I think the most educational game I ever had was Zoo Tycoon 2. The game seemed fun to me and you weren't required to know much about animals to play it. All you had to do was click on an animal and a menu would pop up showing you everything they need to be happy and healthy. In the menu was also a purple dictionary icon and when you clicked on it you could learn more about the animal. I didn't need to, but since I liked all the animals, I read every single animal description in the game. After that I decided to get tons of books to know even more about animals. I think that game deserves to be talked about more.
This is so true. I don't read the animal description but i know that red panda, lemurs, moose, caribou, and other animals that I've never heard before exist only because i played zoo tycoon.
Actually inception doesn't mean "something inside something", or anything metarreferencial, as many people think. Inception was (in the movie) the concept of planting the seed of a thought in the mind of someone, for it to develop naturally. The word means "beginning" or "origin".
I agree that it's kinda odd how people use "X-ception" to talk about these sort of things. I mean, just using the term "Inception", I can sorta understand it, since it's a reference to the movie, but "Something-ception" always confuse me... I mean, the movie isn't called "Dreamception", and since you no longer directly reference the movie, this use of the word doesn't make any sense, since an "inception" is simply a beggining.
Skyrim made me look up what the different metals really are. I learned that corundum is basically rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. I also learned that orichalcum is an ancient term for a gold colored bronze.
One day, my English teacher was showing off a new calender with pictures of popular tourist destinations in Italy. I couldn't shake the feeling that I had seen them before, even though I've never been to Italy. Then I realized that I had cut my way through those places in Assassins Creed. That was a really cool feeling.
Speaking of Dynasty Warriors and learning. In Dynasty Warriors 7 there's a guy you can go to who will quiz you on the three kingdoms era. If you answer the questions correctly, he will reward you. Now that's some good tangential learning. It even provides you with a teacher.
Thank you for this video EC! This is the episode that inspired MatPat to start "Game Theory" :). A perfect example of Tangential Learning in games is Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker. Because of its in-game tape recordings, I learned about the Nuclear Deterrence Theory, The flora and fauna of Costa Rica, the historical struggles of Nicaragua, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the fundamentals of AI.
Yes it did Michael Recto but then Game Theory made awful “theories” -it hurts me to call them that- like “Mario is a Psychopath” or “Phoenix Wright is a criminal” they were heroes long enough to see them becoming villains
I think one of the best examples of this is Kerbal Space Program. Just through the game mechanics - by having rockets and planes that behave at least semi-realistically, with regards to their motion and aerodynamics, and by implementing Newtonian two-body physics for orbital mechanics, KSP manages to teach the player quite a lot about aerospace, and especially teach something which I think is very hard to convey about orbital mechanics - an intuitive understanding. And, since it is so ingrained into the game mechanics, that ensures that any player will learn those things, because you have to learn them to be good at the game.
This was exactly how I felt playing EU4. It is probably the best game for education I've ever played, I love history so much now that I'm planning on doing it in college. I became interested in Ottoman history because they're the first nation most people play, and when down a rabbit hole about Byzantium, Hungary, and eventually Austria and the HRE/modern Germany, none of which is taught in my school. My interest in all this actually led to me finding the Punic War series and by extension this channel! Now history is such a huge part of my life, that's what games can do.
On the exam: "Name at least two artists from Renaissance" Me: "That's cute! Have four of them: Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael" Tangential Learning rocks!
World of Tanks is, at least for me, absolutely wonderful in this department. Before I started playing, I saw all tanks as tanks, but now, I can identify most tanks I see in World War II documentaries on-sight, and have given a lot of thought into the various camps of tank design philosophy, and have learned a great deal about how strategy works simply by applying it as I play to improve my World of Tanks skills. World of Warplanes has started to have this effect on me (I am a massive fan of the XF5U even though I had hardly heard of it before I saw a trailer for the game that featured the plane) and probably even more so for World of Warships, especially since I've been interested in ships for several years now. One of the best parts about these games is that you actually get an unstated advantage in-game by learning: the developers, in every case, make sure that real life tactics in these sorts of battles can be reproduced in the game to a similar effect. For a World of Warships example (the game has an NDA over it at the time of writing, but I am not violating it because this information comes from a public Q&A with the developers), in real life the Yamato, a Japanese battleship, was sent on a mission to beach itself and become a stationary gun emplacement on the shore of Okinawa. The ship would have been unable to move and heavily damaged, but it certainly wouldn't be able to sink, and it would still be able to use all of its guns! The ship was sunk before it got there, but the "beached ships can't sink" idea is a very true one. In World of Warships, ships will have two health bars: a HP bar and a buoyancy bar. A player is eliminated from the game if all of their HP drains, and their HP drains through taking rounds from ships, ramming damage, or can instantly run out if the player's ship completely sinks. If the player beaches their ship, however, they will lose all of their buoyancy points _but_ they will still have HP left, granted the ramming of the beach will take a heavy toll on it! This means that the player's ship can't sink but the player can still shoot at enemies even though they can't move and took heavy damage! It's a virtual mirror of in-game tactics. Granted, the three games do take certain shortcuts that change how people play completely, but these shortcuts are ones to make the game more fun and action-packed, and still allow for analytic instances of real life mirroring like the one I just described. And on top of all of this, the games don't allow you to respawn, and repair costs rise relative to your earnings from matches as you obtain more powerful vehicles, until eventually even breaking even becomes a struggle, which leaves players in those higher-tier matches invested in the survival of their vehicles, preventing the blind rush found in respawn-permitting games and further encouraging use of real life-mirroring tactics. World of Tanks and World of Warplanes (and presumably World of Warships) also all include the "index" talked about in the video, in that the player can click a "vehicle information" tab or look in the research screen to find information that's useful to them positioned directly underneath a few-sentence summary of the vehicle, what it sought to accomplish from a design standpoint, when it was produced, how many were produce, and if it was produced, some examples of wars or even battles that the vehicle participated in. This can be especially useful for the obscure prototype vehicles that the game includes that actually further the player's knowledge by making them realize that World War II tanks weren't only the popular vehicles that they might have known of: for every Tiger, there was one or more Porsche Tiger that didn't get accepted for service and took its own path (in this case, modified into the Ferdinand/Elefant) or simply fizzled out, and _lots_ of VK 30.01 (H) vehicles, which were made by the same designer but failed, but had elements from its design worked into the successful vehicle. All of this from just a game where teams of tanks (and self-propelled guns) blow up other tanks (and self-propelled guns)!
Paradox Development Studio... History, politics, military strategy, macro economy, social structures. The devs keep claiming their games are not simulations, but a lot of fans disagree, but they are crazy hardcore (and that is because the mechanics that are complex = awesome), but then again it gives you a massive feeling of accomplishment for completing your goals. Knowledge building games are not something special. Physics is a big part of many games, strategy is used in almost all games and is also knowledge. Spore and biology... And if you really want to do well in many games a LOT of math helps out a lot. Did I misunderstand something, because indirect learning seems to be a norm associated with games? Maybe it was not on purpose or a core feature of a game, but learning something is almost unavoidable in any complex form of media, and gaming is in my mind the most complex form of media we have...
