Ekolite
Deity
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2007
- Messages
- 5,451
don't joke, the format of civilopedia is exactly the same of a history book.
Are you serious? Dear dear. When you are studying history, you study events, almost always it is events and dates and time periods, none of which you can read about in sufficient depth in the pedia. For example, if you were teaching medieval history to a bunch of school kids, handing them a couple of pedia entries of the medieval units in the game is not going to help them learn! The information is out of context, vague in many areas, and sometimes completely irrelevant. At the end of the school year, yes they may be able to describe a longbowman, or a castle, but they would have only the vaguest idea of what actually happened during this time period.
If it was in the format of a history book, relevant information would be displayed, with appropriate sources and citations listed, about the crucial events of the time. Events. The Hundred Years War, the Black Death, whatever. This is of course completely irrelevant for the pedia, which serves as a reference material mainly while providing a little bit of background information in each article. Therefore, pedia =/= history book format.
I have yet to hear of a class of students where everyone was interested in any given lesson (except maybe sexual education for teens).
Very few school children would be interested in Civilization. Not everyone is interested in computer games, and of those who are, only a small minority are interested in this genre. Those who do not enjoy computer games would see this as little different to standard textbook work.
I assume that if a teacher uses a game such as Civ to teach, it will use it as a teaching tool, I doubt present the lesson as a hour or more of break for gaming.
This game cannot be used for educational purposes. Games sacrifice reality for playability. History is not a game and does not work like one, therefore games cannot teach history. I do accept that games such as Europa Universalis may be able to give players a feel for the era they are set in, which may help to gain their interest, or gain a vague understanding of how things, most obviously politics, worked in that era, however this is still utterly inadequate to teach with on any large scale. Civilization, or RFC, cannot IMHO do even this. It is just simply not designed to.
Perhaps a game-style medium for teaching could work in certain areas, but these would have to be specially designed for educational purposes and would be unlikely to be at all commercially successful.