GWJ Conference Call Episode 465

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, ARK: Survival Evolved, Rodina, Rocket League and Curse Voice, Video Games in Education, Your Emails and More!

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This week Shawn, Cory, Julian and community guest Sean McKenna (legopirate27) to talk about video games in education!

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind.

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Comments

Seek me out on Steam or Curse (Amoebism)! Rocket League is so much better with coordinated teams and buddies to chat with.

Edit: Seek out Cathadan as well, he's involved in the Curse thing much more than I am! Go team GWJ go!

00:01:50 ARK: Survival Evolved
00:10:06 Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
00:23:38 Rodina
00:31:21 Rocket League & Curse Voice
00:34:55 PC Hard-drive Failures & Organic LED screens
00:38:46 Video Games in Education
00:57:52 Your Emails

It's eh-LEE-mah! You're never going to get it right, Certis, are you?
You only have a year of gaming left - what do you play?
LobsterMobster's GoFundMe thread
Something that came up in the thread is that you can't always spend time with people when you're stuck in hospice, or other people are at work, so this is why the question was focused on gaming. Obviously, if I was terminally ill, I'd rather travel, tour wineries and restaurants, but that isn't always feasible when you're really, really ill.
Also, in all fairness, the thread was Shoptroll's idea in the first place.

Really enjoyed the topic this week. I grew up in the 80s so I played a lot of these "educational games". Most of these games were from the aptly name Learning Company: the Reader Rabbit series, Math Rabbit, Zombinis (which I think was mentioned), the Trail series (Oregon Trail of course, but also Amazon Trail and Yukon Trail), Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing (our dad made us, and we hated him for it at the time, but are incredibly grateful now). Also from the Learning Company, I have great memories of the Time Riders in American History game, which actually contributed much to my knowledge of American History before I ever had "CivAm" (American Civilization) courses in middle school.
I don't know that these games would "work" nowadays, but they certainly did back in my day.

Now get off my lawn.

Nice to hear a fellow Brit on the podcast ! Well done Sean McKenna, nice insights and enthusiasm.

When I was at my senior year at junior school, approx 1984 we had a Viking game that we were playing in class.
We were studying Vikings, and took a trip to York to see the Viking museum.
The game was a top-down strategy game in which you got to choose the crew of a ship, and sail to England to raid.
It taught me a lot about Vikings (obviously) but also about how to rape, loot and pilliage.
Essential learning for a 10 year old.

This goes back to the pre-PC era, but I had a history professor in college who used the old SPI game Terrible Swift Sword in class to help teach Civil War history. Another professor had us play Diplomacy in class when going through World War I.

On my phone so typing is limited, but I'm going to leave this blog here re Gone Home taught in a high school English class

http://www.ludiclearning.org/tag/gon...

The name you couldn't recall was Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan.

The community is batting 1.000 on being awesome guests! Great job legopirate27!

EDIT - I am sorry for using a baseball metaphor in my compliment. Let me rephrase and say that so far the community is pulling constant five wicket hauls.

TheHarpoMarxist wrote:

The community is batting 1.000 on being awesome guests! Great job legopirate27!

EDIT - I am sorry for using a baseball metaphor in my compliment. Let me rephrase and say that so far the community is pulling constant five wicket hauls.

Agreed, both of the community guests were (and are) awesome!

Rat Boy wrote:

The name you couldn't recall was Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan.

Right! I totally forgot to post that, I was bouncing up and down while listening. I'm just now making my way through the series, up to season 4, and loving it. I blame Katerin for covering it on the Heroine's Journey podcast.

TheHarpoMarxist wrote:

The community is batting 1.000 on being awesome guests! Great job legopirate27!

EDIT - I am sorry for using a baseball metaphor in my compliment. Let me rephrase and say that so far the community is pulling constant five wicket hauls.

*confers with third umpire* the metaphor was in-line. Nice one.

The MGSV effusion this week almost has me giving a rat's rear end about a Metal Gear game.

I'm tempted to buy it just so Certis won't feel so lonely.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

The MGSV effusion this week almost has me giving a rat's rear end about a Metal Gear game.

I'm tempted to buy it just so Certis won't feel so lonely.

I'm playing MGSV El Guapo!

IMAGE(https://masonellis.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/el-guapo1.jpg)

Mind you, only 2% in and haven't got to the dog or problematically nude women yet. But it is GOOOOOOD so far.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

The MGSV effusion this week almost has me giving a rat's rear end about a Metal Gear game.