Assassin's Creed made me go back and look at all the moments in history that happened during the games, the Crusades, the Renaissance, the Golden Age of Piracy, The Seven Years' War, and the Revolution (Both American and French). I might be leaving a few out but my point is these games made me want to learn more about those time periods.
About when you mentioned quoted on the loading screens of games... I learned so many things from loading screens, too! Helpful tips in game or even real world factual information! The coolest thing a loading screen ever taught me was in Medal of Honor: Warfighter. The loading screen said told me that AK-47 assault rifles today are not real, authentic AKs because AK47 production stopped in like the 1970s. Most AK assault rifles are actually modern variations such as the "AKS" or "AKM" 74 series
Kerbal Space Program has taught me a great deal about physics, and a few interesting things regarding flight. I learned that the center of mass behind the center of lift is a very ineffective way to make a plane along with many other things.
Heh, same for me. Well I can't tell shit on a world map, but FS95 was the first thing that made me look at one out of own interest :P Something my teachers never managed through force.
I'm the kind of nerd that will look up philosophical analyses, musical analyses, thematic analyses, theories, etc etc etc, about video games when I get into them. Not quite the same thing as playing a game about WW2 and then looking up info on trench warfare, but similar. I get really invested in a game and want to learn everything I can about it, often to the point of getting sick of it for a bit after, which just gives me a chance to look into the next interesting game.
great examples of mine growing up were the medal of honor series, where i learned about the japanese invasion of the phillipines, the battle of guadacanal, and the siegfried line; and mgs3 where i learned about the davy crockett and the bay of pigs invasion
The portal series taught me mor about spacial geometry than a teacher ever did, it would be really nice if teachers were to realise the potential of games like these
Battlefield 1 did this REALLY well with their historically-accurate Codex Entries. I found myself learning so much about World War I by reading those. Ex: the fact that the propeller planes had synchronizers on them so that the front-mounted machine gun on the plane could fire right through the propeller blades as they were rotating, or the fact that the Eastern front of the war was the scene of some of the largest elite cavalry charges in history. They also encouraged collecting the codex entries really well. I was incentivized to play the game in order to unlock them by doing certain challenges so that I could read more codex entries. There's usually a narrator reading aloud the entry to an epic melodic background score while you're viewing it to really amp up the experience of "being there" while it happened.
Fun fact: the team at the Great War channel on youtube actually consulted on these. You can watch their channel which goes over events in the Great War 100 years after they happened, and also answers questions about the period.
BackfallGenius The weapons are terribly historically inaccurate. Like the clip side loaded fully automatic weapon that you start off with in multiplayer is a perfect example. Weapons that were fully automatic overheated and malfunctioned or jammed so much. Fully automatic weaponry could not just be carried by a soldier like a damn modern SMG and just aimed and shot with no jamming or malfunction with little or no recoil. There is a bunch weapons in BF1 that do not match the times. It just makes me mad how people have been brainwashed into thinking their WWI experts and pisses me even more off how BF1 paints WWI in such a different way than it really was. Tanks were not really "tanks" and "tank battles" were not really a thing.
well you are right, but I think hes talking about the greater historical context, you know like: where did this happen, how was that developed, that sort of thing its still a game and making it completely accurate would be kind of boring for many people. Sometimes realism isnt the best way to go, as it can lessen the fun and thus the willingness to learn (kind of a point they made in the video). Just imagine if you had to do a minigame after each mission where you had to disassemble and clean your guns... ok scratch that, that might actually be awesome if done in the right context, way and not too often... but I think you get my point.
The civilopedia is a great example. I remember when playing CIV3 (my favorite), whenever I opened the civilopedia to look up some fact or figure, I would find myself on an information spree. For example, CIV introduced me to the concept of oligarchy, and made me interested enough to look it up in other sources. Other examples would be foreign combat units, like the Persian Immortal. From that I discovered histories of ancient battles and the politics of the time, etc. All very fascinating.
The first game that got me deeply hooked this way was Age of Mythology, I think I probably spent at least as much time reading about the Gods, myths, and heroes as I did actually playing the game. It came in handy later too! In high school when we were assigned the Odyssey and I didn't want to do the homework, I still aced the test because I already knew everything from playing that game when I was younger!
Doing the quotes on the loading screens is great. I really enjoy seeing stuff like that. I just recently picked up a PS3 and started playing inFamous. I was pleasantly surprised to see that most loading screens, as rare as they are in the game, to have quotes from historical figures or philosophers. The thing I don't like, however, is that the game tends to enjoy throwing longer quotes on really short load times, which is frustrating.
As mentioned in the video, I got interested in and learned more about three kingdoms era China and Sengokujidai Japan due to tangential learning by playing the koei Warriors games. And I gotta say, that was some awesome history to learn.
Now that i recall, there are tons of topics that games and other medias made me interested Into. Greek, egypcian, Nordic, japanese, hindu and christian Mythology, tarot, astrology, Alchemy, craftsmanship, history, physics, and a plethora of others. That serves to show how important media can be to our learning, and that there are a multitude of ways of using for the greater good
Awesome video! I really like the concept of tangential learning:) Also, this is how MatPat got the idea of the Game Theorists (Game Theory, Film Theory, GTLive, Game Lab, etc.:) Great job!
This is seriously so good it's inspiring. *hint hint* But really, the way you just put games together and showed a way for us to learn RL thingies by using games could be(spoilers, it IS) very useful for our life and our future... At this point there might be way more examples of Tangential Learning than before...
THANK you. I'm so tired of getting beaten over the head with facts. The whole reason I got re-excited in my school history? Newsies. I fell in love with the plot and wanted to learn ALL about the strike. It kinda revived my interest in history.
Hell, a fairly large chunk of my life came into being because of tangential learning in a single game. Prince of Persia 360 inspired me just to look up the name Ahriman, and over the next several months I spent most of my time studying Zoroastrian stories and beliefs. And before hand I never even knew the religion existed!
The Shin Megami Tensei games are good examples for both of those ending topics. Everything in them, every monster, every weapon, everything, has some root in myth somewhere. Also, if you want a good crash course in any particular mythology, you can usually check out the game's notes on all the monsters and at least cobble together a decent knowledge of where the monsters are from. And it's totally worth the read, too. It does a pretty good job explaining how the monsters are interconnected.
so like in assassin creed every time you pass by a historical building there is a pop up you can activate to learn more, but if you just don't care you don't have to. and you know it's actually something because you're walking through a real country!
