The Value of Games

TODO: Still just a blurb. No structure. Needs more Wikiness.

As analogies. Entry level simulations. Illustrated applied mathematics. Analogies with the capacity to be complete in 4 dimensions. Games employ storytelling, mathematics, and metaphor; the highest order forms of language. For teaching, example, and explanation, games ahev an incredible potential.

However, as demonstrated and often exploited by the ever growing mass market, games can be an awful addiction. A legal, popularized drug, like cigarettes in their heyday. Time wasting. Mind numbing. Reductive. Modern idols; accepting every offering and returning nothing. The most successful games are often the most exploitative; seeking to develop/tunnel into weaknesses of the pysch to hook more dedicated customers.

The value is in return on time invested. Hand eye coordination is a cop-out. What do you learn from a game? Does it help you chill? Or are you just compulsively driving for some arbitrary goal that you can only value until you've achieved it?

Edutainment is a failure. A game is edutainment when it fails to properly integrate the subject with the game mechanics. Buying chips in a casino game and figuring profit margins in a Koei simulation are far more compelling methods of training arithmetic than having to do naked addition and subtraction problems to get fuel for a ship to bounce around for a minute.