I'm tempted to buy it just so Certis won't feel so lonely.

I'm playing MGSV El Guapo!

IMAGE(https://masonellis.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/el-guapo1.jpg)

Mind you, only 2% in and haven't got to the dog or problematically nude women yet. But it is GOOOOOOD so far.

These are good men, all three of them.

I love MGSV so much, I double-posted.

Eleima wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:

The name you couldn't recall was Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan.

Right! I totally forgot to post that, I was bouncing up and down while listening. I'm just now making my way through the series, up to season 4, and loving it. I blame Katerin for covering it on the Heroine's Journey podcast. :D

BAH! Drove me nuts! And I really try not to google mid-show. Seems like cheating. One of my favorite characters ever. The ultimate space-cleric! And a plant to boot!

Thanks for the kind words folks! Good fun to be involved in the show. I also appreciate the cricket translation

Pinkdino99: that game sounds awesome! I was at University up in York so the Viking influence on the city is really evident. It's great you have that memory tied in to Viking history.

If it involves hitting balls with sticks, I'm your man!

Spoiler:

This is why I am seldom invited to parties that have pinatas.

Rodina made an appearance? Wow, that's quite shocking. I'm glad the dev is still making enough to keep working at the game. Lots of promise.

Playing video games taught me English. Sure, most of pop culture is in English over here in Flanders (music, movies, tv-shows). But most of my vocabulary came from games like Civ I and II, or early nineties RPG's (Ultima 7 etc.)

Eleima wrote:

Really enjoyed the topic this week. I grew up in the 80s so I played a lot of these "educational games". Most of these games were from the aptly name Learning Company: the Reader Rabbit series, Math Rabbit, Zombinis (which I think was mentioned), the Trail series (Oregon Trail of course, but also Amazon Trail and Yukon Trail), Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing (our dad made us, and we hated him for it at the time, but are incredibly grateful now). Also from the Learning Company, I have great memories of the Time Riders in American History game, which actually contributed much to my knowledge of American History before I ever had "CivAm" (American Civilization) courses in middle school.
I don't know that these games would "work" nowadays, but they certainly did back in my day.

This was my childhood as well! I never hear anyone bringing up Time Riders but it was great. Some other semi-obscure "edutainment" games I used to love are The Secret Island of Dr. Quandary and Sierra's Lost Secret of the Rainforest.

dejanzie wrote:

Playing video games taught me English. Sure, most of pop culture is in English over here in Flanders (music, movies, tv-shows). But most of my vocabulary came from games like Civ I and II, or early nineties RPG's (Ultima 7 etc.)

This is a very cool angle, I completely forgot about language learning. Considering how conflict based Civ I and II were I can't help but feel this vocabulary could only sour your diplomatic relations with the English speakers!

Demyx wrote:

This was my childhood as well! I never hear anyone bringing up Time Riders but it was great. Some other semi-obscure "edutainment" games I used to love are The Secret Island of Dr. Quandary and Sierra's Lost Secret of the Rainforest.

I'd totally forgotten about Lost Sevret of the Rainforest!!!!
So cool we have all these older "edutainment" games in
commun!!

Any chance you guys will go deep in the MGSV pool of wonder? The weirdest things happen in these games.

Certis wrote:

These are good men, all three of them.

Maybe I missed it in the show, but horse poop can totally be used to spin out enemy vehicles.

Pretendbeard wrote:
Certis wrote:

These are good men, all three of them.

Maybe I missed it in the show, but horse poop can totally be used to spin out enemy vehicles.

You are not helping me not buy this game. I need to save that money for the donation drive, gosh darnit!

To heck with it! MGSV is now downloading!

Mr. Certis, if you're looking for Spoiler Section volunteers, you have my bionic dog sword.

Hahahahaha! Well, I'm 40 hours in and maybe half way through the main campaign? Good luck catching up!

Certis wrote:

Hahahahaha! Well, I'm 40 hours in and maybe half way through the main campaign? Good luck catching up! :drink:

IMAGE(http://funny-pictures-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Challenge-Accepted_3.jpg)

The more I hear about MSG V the more interested I get, and I've never played an MGS game outside of a PC demo for II (?). But yeah, I can't begin to justify spending the money on a game with a character like Quiet.