I am so glad I watched this episode. I am a geek who is into school subjects, especially science. I have had challenges of using this in my art, without making it seem awkward and like a boring lecture. When I was a kid, the educational games I loved to play were the Magic School Bus games for the pc. I had six: dinosaurs, geology, rainforest, solar system, human body and ocean. I also enjoyed the tv show and books from the franchise. I enjoyed Magic School Bus and Bill Nye the Science Guy so much that it really got me interested in science. Now I use science a lot. I majored it in college. I am working to be a science teacher. I also use science to inspire my art work. It is less blatent, but it is in there. When I was a student teacher, I found it difficult to get kids interested in science. I do know that making a lesson fun is helpful for learning. Maybe tangential learning can help. 2:12 Yikes! This hits so close to home. World of Warcraft alone has gotten me interested in landscapes. I love how they look in the game and they inspire me. Afterwards I got very interested with how climate varies and works in the subject of ecology. I have even been in the hundreds of ecozones in the world. Fortunately my interest in Geography goes much further back. When I was a little kid I loved watching animated movies, especially Disney movies. Some of them take place in a variety of places around the world. That makes me more interested in the real equivalents. The best examples are Pocahontas and Anastaisia. Not only do they take place in very specific areas, but hey are also based on real events in history. That makes me interested in history. My favorite parts are based on them. If any gamers like Tetris, I recommend watching the song "Soviet Tetris". Like Anastasia, it presents Russian history in a very fun and engaging way.
@@afilina The orbital mechanics in KSP are simplified tough. You need the mod Principia for realistic orbital mechanics and RSS/RO for realistic DeltaV requirement but the game is a great way to introduce to orbital mechanics.
@Extra Credits: I have been watching you guys for 2 or 3 years now and I learned a lot from you guys. I was just watching the Creator Academy Creator Academy video "MatPat: The Business Side of Gaming (ft. The Game Theorists)" and he brings up this video you made in it. I just wanted to say this really... Thank you for all the great videos you have put out. I liked watching them at first and now I'm going to USE them going forward with my Gaming channel that I am making. It is not as easy to make a good video as you guys make it seem. In closing. PLEASE make a video on "Video Editing" and "Video Software". P.s. I love your artwork style and the way your video flows. Please dont stop. ALSO more videos on Japanese History PLEASE! "Watashi wa yobun'na kurejitto o tatakau koto kara ōku o mananda"
Sabaton has made tangential learning possible with their music. They were able to combine epic power metal with military history. They have wrote songs about various battles, people, and events and I have learned more about history thanks to them.
Dynasty Warriors is what got me into Romance of The Three Kingdoms, something I don't think I would have ever cared about before, which in turn got me into the Sengoku Jidai. The Warring States, whatever, the point is, when you play something you like, and there is some real life basis to it, you end up learning stuff without even realizing it. It's awesome and it's not in an intrusive way that makes me go '"Man I'd rather be playing Mario 3 than this ghetto Time Machine game" kind of way. Just upgraded to windows 10 and my " and @ are swapped for some reason... Completely unrelated, but weird.
I think I can understand what you're getting that, tell me if this example is accurate. After playing through persona 4 I became interested in understanding both the concept of personas/shadows and the tarot cards. So I got myself a deck of tarot cards to understand the symbolism within the characters. And I recently discovered Carl Jung's work on psychology which the persona series is based on. This is pretty much what you're talking about here right?
History and Geography were heavily engrained into me while playing games like Civilization, Risk, even Carmen SanDiego. It wet my appetite for additional learning of medieval warfare, development of Animal husbandry, geopolitical dynamics, etc. When done right, games can make learning fun, and insatiable.
Assassin's Creed taught me a lot about ancient history, especially the first couple. I think the best examples were including landmarks without making them a central theme in the game. Just having little snippits of information about the landmark teaches with subtly. And everyone knows Assassins Creed is not a historical game, at least not one of accuracy enough to call it educationally historic.
Before I played Total War: Rome 2 , I didn't know that there were cities named "Arse" and "Nimrod." Now I know that the people of Arse and Nimrod have the worst legacy in history.
Some of my great tangential learning moments came from Ace Combat 4-6, Dynasty Warriors 3, MGS 1, Fallout 3 (never thought I'd like 50s music so much), Medal of Honor Frontline, Assassin's Creed 2, Neverwinter Nights (got me into D&D), and Tenchu (learning about Feudal Japan and separating myth from reality about ninjas) Its always nice when you learn something from a game, but even better when you are unknowingly encouraged to learn more.
I agree its interesting I find it works pretty well in games like bioshock and assassins creed sure there not 100 historically accurate but it definitely lead to some interesting research both on the accuracy and inaccuracys on the settings such as the underwater city and the philosophy and ideals of the times and time period. Also reading the work it was influenced by. Where as something like assassins creed makes you fell emotionally attached to real life historical figures and I enjoy history to begin with it made me look up information on the Templar and on certain figures in the mythos of the games not only that but I actually notice destines that the game influence from in art and architecture. Even more stylized games like Okami takes allot of historical and mythology references. When you can a game beyond it self its quite a wonderful thing.
The Bioshock example is especially good. After all, it says "Oh, it's inspired by Ayn Rand." in pretty much every review of the game. I'm pretty sure there's a significant amount of Bioshock players who then went on to look up who Ayn Rand is or maybe even went on to _read_ Atlas Shrugged.
348joey Actually it's entirely possible, it was possible in the fifties even. To begin lets take a look at the clear "windows" that allow you to see the outside of the city, If you look at deep sea submergence vehicles they actually have large plexiglass view ports that are capable of withstanding incredible ocean depths. The most interesting fact is that the Bathyspheres in bioshock are based off of actual deep sea exploration vehicles that were created in the *nineteen-thirties.* So that covers the metal and glass. But what about air? Well, since the early days of submarines most used an air filtration system that split the water around them into oxygen and hydrogen, making breathable air. While the game may say that the gardens are the air source, I'm calling bullshit on that. I think they were more a produce source. And honestly that's all you need to build an underwater city, and like I said they had some of these since the thirties about twenty years before bioshock, I think that's more than enough time.
348joey alright 1st off I thought you meant something else when you said toxic, let me clear this up for you, at *NO*, repeat after me *NO* point does oxygen become toxic, oxygen toxicity is not what it sounds like and is not exclusive to under the sea, when breathing pure oxygen your body becomes oxygen saturated, meaning your individual cells are holding as much oxygen as the possible can. However continuing to breathe pure oxygen after this point can cause what is known as oxygen toxicity even though it should be called oxygen over saturation, but I digress, basically put this phenomenon occurs when there is an over abundance of oxygen in the blood stream, most cells use passive transport systems to gather nutrients needed, these systems travel from a point of high concentration to a point of low concentration. Since there is an over abundance of O2 within the body the cells start taking more in, possibly more than they can handle causing the cells to burst from the pressure. This is why most deep divers use tanks filled with mixed gasses, nitrogen, oxygen, etc, as opposed to pure a then tanks, this keeps the body from becoming over saturated.
Personally, I actually learned a LOT about various mythologies and folklore from various cultures, both from the Persona games (namely 3 and 4) and another game called Folklore (different game entirely, and probably a bit more obscure). It helped that the original mythology of each respective demon/Persona was included in the SMT Wiki.
