My girlfriend’s mom never let her have video games because she warned her, “you’ll rot your brain.”
Well, it’s happened we just bought a Wii. Our brains are gone. Fried. Even Barack Obama just warned me on CNN that I better “turn off the video games and start demanding excellence.”
I’m not a video gamer. Never was. I wasn’t even allowed to have toy guns as a child so blowing digital people up was never appealing either. I’ve only heard of Halo and Grand Theft Auto because my first graders told me about them. (Turns out those games might not be so appropriate for five and six year olds).
However, when I first saw Super Mario Brothers at Jeremy Dicker’s house back in the fifth grade I knew I had to have it. I think my first memory was watching Mario go down into the pipes to uncover the subterranean world below. Maybe it was some sort of child curiosity about what lay beneath (remember this was before the movie, What Lies Beneath which might have answered that question if only I’d seen it).
I told my mom about my new obsession and she bought me a Nintendo Entertainment System (did she not care that my brain would rot?). And I spent hours playing it. I remember I lost interest at one point. Then I met Alex. He knew how to get to the secret warp zone and I was hooked again.
Twenty three years later and we’re using the state of the art and hard to come by Nintendo Wii but our favorite game to play is still Super Mario Brothers. What is it about the game that is so hypnotic.?
- Perhaps it’s the music. I notice the music in a several of the most popular video games has the same quality of getting into your head. A search of Youtube uncovers many covers of the Super Mario song played by different instruments.
- It’s also a game with very clear beginnings and endings. You want to complete level eight. While this guy can do it in five minutes. It’s going to take me much longer and you keep playing to try beat the game.
- There are many secrets. Warp zones. Bugs. Hidden bricks and unexpected pipe escapes. Like a primitive version of the TV show, Lost, it always feels like there are hidden secrets if only you knew where they were. Youtube reveals many of these secrets but in the 80’s all we knew was what we discovered by accident or heard about on the playground.
- Pattern recognition. If there’s a redeeming quality, it’s this. Enemies and obstacles move in predictable patterns that you only realize after repeated play. Your ability to notice and remember patterns increase through gameplay.
Is this mindless entertainment? There’s got to be something to video games. Chris Walsh makes the point that students will try and fail at video games thousands of times while they drop out of school when encountering similar obstacles. If there’s a point to this post it’s this…how can we harness the addictive qualities of these games and interest students through the same placement of mystery and wonder in our lessons?
We know students (and grownups, apparently) love video games. We need to teach using lessons from these games. What do the characters tell us? How do games make us experience reality? Engaging kids on their own turf will help teach them lessons they can really relate to.
Welcome to the dark side! Perfect timing for the Games unit in first grade. I just did a demo yesterday where we discussed what part of the video game system is the game. Is the xBox the game or is it the disk you put inside of it? Since we’re working on an expository unit, I’m thinking writing about how to turn on and play a game on the xBox will be easier for the 7-year-olds than telling me how to play Super Mario.
@ Mary Ann, I think yours is an example of culturally relevant teaching. So often people think of culturally relevant teaching as relating to cultures of twenty-fifty years ago when it is video games and television which are most a part of students’ cultures today and many teachers are totally unaware of them.
Marc Prensky, of “digital native” fame, argues that video-game-playing kids are learning the skills to succeed in the 21st century in a recent book, “Don’t Bother Me Mom – I’m Learning!”
While this isn’t a good excuse for non-stop video game playing, it seems to be an important source of learning for today’s kids.
Thanks Sandra for the book. I’d also recommend “Everything Bad Is Good for You” by Steven Johnson which argues that much of popular culture has been getting smarter and that there are additional merits to video games.
Thanks for the recommendation. I’m ordering it and his other book, Mind Wide Open. I think it’ll be an interesting counterpoint to the suggestion that our society is heading toward “Idiocracy.”
I think the reason someone might keep trying in a game and not in school is because if you fail in a game, you can always try again, whereas if you fail in school, that test is gone and the next one is only going to be harder. There’s a sense of trial and error that makes games so addicting.
Also, if you have the right teacher, I think students do feel that sense of wonder. Bill Nye the Science Guy had me thinking Science was cool all the way up through High School, and my grade six teacher got me into math like no one’s business.