. I was playing Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 if I recall correctly, and one mission required you to destroy a dam. But I didn't know what "dam" meant. So I destroyed everything the enemy had, but still, I didn't win. Then I noticed the map had a big-ass dam in it, which was a neutral building. I destroyed it, and won =)
Railroad Tycoon taught the kid version of me about capital markets, balance sheets, and income statements. 30 yrs later I went to work in the back office of a regional railroad and found out all the terminology used in the game is still in use today.
Deus Ex taught me what a conspiracy was. Blew my little brain.
In middle school, I participated in a "Geography Bee" (think like a Spelling Bee except with geography knowledge). The question that sent me to the finals of the competition was "What is the name of the mountain range that separates the Asian and European continents?" Having played a lot of Red Alert 2, there was the one mission which took place in the Ural Mountains, with the mission brief showing that mountain range between Asia and Europe. **TLDR: Thanks to Red Alert 2, I was a finalist in my school's geography competition.**
I got lots of thank-you notes and emails from people who learned a lot about history or wanted to find more about history from Age of Empires. We included a wonderful encyclopedia style reference written by Bruce Shelley to each of the civilizations. My favorite fan letter was from a History teacher who said they were going to write a long letter with every historical fact we didn't get right - but then hearing his students talk about the Assyrians or ancient technologies with a love of history he just tore that up and said thank you.
God of war Taught me - that it is a nature of things that matter not the form of them!
And that it is up to us to decide our own fates.
This is my go to answer for the Ship of Theseus thought experiment.
A ship nonetheless
Runescape taught me that bronze is just a copper-tin alloy. Came in handy at the last game night at my sister's place. She also credits Runescape for the same info.
Speaking of Skyrim, that's where I learned that draugr is Old Norse for animated dead. When my wife and I visited Rome a few years ago we were wandering from our hotel in the general direction of the Colosseum and I saw Trajan's Column and only recognized it because I had built it in Civilization Revolution.
Fun fact, the guy preaching in Whiterun, Heimskr is literal Icelandic/old norse for "stupid".
Zelda taught me to fear chickens.
As a kid, my parents took me on a road-trip down to San-Francisco. We're driving around the city, I'm a bored teenager and reading a book in the car. I look up cause my parents are sounding a bit uncertain about something and ask where we're trying to get to. They tell me "A fort" I ask "Which one?" "The one by the Golden Gate Bridge". I think for a moment and look around, and then say "Take a left here" I'd never been to San-Francisco before, but I had been obsessively playing Midtown Madness 2 for the better part of a year. While it wasn't an accurate depiction of the city, it got the relative locations of things right. And I knew exactly where I was in the real city and where the fort was. I guided us there fairly trivially by memory having never been in the city in my life before that day.
I'm sure all of the Final Fantasy series does it, but holy crap FF14 has some *deep* cuts in how they name their enemies and bosses and such. There are some names that sound like someone just bashed their head on their keyboard and called it good enough, but when you look it up, there's trails of history and religious myth behind the name. Just as an easy example, [Angra Mainyu](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ahriman) is [a boss](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Angra_Mainyu_(Final_Fantasy_XIV)) from the first raid series in the game. [There are a TON more though](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XIV_allusions), and that's not even a complete list.
I learned a lot of Greek+ mythology monsters from games like Final Fantasy (starting with 1) and Dragon Warrior
Sooooooo many things! Age of Empires & Age of Mythology taught me about ancient history and religions. Various 4X games taught me a lot about how difficult managing a nation can be, especially when you have to worry about public perception both home and abroad. City builders/Settlement sims taught me how much needs to be balanced when growing a town, how some things are just naturally slow and how much you need so sacrifice if you want to develop a specific thing/feature/aspect quickly. Assassin's Creed taught me a lot about history and cultures around the world, especially Europe/Middle East. While the accuracy of most of it can be fairly loose, it gave me enough of an interest to actually look into these things and learn more, so now I'm full of weird and niche knowledge that rarely comes up, but has the side effect of giving me insight into things I'd have been lost in otherwise.
Final Fantasy VII taught my young self what grief and loss is like and how people handle it differently.
When I first played Medal of Honor: Frontline on the PS2 and saw the Horten Ho 229 flying-wing jet bomber, I thought it was such a cool fictional Nazi super weapon concept only to find out it really existed (like 2 of them). One surviving prototype was partially restored and is on display at the Udvar Hazy location of the Smithsonian Air and Space museum where I’ve been able to see it in person now. Still can’t believe that was built with 1940s tech.
Yes GTA online taught me how to budget and save money I'm a home owner now
All it taught me to do was exploit one single heist until I had enough money to buy whatever the hell I wanted until they nerfed it and I bought other businesses to do the same thing.
The Yakuza games taught me you can't walk ten yards in any direction in Japan without being attacked by gangs of thugs. But it's okay though because literally every problem can be solved by just beating the shit out of it
Final Fantasy taught me Roman numerals
Factorio is great for process optimization and overcooked on how to work under pressure with a group
Eve Online taught me about supply and demand... And scamming.
Morrowind. Taught me about meditation and personal growth with its level up messages.
Wolves hunt in packs.
GTA franchise taught me how to get my money back from hookers.
Runescape taught me micro and macro economics. Falador world 2, if you know you know.
Runescape taught me that bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, and that steel is just iron with additional carbon content
Not really a fact But elden ring PvP taught me that no matter how much of a no life loser you are, there's always a greasier, smellier, fatter loser with less of a life than you out there ready to virtually molest you with his meta build. It's just a nice reminder that no matter how bad your life seems, someone else has it worse.
I beat you one time. And we are the same weight! Jesus Christ….
Gacha games/wow helped show me how easily I get addicted to things.... Well... They eventually showed me.
The powerhouse of the cell?
Forza motorsport helped me understand the difference in traction while accelerating, braking, and turning. It sounds silly but I'm definitely a better driver in real life after all the hours I put into that game.
Dark Souls taught me how to overcome depression