True Twisted Hero but then Game Theory made awful “theories” -it hurts me to call them that- like “Mario is a Psychopath” or “Phoenix Wright is a criminal” they were heroes long enough to see them becoming villains
@@alanzapreservationtheythem2861 We get it you don't like him, but some people do and frankly it's quite rude to spam people. Please keep your opinions to yourself. Thank you.
One of my fondest video games memory is playing the Pink Panther and exploring the world. There was also a codex containing real pictures of the places you visit with alot of reading material. Also, all the songs in the game were written about real world stuff.
I studied Ayn Rand and her concepts of Objectivism, which let me to reading up on Laissez-faire capitalism. Playing MMORPG's has taught me more about how economy works than any text book could ever dream of. MMO's and Free to play games got me to look into behavioral psychology and the work and research of B.F. Skinner. Doing so likely saved me hundreds of dollars, as once you are aware of the psychological tricks these games tend to employ to get you to spend money, you are far less likely to fall for them.
They did inspire Game Theory DoubleHelixGamer but then Game Theory made awful “theories” -it hurts me to call them that- like “Mario is a Psychopath” or “Phoenix Wright is a criminal” they were heroes long enough to see them becoming villains
NiceGuy Productions dude you’re just copy pasting the same comment all over the comment section, you’ve made your point, i don’t agree and that’s it, no need to annoy people posting this comment again and again
Never had any form of media made me feel BAD for Blackbeard. Yeah it's romanticizing pirates but the point is you get to see what these people might have been like when they weren't pillaging and battling at sea. Edward Kenway is genuinely charismatic and a deeper individual than he likes people to know, he has sympathy and a desire to do the right thing hidden beneath that lust for gold and riches.
I think a good example of an in-game database is the Tab-key from Assassin's Creed 2 and onward. It really puts the locations and characters into context. I learned a great deal about Firenze and Venice just by reading all the bio's, and when I visited the cities a while later, I could perfectly navigate myself in the streets, and find all the hidden wonders.
As a Dynasty Warriors fan who first played DW4 back in 2004 it's kindled an interest in Chinese history which crops up at least once every season, even hearing it just now got me thinking back to that time, cheers Extra Credits
Oh yeah, the AoM encyclopedia is absolutely glorious. It basically says which units it's especially good or especially bad against at the top and then goes on to explain the historical or mythological significance of the unit.
The Dynasty Warriors example is basically why I am interested in Chinese and Japanese military history. One day, my dad rented Samurai Warriors 2: Empires, and I fell in love with the series. Then I started doing research, and learned all about the awesome people from those times. I may complain about the games all the time, but I still play and enjoy them. I'm proud of being a Warriors fan, and I'm just as proud to be a history fan as well.
I had an experience similar to tangential learning in the most unlikely of games, FIFA 12. While I didn't necessarily become smarter, I started getting interesting in European soccer/football. I started actively following the Premier League in England and the Liga BBVA in Spain. So while I didn't "learn" anything per say, FIFA 12 nonetheless got me interested in a certain part of the real world I had never cared about before. Because of that I can speak to the power of tangential learning.
One of my favourite examples of this is the loading screens in the Total War series. They list a quote from a famous person and often reference a famous place or battle. So many times I've gone to look up the reference and often that's lead on to something else.
So games like Assassin's Creed (Nobody looked up what the Templars REALLY were after finishing it?) The Total War series And others I don't care enough to list are secretly teaching us? Interesting.
***** Well, The AC series WAS inaccurate, and we knew it, but since it was so inaccurate, I have no doubt that people wanted to know what the Templar's REALLY were, and then googled them, and learned.
***** Hey, the only thing I knew about the templar's were that peopole thought they were the first bankers. So I think that, because the game depicted them so obviously falsely, that those who knew just as much as I learned at least a little about them.
I learned a few things from Runescape back when I used to play it, specifically from the crafting things. For example, I once took a beginner's glass blowing class. Thanks to runescape's crafting skill, I actually already knew a few of the things that I had to do to blow glass. And I knew a fair bit more then most of the other students in the class. And that was with me never, ever having looked up glass blowing, it was just from runescape. I also learned that bronze is made from a mixture of copper and tin, and a couple of other things.
I always explore things from my games, I read up on the history of japan from samurai warriors, learned a lot about fighter jets from Ace combat, explored the Napoleonic era from interest in mount and blade warband: Napoleonic wars. So developers I love being introduced to topics through games.
when I was a kid, I was huge into RTS, and Age of Empires 2 was one of the first ones. cue me delving into any book I could find about medieval times and going from there. props for that.
One game series I think utilizes this VERY well (and doesn't get the attention it deserves) is the Nancy Drew PC game series. The first game I played was actually the sixth one, Secret of the Scarlet Hand. There was a period of time where I was OBSESSED with Mayan culture and history because of that game, and it's a subject that I don't think is really introduced until high school or college, and even then only in very specific courses like World History and very briefly. Most of these games teach a variety of topics and because of the many puzzles and optional minigames within them also teach critical thinking skills. I recommend these games to any child or even any adult who's into point and click adventure games. 8)
For me, a great example of tangential learning is the Total War series. Playing as England in a Medieval 2 campaign might get you interested and learning about england. also, I love learning about armies and units in TW.
Hotline Miami got me interested in the drug wars in miami in the early 1980s. Settings of games and references really make me learn. In my final year of primary school I completed a whole ww2 project from information and references in call of duty world at war. I even learned off ww2 weaponry from the multiplayer. Games should definitely be part of education. Extra credits has the answers people!
For me DayZ is one of these titles that used some tangetial learning. In the game you have to be able to read a map, navigate by landmarks and stars and figure out where you are without a compas. I read real life guides on how to navigate with the stars and how to use a clock to determine south because it enabled me to navigate the map of DayZ better. Now whenever I go on a camping trip I won't get lost so easily thanks to that.
I'm a huge ace attorney fan, and it actually ended up motivating me to join a law program in my high school and am now thoroughly interested in the topic. i also want to learn about the japanese legal system and how it influenced the development and writing of the games upon seeing just how jarringly different the system is from the US legal system. tangential learning made me take a whole new class i never would've taken otherwise!
Tangential Learning explained in two words: this video. Tangential Learning explained in two other words: Extra Credits. Seriously, I come here, because I am interessted in games and have some experiance in making games. Extra Credits has very interessting topics and most of the time they only scratch the surface. Which gets me even more interessted in digging deeper. Great work. :top:
My teenage mind were blown away when I first saw the word sephiroth outside of FFVII ... But kaballah is even more comvoluted than the plot of FFVII xD
Honestly, I found the total war saga a great mix of learning and entertaining. After every historical battle I used to check how generals used their armies, as I learned that I got interest in the reasons why these wars/ battles were fought in the first place
I am personally an example of Dynasty Warriors inspiring an interest in Chinese history. I've always been a history buff, but like many Westerners it was quite Eurocentric. Then I bought Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires and a few years later I now have three books on the Sui period, let alone all of the things about the actual Three Kingdoms period.
