If you ever frequent deal sites, even something like Groupon, you’ll notice how easy it is to be seduced into buying crap. Wait, 50% off something I would never consider buying otherwise? I must be saving money on that deal! It’s a weird psychological reaction, because I suspect it isn’t as effective for many online customers when retail stores do the same thing.
Video games are capable of being political in an interesting manner. Games such as Beyond Good and Evil, Bioshock, and the Metal Gear Solid series make quite valiant attempts at discussing, at the least, some minor political theory or ideologies.
The problem is that most games that attempt doing so can’t even be called valiant attempts. It would be interesting to see a game that truly tackled the issue of politics in a deep manner. Maybe the Civilization series…sort of?
Some people may read this strip as making fun of engineers, which it is to some degree. However, I really see it as more making fun of the extremes to which teachers will go to try to interest students in a class they’re completely disinterested in. If you’ve ever taught, you’ve had that moment of realization like Professor Hobo in this strip. No matter what you do, your students are fundamentally more interested in Halo.
If scary movies can give children nightmares, then surely difficult video games must be similar, right? Zelda and Mario never gave me nightmares, but I do remember a few dreams populated by Tetris pieces. Those were rough years, 24-27.
Whether or not video games are art is actually a fairly silly discussion. Roger Ebert is probably the most famous name to weigh in on the discussion, but long term it seems inevitable that games will be considered artistic at some level. What’s humorous to me, as a lifelong gamer, is the argument that the average shooter is high art. That’s sort of like arguing Twilight as high art literature. Just because some games may be art doesn’t mean they all are.
Is it odd that Professor Hobo carries around a ball and slinky? Yes, probably so. Though I did have a professor once who carried a ball to class each day. I think mostly to throw at sleeping students.
Gamers love to complain about the prices of video games, but just about every person I know who is serious about the hobby has a backlog of games to play. One could deduce they’re hardly too expensive, or else gamers simply have too much money to spend. Of course, you could probably use the same logic towards food, but there’s few achievements or trophies you get with it.
As a teacher, I love when it when I hear learning should be more like a video game. Not to say that I haven’t ever learned from a video game (I learned a great deal about world deities from the Final Fantasy series), but simply making learning “interactive” doesn’t seem to add much to the experience. Clickers do nothing that raising a hand can’t do.
Still, the free moving 3D cameras of many games are quite valuable when teaching shot composition in a video class. This is especially true since you’re unlikely to have 30 cameras to have them actually work with. So, do video games belong in education? Probably about as much as TV does, which is to say sparingly.
As a teacher, I see this a lot. Young men confused why young women aren’t as interested in video games as them. I also see young women confused why young men don’t understand this. The same reason young women don’t understand young men not being interested in Katherine Heigl films.
I’m intrigued by where Microsoft takes this franchise next. Halo: Reach is a great game, but I’m not sure a new developer can do much but ruin the perfect balance they currently have. I think Halo is more about balance than just about any other game series currently out there (except maybe a fighting game like Street Fighter).
This strip went through several rewrites before finally settling on this version. One of the other versions was simply an expanded version of this strip, but the joke felt like it went on too long.
I long ago gave up on explaining any video game to a non-player. The truth is that most are beyond ridiculous when given a moment or two of thought.
It’s also always enjoyable to note that you’re the bad guy when you think you’re the hero.
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