Tangential Learning through Video Games

[jireh the provider]

If you are reading this, if you can give as much detailed answers as you can, it can definitely help me on my college research paper for next week. I hope a lot of you can aid me here.

By the way, welcome to the thread talking about the lessons gamers like some of us here on Pokeheroes can learn from video games like the Pokemon Franchise.

Before I delve into the questions, one thing that I can share to you is the concept of Tangential Learning . If you don't know what that is, it is a modern teaching approach and game designing approach where people can learn any kind of lesson by doing hobbies that they want that is "enabled", NOT "enforced." If the video game enforces learning, Tangential Learning doesn't happen. But if it is "facilitated" or "enabled". I suggest that you watch a video about Tangential Learning by Extra Credits on youtube to have more details.

Just to give you an example as to how video games have enabled Tangential Learning in my experiences, here are two examples:

a. In the Pokemon Franchise, Jirachi is one of my personal all time favorite Pokemon. Due to how curious I was on her characteristics, I searched online and found more on her cultural origins on bulbapedia. That research lead me to learn more about the Tanabata Festival of Japan which I had come to learn to truly admire its lore. As a little fun fact, just a few weeks ago, I reported on literature class about Chinese Literature and also discovered that the Tanabata Festival's original source came from a popular Chinese Fable called The Weaver Girl and The Cowherd. Another element comes fro the Regi Challenge for I never knew how to solve those braile letters back in the day where I actually had to research about Braile writing just for me to solve the puzzle vack in 2005.

b. Another video game that got me a little bit inspired to learn about some iconic historical buildings come from the Assassins Creed Franchise where I take summary lessons about the iconic locations such as the Rome Coliseum, various churches, learn and appreciate the legacies of Leonardo Da Vinci,and learn more as to what made the Renaissance such an iconic historical era.

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So now here are my questions:

1. Can you name any video game title that you played or watched a lets play on Youtube in the past that made you interested on learning any kind of topic? What topic have you been able to learn or make you search about it?

2. Have you played any video game that drove you to learn any kind of language? Or have you learned words coming from a specific field of work, practice, business, or culture?

Just like my recent post, here is the link to the Pokemon exclusive content for my Tangential Learning questions for my thesis. For this page, you can post examples from other video game titles (like Undertale, Watch Dogs, Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty, DOTA 2, Mass Effect, Yokai Watch, etc) excluding Pokemon.

 

[Kyergr]

When I finished Bio-Shock Infinite it made me interested in the theory of the multiverse

 

[Mr. Uncompetitive]

I'm still pretty convinced that what ultimately made me switch my major to Computer Engineering and Computer Science was the amount of time I spent (and still spend) browsing tcrf.net last year

 

[Celever]

Since this is for your college paper, I'll answer seriously, and the series I have to name on this topic (if I'm understanding it right, anyway) is the Sid Meier's Civilization franchise. It sounds ridiculous, but because of how closely related to the real world these games are in terms of world history, I actually found it pretty interesting, and now I'm an ancient world history nerd. I suppose the main thing which triggered this was the Civlopedia, which gave a lot of background information the civs represented in the game and all of their unique units and buildings, as well as the specific leaders chosen as the spokesperson of the civs. I only really started caring about history and all that from first reading the Civlopedia, and I think it's especially important that it was introduced in a computer game considering the non-existence of obvious effects world history has on culture today, so it's a topic most people really know minimal about. Of course, I only ended up discovering the Civlopedia because the game was good, too. :U

Your example of Pokémon is also very important though, as each Pokémon has so many design aspects inspired by various real world cultures and myths. I've learned a lot about yokai and the like as a result of looking up their designs within Pokémon, but also more obscure concepts in the 1st world like, to give a random example, astral bodies as a result of Gothitelle's inspiration. The ability to easily choose what language you use to play through the game is nice as it's helped me with my Spanish class at school a bit, since I've played through both X and Alpha Sapphire in the language. These kinds of text-heavy games can also help with expanding English, as they use random words sometimes. Especially when the games are translated from a development language into English for international releases, as the translations try to be as direct as possible, and this can lead to some strange results; I still remember the word "aplomb" clearly from Prof. Birch's use of it in Gen III. Only time I've ever seen the word but I know what it means because of it :p

Good luck with your paper!