I think the most educational game I ever had was Zoo Tycoon 2. The game seemed fun to me and you weren't required to know much about animals to play it. All you had to do was click on an animal and a menu would pop up showing you everything they need to be happy and healthy. In the menu was also a purple dictionary icon and when you clicked on it you could learn more about the animal. I didn't need to, but since I liked all the animals, I read every single animal description in the game. After that I decided to get tons of books to know even more about animals. I think that game deserves to be talked about more.
+Sejref Raincisa I learned that killer penguins live in the tundras of Madagascar! Thanks Zoo Tycoon!
Sim Safari did this for me.
This is so true. I don't read the animal description but i know that red panda, lemurs, moose, caribou, and other animals that I've never heard before exist only because i played zoo tycoon.
Wait... I just Google'd Tangential Learning after hearing about Tangential Learning in this video...
...
*INCEPTION NOISE!!!*
Lmao Molly pops up (I think that was her name)
Actually inception doesn't mean "something inside something", or anything metarreferencial, as many people think. Inception was (in the movie) the concept of planting the seed of a thought in the mind of someone, for it to develop naturally. The word means "beginning" or "origin".
I agree that it's kinda odd how people use "X-ception" to talk about these sort of things.
I mean, just using the term "Inception", I can sorta understand it, since it's a reference to the movie, but "Something-ception" always confuse me... I mean, the movie isn't called "Dreamception", and since you no longer directly reference the movie, this use of the word doesn't make any sense, since an "inception" is simply a beggining.
+Pranav Agrawal
Except it isn't? It's an English word which means "To begin", and it comes from the Latin word "Inceptio"
***** No it's not XD I'm not even a native English speaker and I knew this, Look it up.
Skyrim made me look up what the different metals really are. I learned that corundum is basically rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. I also learned that orichalcum is an ancient term for a gold colored bronze.
+That one guy without a profile pic That's interesting actually. I assumed those were fictional to the elder scrolls universe.
+c477um11 nope. They're in Kingdom Hearts as well :)
I already knew them via reading, but learning via game is fine too, I guess.
One day, my English teacher was showing off a new calender with pictures of popular tourist destinations in Italy. I couldn't shake the feeling that I had seen them before, even though I've never been to Italy. Then I realized that I had cut my way through those places in Assassins Creed. That was a really cool feeling.
who else thought the biggest thing we learned from this video is that dan has a wife
hahaha!! :D
Or that they are allowed to swear in these videos. Haha.
Braxton Rasmussen LMAO
Speaking of Dynasty Warriors and learning.
In Dynasty Warriors 7 there's a guy you can go to who will quiz you on the three kingdoms era. If you answer the questions correctly, he will reward you.
Now that's some good tangential learning. It even provides you with a teacher.
Thank you for this video EC! This is the episode that inspired MatPat to start "Game Theory" :).
A perfect example of Tangential Learning in games is Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker. Because of its in-game tape recordings, I learned about the Nuclear Deterrence Theory, The flora and fauna of Costa Rica, the historical struggles of Nicaragua, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the fundamentals of AI.
Really ?? I didn't know that thats awsome
Yes it did Michael Recto but then Game Theory made awful “theories” -it hurts me to call them that- like “Mario is a Psychopath” or “Phoenix Wright is a criminal” they were heroes long enough to see them becoming villains
I think one of the best examples of this is Kerbal Space Program. Just through the game mechanics - by having rockets and planes that behave at least semi-realistically, with regards to their motion and aerodynamics, and by implementing Newtonian two-body physics for orbital mechanics, KSP manages to teach the player quite a lot about aerospace, and especially teach something which I think is very hard to convey about orbital mechanics - an intuitive understanding.
And, since it is so ingrained into the game mechanics, that ensures that any player will learn those things, because you have to learn them to be good at the game.
The episode that created The Game Theorists
+Cell-Head hummm?
+Cell-Head
Yes it is, yes it is
+Cell-Head
Yes it is, yes it is
actually this is a remake of an older video.
+Cell Head I think this inspired GG to find all the cultural references from video games.
This was exactly how I felt playing EU4. It is probably the best game for education I've ever played, I love history so much now that I'm planning on doing it in college. I became interested in Ottoman history because they're the first nation most people play, and when down a rabbit hole about Byzantium, Hungary, and eventually Austria and the HRE/modern Germany, none of which is taught in my school. My interest in all this actually led to me finding the Punic War series and by extension this channel! Now history is such a huge part of my life, that's what games can do.
On the exam:
"Name at least two artists from Renaissance"
Me:
"That's cute! Have four of them: Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael"
Tangential Learning rocks!
World of Tanks is, at least for me, absolutely wonderful in this department. Before I started playing, I saw all tanks as tanks, but now, I can identify most tanks I see in World War II documentaries on-sight, and have given a lot of thought into the various camps of tank design philosophy, and have learned a great deal about how strategy works simply by applying it as I play to improve my World of Tanks skills. World of Warplanes has started to have this effect on me (I am a massive fan of the XF5U even though I had hardly heard of it before I saw a trailer for the game that featured the plane) and probably even more so for World of Warships, especially since I've been interested in ships for several years now.
One of the best parts about these games is that you actually get an unstated advantage in-game by learning: the developers, in every case, make sure that real life tactics in these sorts of battles can be reproduced in the game to a similar effect. For a World of Warships example (the game has an NDA over it at the time of writing, but I am not violating it because this information comes from a public Q&A with the developers), in real life the Yamato, a Japanese battleship, was sent on a mission to beach itself and become a stationary gun emplacement on the shore of Okinawa. The ship would have been unable to move and heavily damaged, but it certainly wouldn't be able to sink, and it would still be able to use all of its guns! The ship was sunk before it got there, but the "beached ships can't sink" idea is a very true one. In World of Warships, ships will have two health bars: a HP bar and a buoyancy bar. A player is eliminated from the game if all of their HP drains, and their HP drains through taking rounds from ships, ramming damage, or can instantly run out if the player's ship completely sinks. If the player beaches their ship, however, they will lose all of their buoyancy points _but_ they will still have HP left, granted the ramming of the beach will take a heavy toll on it! This means that the player's ship can't sink but the player can still shoot at enemies even though they can't move and took heavy damage! It's a virtual mirror of in-game tactics. Granted, the three games do take certain shortcuts that change how people play completely, but these shortcuts are ones to make the game more fun and action-packed, and still allow for analytic instances of real life mirroring like the one I just described.
And on top of all of this, the games don't allow you to respawn, and repair costs rise relative to your earnings from matches as you obtain more powerful vehicles, until eventually even breaking even becomes a struggle, which leaves players in those higher-tier matches invested in the survival of their vehicles, preventing the blind rush found in respawn-permitting games and further encouraging use of real life-mirroring tactics.
