Yo! I'm finally starting to write more articles consistently (make a wish, fast!) but I need to take a good chunk of screenshots so I can have a good selection to pick from, you know how I am, I love to have my things full of colors and with not much text together for an easy reading. So meanwhile, why not making a sequel to my last article? There I said that I wanted to talk about how games can teach you but it was a bit difficult for having to use examples from my life, luckily I though about something for that and I'm pretty sure that we'll not see WWII again (hopefully).
In our lives we learn something new all the time, non-stop. From the dumbest thing you could consider to something that you may thing it will be helpful to you, maybe
But what if I also told you that games localized in your language can also help you to write better or read faster? The game you would never have thought of for this case was the one that helped the little me to read my native language and I'm not kidding. I don't know how many times I've played Resident Evil 4, but surely more than 20; the first time I couldn't read almost a single word and I had to guess a lot. I remind you, when I played this game I had to select Easy difficulty because it was super hard for me, I'm saying this so you can try to think how old I was at the time. It was one of the few actual good games I had, it was playing that or Shrek the Third and I ASSURE YOU, you don't want to pick Shrek the Third... So at the end I learned what those words meant and what the story was about besides the enemies saying ''detrás de ti, imbécil!''
Actual reaction of me playin' Shrek
I'm pretty sure video games also helped other kids with reading problems or even adults to read more consistently and
not lose the touch. Still, learning has to be F U N and if you don't give something rewarding then where is the fun part of that suffering? You may be wondering where I'm going with this and that's maths, I hate them, I was super good only as a kid but now my tiny brain doesn't have space for them anymore, now there's only room for RPGs and Yugi Muto. Sadly, Shadow Hearts III it's one of my favorite games of all time and has a series of side quests with 30 random math problems that you have to solve in less than 10 seconds each, this may be hard or easy depending on how good and fast you are. But this is a fun way for kids (and stupid people like me) to improve with school subjects, something that video games don't do much but should do more, with a reward at the end of course. In this case I believe it was a summon, and not a bad one.
Next! Would you believe that some people are like Roronoa Zoro in real life? No, I don't mean people using a katana in their mouth but more like people not having an idea of how to orientate themselves, well I'm one of them! I get lost a
lot and sometimes I have trouble remembering the cardinal directions and where they are when for example a NPC ask you to go south east and look for a cave. Luckily I'm getting more used to it thanks to games using them a lot, although it still keeps happening to me. That's a fun fact I wanted to throw but related to this are locations, another example; I never went to the sea or a beach in my life, but games gave me the chance to see them through the
screen, learn how they look and sound. Final Fantasy X are full of them and I felt like I was there with the fantastic sound design it has. Video games can give you the chance to see and learn about places like Japan and their culture, the first Samurai Warriors gave me the push to start learning the Sengoku Jidai just for how badly explained the story was in the game, it got me excited for the characters and when I started knowing their past, rivalries, fights, it felt like the best game in the world. I'm not even in love with Japan like some people really do thanks to media, but many historical games were helpful for get people interested so they could start researching, Age of Empires II it's another good example with the campaign it has or even if it sounds super funny and stupid, God of War help people to get into Greek mythology. The old legend says that Medal of Honor and Call of Duty were historical games ages ago and you were be able to experience some of the most important World War battles.
Remember when in the last article I said that teenagers don't know what they want to be because they are in that period of their lives when they don't know too well who they even are? Well, for a lot of people, games gave them the knowledge of what they wanted to study or work as adults. Naoki Hamaguchi, the director of Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth works as game developer because he played games as a kid and wanted to make something like Final Fantasy VI, a game from 30 years ago. Satoru Iwata way before working in the industry, was making games inside calculators because he liked to play. How many adults are now teaching history and literature because they loved the stories in their games? Even artists, Toby Fox started making hacks of EarthBound/Mother and now is a famous game dev who music was inspired by Yoko Shimomura and Falcom JDK. Another example, one of my friends is going right now to a philology university because he got interested in game localization. I want to design sounds thanks to hearing a lot of funny blows, beeps and steps in many games, I got interested in keyboard thanks to Yuzo Koshiro's work in Ys III: Wanderers from Ys and Akira Yamaoka's work with Silent Hill 4: The Room. I want to teach kids and teens thanks to games who show me that is possible to teach in fun ways, like Banjo-Kazooie's tutorial who is full of jokes between characters and makes you WANT to read all the tutorials.
Learning is a life process, you can learn things who are not just school subjects as you can see.
Characters can give you words of strength so you don't give up and keep walking, like
Vyse from Skies of Arcadia once said ''Impossible is just a word to let people feel good about themselves when they quit.'' I learned to be a good and fun person thanks to them. I related to some of their stories and I learned to face things along with them, all of those who felt alone while playing, really weren't, they have messages from other adults through games.
This article was short but I wanted to show some love to how games can increase your knowledge and make your learn about cool stuff, these days I'm studying Japanese through them, taking notes and researching while replaying Dragon Quest I. If you want to learn a language I encourage you to try to do the same!
By the way, for some reason the article was published without me wanting to, so I'm sorry for any convenience!
Next! Would you believe that some people are like Roronoa Zoro in real life? No, I don't mean people using a katana in their mouth but more like people not having an idea of how to orientate themselves, well I'm one of them! I get lost a
Learning is a life process, you can learn things who are not just school subjects as you can see.
Characters can give you words of strength so you don't give up and keep walking, like
This article was short but I wanted to show some love to how games can increase your knowledge and make your learn about cool stuff, these days I'm studying Japanese through them, taking notes and researching while replaying Dragon Quest I. If you want to learn a language I encourage you to try to do the same!
By the way, for some reason the article was published without me wanting to, so I'm sorry for any convenience!
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