World of Tanks and World of Warplanes (and presumably World of Warships) also all include the "index" talked about in the video, in that the player can click a "vehicle information" tab or look in the research screen to find information that's useful to them positioned directly underneath a few-sentence summary of the vehicle, what it sought to accomplish from a design standpoint, when it was produced, how many were produce, and if it was produced, some examples of wars or even battles that the vehicle participated in. This can be especially useful for the obscure prototype vehicles that the game includes that actually further the player's knowledge by making them realize that World War II tanks weren't only the popular vehicles that they might have known of: for every Tiger, there was one or more Porsche Tiger that didn't get accepted for service and took its own path (in this case, modified into the Ferdinand/Elefant) or simply fizzled out, and _lots_ of VK 30.01 (H) vehicles, which were made by the same designer but failed, but had elements from its design worked into the successful vehicle.
All of this from just a game where teams of tanks (and self-propelled guns) blow up other tanks (and self-propelled guns)!
Paradox Development Studio...
History, politics, military strategy, macro economy, social structures. The devs keep claiming their games are not simulations, but a lot of fans disagree, but they are crazy hardcore (and that is because the mechanics that are complex = awesome), but then again it gives you a massive feeling of accomplishment for completing your goals.
Knowledge building games are not something special. Physics is a big part of many games, strategy is used in almost all games and is also knowledge. Spore and biology... And if you really want to do well in many games a LOT of math helps out a lot.
Did I misunderstand something, because indirect learning seems to be a norm associated with games? Maybe it was not on purpose or a core feature of a game, but learning something is almost unavoidable in any complex form of media, and gaming is in my mind the most complex form of media we have...
Well in crusader kings 2 we got a wikipedia links to the real life historical characters. So they might be on to the things explained in this video.
Assassin's Creed made me go back and look at all the moments in history that happened during the games, the Crusades, the Renaissance, the Golden Age of Piracy, The Seven Years' War, and the Revolution (Both American and French). I might be leaving a few out but my point is these games made me want to learn more about those time periods.
I actually started loving history after playing Rome Total War, when I saw a bunch of cultures I didn't know about like the Seleucid Empire.
Exactly
But i played EU4
About when you mentioned quoted on the loading screens of games...
I learned so many things from loading screens, too! Helpful tips in game or even real world factual information! The coolest thing a loading screen ever taught me was in Medal of Honor: Warfighter. The loading screen said told me that AK-47 assault rifles today are not real, authentic AKs because AK47 production stopped in like the 1970s. Most AK assault rifles are actually modern variations such as the "AKS" or "AKM" 74 series
I actually used a bit of this episode in a speech I wrote in high school. Nobody had any idea what I was talking about, but it went well anyway.
What part?
Kerbal Space Program has taught me a great deal about physics, and a few interesting things regarding flight. I learned that the center of mass behind the center of lift is a very ineffective way to make a plane along with many other things.
This is very true. People often think I'm a geography buff and a living world map, while I'm just an FSX pilot!
Heh, same for me. Well I can't tell shit on a world map, but FS95 was the first thing that made me look at one out of own interest :P
Something my teachers never managed through force.
I'm the kind of nerd that will look up philosophical analyses, musical analyses, thematic analyses, theories, etc etc etc, about video games when I get into them. Not quite the same thing as playing a game about WW2 and then looking up info on trench warfare, but similar. I get really invested in a game and want to learn everything I can about it, often to the point of getting sick of it for a bit after, which just gives me a chance to look into the next interesting game.
great examples of mine growing up were the medal of honor series, where i learned about the japanese invasion of the phillipines, the battle of guadacanal, and the siegfried line; and mgs3 where i learned about the davy crockett and the bay of pigs invasion
The portal series taught me mor about spacial geometry than a teacher ever did, it would be really nice if teachers were to realise the potential of games like these
Battlefield 1 did this REALLY well with their historically-accurate Codex Entries. I found myself learning so much about World War I by reading those. Ex: the fact that the propeller planes had synchronizers on them so that the front-mounted machine gun on the plane could fire right through the propeller blades as they were rotating, or the fact that the Eastern front of the war was the scene of some of the largest elite cavalry charges in history.
They also encouraged collecting the codex entries really well. I was incentivized to play the game in order to unlock them by doing certain challenges so that I could read more codex entries. There's usually a narrator reading aloud the entry to an epic melodic background score while you're viewing it to really amp up the experience of "being there" while it happened.
Fun fact: the team at the Great War channel on youtube actually consulted on these. You can watch their channel which goes over events in the Great War 100 years after they happened, and also answers questions about the period.
BackfallGenius The weapons are terribly historically inaccurate. Like the clip side loaded fully automatic weapon that you start off with in multiplayer is a perfect example. Weapons that were fully automatic overheated and malfunctioned or jammed so much. Fully automatic weaponry could not just be carried by a soldier like a damn modern SMG and just aimed and shot with no jamming or malfunction with little or no recoil. There is a bunch weapons in BF1 that do not match the times. It just makes me mad how people have been brainwashed into thinking their WWI experts and pisses me even more off how BF1 paints WWI in such a different way than it really was. Tanks were not really "tanks" and "tank battles" were not really a thing.
I could just go on at all the things BF1 does to paint a false picture of WWI
well you are right, but I think hes talking about the greater historical context, you know like: where did this happen, how was that developed, that sort of thing
its still a game and making it completely accurate would be kind of boring for many people. Sometimes realism isnt the best way to go, as it can lessen the fun and thus the willingness to learn (kind of a point they made in the video). Just imagine if you had to do a minigame after each mission where you had to disassemble and clean your guns... ok scratch that, that might actually be awesome if done in the right context, way and not too often... but I think you get my point.
The civilopedia is a great example. I remember when playing CIV3 (my favorite), whenever I opened the civilopedia to look up some fact or figure, I would find myself on an information spree. For example, CIV introduced me to the concept of oligarchy, and made me interested enough to look it up in other sources. Other examples would be foreign combat units, like the Persian Immortal. From that I discovered histories of ancient battles and the politics of the time, etc. All very fascinating.
The first game that got me deeply hooked this way was Age of Mythology, I think I probably spent at least as much time reading about the Gods, myths, and heroes as I did actually playing the game. It came in handy later too! In high school when we were assigned the Odyssey and I didn't want to do the homework, I still aced the test because I already knew everything from playing that game when I was younger!
Doing the quotes on the loading screens is great. I really enjoy seeing stuff like that.
I just recently picked up a PS3 and started playing inFamous. I was pleasantly surprised to see that most loading screens, as rare as they are in the game, to have quotes from historical figures or philosophers. The thing I don't like, however, is that the game tends to enjoy throwing longer quotes on really short load times, which is frustrating.
That one time when we were talking about ores at school and one student said "Wait, what about coal ore?"
Well, I didn't know iron had brownish color before Minecraft.
But yeah, sometimes developers makes up crazy shit.
Actually, it is realistic in minecraft, note how you must smelt iron ore in order to get iron, but when you mine coal, you get coal.
Elouj Time Reaver +Gold being shittier than Iron in terms or armor and tool making.
But diamond armor (in minecraft ) on the other hand, being totally unrealistic, go watch some game theorists
Actually, Diamond armor works fine for defending against zombies and explosions, just not other humans.
5:55 I definitely never bothered to read the scan entries in the metroid prime games. but that doesn't mean I didn't try to get every scanable entry.
As mentioned in the video, I got interested in and learned more about three kingdoms era China and Sengokujidai Japan due to tangential learning by playing the koei Warriors games. And I gotta say, that was some awesome history to learn.
Now that i recall, there are tons of topics that games and other medias made me interested Into. Greek, egypcian, Nordic, japanese, hindu and christian Mythology, tarot, astrology, Alchemy, craftsmanship, history, physics, and a plethora of others. That serves to show how important media can be to our learning, and that there are a multitude of ways of using for the greater good
Awesome video! I really like the concept of tangential learning:) Also, this is how MatPat got the idea of the Game Theorists (Game Theory, Film Theory, GTLive, Game Lab, etc.:) Great job!
This is seriously so good it's inspiring.
*hint hint*
But really, the way you just put games together and showed a way for us to learn RL thingies by using games could be(spoilers, it IS) very useful for our life and our future...
At this point there might be way more examples of Tangential Learning than before...
Cant believe this single episode created the game theorists
THANK you. I'm so tired of getting beaten over the head with facts. The whole reason I got re-excited in my school history?
Newsies.
I fell in love with the plot and wanted to learn ALL about the strike. It kinda revived my interest in history.
Hell, a fairly large chunk of my life came into being because of tangential learning in a single game. Prince of Persia 360 inspired me just to look up the name Ahriman, and over the next several months I spent most of my time studying Zoroastrian stories and beliefs. And before hand I never even knew the religion existed!
The Shin Megami Tensei games are good examples for both of those ending topics. Everything in them, every monster, every weapon, everything, has some root in myth somewhere. Also, if you want a good crash course in any particular mythology, you can usually check out the game's notes on all the monsters and at least cobble together a decent knowledge of where the monsters are from. And it's totally worth the read, too. It does a pretty good job explaining how the monsters are interconnected.
Crusader Kings 2 have a direct wikipedia link for pretty much all of the historical characters. :)
Without this, there wouldn't be Game Theory
I'm surprised someone went down this rabbit hole today to
@@toxsicle9753...and we realised it far too late, despite me being a subscriber of both EC (now Extra History) and the Theorists channels.
so like in assassin creed every time you pass by a historical building there is a pop up you can activate to learn more, but if you just don't care you don't have to. and you know it's actually something because you're walking through a real country!
EU4 is has teached me alot in history and geography and it's very fun :D
Today is the day matpat makes his final theory... so here we are, at the video that inspired him to create game theory and our childhoods.
f
I am so glad I watched this episode. I am a geek who is into school subjects, especially science. I have had challenges of using this in my art, without making it seem awkward and like a boring lecture. When I was a kid, the educational games I loved to play were the Magic School Bus games for the pc. I had six: dinosaurs, geology, rainforest, solar system, human body and ocean. I also enjoyed the tv show and books from the franchise. I enjoyed Magic School Bus and Bill Nye the Science Guy so much that it really got me interested in science. Now I use science a lot. I majored it in college. I am working to be a science teacher. I also use science to inspire my art work. It is less blatent, but it is in there. When I was a student teacher, I found it difficult to get kids interested in science. I do know that making a lesson fun is helpful for learning. Maybe tangential learning can help.
2:12 Yikes! This hits so close to home. World of Warcraft alone has gotten me interested in landscapes. I love how they look in the game and they inspire me. Afterwards I got very interested with how climate varies and works in the subject of ecology. I have even been in the hundreds of ecozones in the world. Fortunately my interest in Geography goes much further back. When I was a little kid I loved watching animated movies, especially Disney movies. Some of them take place in a variety of places around the world. That makes me more interested in the real equivalents. The best examples are Pocahontas and Anastaisia. Not only do they take place in very specific areas, but hey are also based on real events in history. That makes me interested in history. My favorite parts are based on them. If any gamers like Tetris, I recommend watching the song "Soviet Tetris". Like Anastasia, it presents Russian history in a very fun and engaging way.
Three words: Kerbal Space Program.
GODDAMMIT! You beat me to it
I never thought that I'd understand orbital mechanics one day. I ended up reading on the types of fuel too.
2 words and 1 number
Europa Universalis 4
great history teacher
@@afilina The orbital mechanics in KSP are simplified tough. You need the mod Principia for realistic orbital mechanics and RSS/RO for realistic DeltaV requirement but the game is a great way to introduce to orbital mechanics.
@Extra Credits: I have been watching you guys for 2 or 3 years now and I learned a lot from you guys. I was just watching the
Creator Academy Creator Academy video "MatPat: The Business Side of Gaming (ft. The Game Theorists)" and he brings up this video you made in it.
I just wanted to say this really...
Thank you for all the great videos you have put out. I liked watching them at first and now I'm going to USE them going forward with my Gaming channel that I am making. It is not as easy to make a good video as you guys make it seem.
In closing. PLEASE make a video on "Video Editing" and "Video Software".
P.s.
I love your artwork style and the way your video flows. Please dont stop.
ALSO more videos on Japanese History PLEASE!
"Watashi wa yobun'na kurejitto o tatakau koto kara ōku o mananda"
6:27
You son of a bitch, I totally was...
This is amazing
Sabaton has made tangential learning possible with their music. They were able to combine epic power metal with military history. They have wrote songs about various battles, people, and events and I have learned more about history thanks to them.
The Persona series introduced me to so many myths and gods I never knew I'd be interested in
As someone who knows the language and can appreciate how hard it is to learn a new language, My wholehearted congratulations to you. :)
Garry's Mod got me interested to learn programming because of what Expression 2 can make, and now I'm on my way to a comp sci degree
That's awesome!
chaquator that's really cool
I'm so glad I saw this comment. I now have a chance that some of my gamer friends will gain interest in coding.
Dynasty Warriors is what got me into Romance of The Three Kingdoms, something I don't think I would have ever cared about before, which in turn got me into the Sengoku Jidai. The Warring States, whatever, the point is, when you play something you like, and there is some real life basis to it, you end up learning stuff without even realizing it. It's awesome and it's not in an intrusive way that makes me go '"Man I'd rather be playing Mario 3 than this ghetto Time Machine game" kind of way.
Just upgraded to windows 10 and my " and @ are swapped for some reason... Completely unrelated, but weird.
It's a UK keyboard
I think I can understand what you're getting that, tell me if this example is accurate. After playing through persona 4 I became interested in understanding both the concept of personas/shadows and the tarot cards. So I got myself a deck of tarot cards to understand the symbolism within the characters. And I recently discovered Carl Jung's work on psychology which the persona series is based on. This is pretty much what you're talking about here right?
History and Geography were heavily engrained into me while playing games like Civilization, Risk, even Carmen SanDiego. It wet my appetite for additional learning of medieval warfare, development of Animal husbandry, geopolitical dynamics, etc.
When done right, games can make learning fun, and insatiable.
So this is what inspired Game Theory
Assassin's Creed taught me a lot about ancient history, especially the first couple. I think the best examples were including landmarks without making them a central theme in the game. Just having little snippits of information about the landmark teaches with subtly. And everyone knows Assassins Creed is not a historical game, at least not one of accuracy enough to call it educationally historic.
Before I played Total War: Rome 2 , I didn't know that there were cities named "Arse" and "Nimrod." Now I know that the people of Arse and Nimrod have the worst legacy in history.
Lmao this comment
Some of my great tangential learning moments came from Ace Combat 4-6, Dynasty Warriors 3, MGS 1, Fallout 3 (never thought I'd like 50s music so much), Medal of Honor Frontline, Assassin's Creed 2, Neverwinter Nights (got me into D&D), and Tenchu (learning about Feudal Japan and separating myth from reality about ninjas)
Its always nice when you learn something from a game, but even better when you are unknowingly encouraged to learn more.
I agree its interesting I find it works pretty well in games like bioshock and assassins creed sure there not 100 historically accurate but it definitely lead to some interesting research both on the accuracy and inaccuracys on the settings such as the underwater city and the philosophy and ideals of the times and time period. Also reading the work it was influenced by.
Where as something like assassins creed makes you fell emotionally attached to real life historical figures and I enjoy history to begin with it made me look up information on the Templar and on certain figures in the mythos of the games not only that but I actually notice destines that the game influence from in art and architecture. Even more stylized games like Okami takes allot of historical and mythology references. When you can a game beyond it self its quite a wonderful thing.
eeyep. not only possible today, but was possible in the setting of bioshock 1
The Bioshock example is especially good. After all, it says "Oh, it's inspired by Ayn Rand." in pretty much every review of the game.
I'm pretty sure there's a significant amount of Bioshock players who then went on to look up who Ayn Rand is or maybe even went on to _read_ Atlas Shrugged.
348joey Actually it's entirely possible, it was possible in the fifties even. To begin lets take a look at the clear "windows" that allow you to see the outside of the city, If you look at deep sea submergence vehicles they actually have large plexiglass view ports that are capable of withstanding incredible ocean depths. The most interesting fact is that the Bathyspheres in bioshock are based off of actual deep sea exploration vehicles that were created in the *nineteen-thirties.* So that covers the metal and glass. But what about air? Well, since the early days of submarines most used an air filtration system that split the water around them into oxygen and hydrogen, making breathable air. While the game may say that the gardens are the air source, I'm calling bullshit on that. I think they were more a produce source. And honestly that's all you need to build an underwater city, and like I said they had some of these since the thirties about twenty years before bioshock, I think that's more than enough time.
348joey then don't pump pure oxigen into that, pump NORMAL air with almost 3/4 nitrogen with it
348joey alright 1st off I thought you meant something else when you said toxic, let me clear this up for you, at *NO*, repeat after me *NO* point does oxygen become toxic, oxygen toxicity is not what it sounds like and is not exclusive to under the sea, when breathing pure oxygen your body becomes oxygen saturated, meaning your individual cells are holding as much oxygen as the possible can. However continuing to breathe pure oxygen after this point can cause what is known as oxygen toxicity even though it should be called oxygen over saturation, but I digress, basically put this phenomenon occurs when there is an over abundance of oxygen in the blood stream, most cells use passive transport systems to gather nutrients needed, these systems travel from a point of high concentration to a point of low concentration. Since there is an over abundance of O2 within the body the cells start taking more in, possibly more than they can handle causing the cells to burst from the pressure. This is why most deep divers use tanks filled with mixed gasses, nitrogen, oxygen, etc, as opposed to pure a then tanks, this keeps the body from becoming over saturated.
Personally, I actually learned a LOT about various mythologies and folklore from various cultures, both from the Persona games (namely 3 and 4) and another game called Folklore (different game entirely, and probably a bit more obscure). It helped that the original mythology of each respective demon/Persona was included in the SMT Wiki.
10 years of game theory
"holding you down and bludgeoning you with knowledge"
what a fantastic quote.
Well, this episode made Game Theory, so thanks
Lol yeah
True Twisted Hero but then Game Theory made awful “theories” -it hurts me to call them that- like “Mario is a Psychopath” or “Phoenix Wright is a criminal” they were heroes long enough to see them becoming villains
PersonMan Productions
How many times did you spam that?
@@j2dragon109 On every comment who mentioned MatPat!
@@alanzapreservationtheythem2861 We get it you don't like him, but some people do and frankly it's quite rude to spam people. Please keep your opinions to yourself. Thank you.
One of my fondest video games memory is playing the Pink Panther and exploring the world. There was also a codex containing real pictures of the places you visit with alot of reading material. Also, all the songs in the game were written about real world stuff.
I've looked up way more ores and stones than I feel comfortable admitting because of Dwarf Fortress.
I studied Ayn Rand and her concepts of Objectivism, which let me to reading up on Laissez-faire capitalism. Playing MMORPG's has taught me more about how economy works than any text book could ever dream of. MMO's and Free to play games got me to look into behavioral psychology and the work and research of B.F. Skinner. Doing so likely saved me hundreds of dollars, as once you are aware of the psychological tricks these games tend to employ to get you to spend money, you are far less likely to fall for them.
Funny you should mention Excalibur, it's one of the references I planned on adding to the game I'm developing :D
Matpat watched this video and it inspired his entire game theory channel. great work! Now you know your legacy will never disappear!
So this is the episode that inspired Game Theory. GG guys. You've done the internet a bigger service than you already have.
They did inspire Game Theory DoubleHelixGamer but then Game Theory made awful “theories” -it hurts me to call them that- like “Mario is a Psychopath” or “Phoenix Wright is a criminal” they were heroes long enough to see them becoming villains
NiceGuy Productions dude you’re just copy pasting the same comment all over the comment section, you’ve made your point, i don’t agree and that’s it, no need to annoy people posting this comment again and again
Nine words: BUT hey, that’s just a theory. A Game Theory!
Other words to add in: **science blaster music intensifies*
assassins creed 4 gave me plenty of moments like what you mentioned.
plague inc less but still a few.
Never had any form of media made me feel BAD for Blackbeard. Yeah it's romanticizing pirates but the point is you get to see what these people might have been like when they weren't pillaging and battling at sea. Edward Kenway is genuinely charismatic and a deeper individual than he likes people to know, he has sympathy and a desire to do the right thing hidden beneath that lust for gold and riches.
I think a good example of an in-game database is the Tab-key from Assassin's Creed 2 and onward.
It really puts the locations and characters into context.
I learned a great deal about Firenze and Venice just by reading all the bio's,
and when I visited the cities a while later,
I could perfectly navigate myself in the streets, and find all the hidden wonders.
wait what if i have a favorite gun in battlefield then after playing for awhile i look up the real deal weapon. is it the same thing?
Yep!
In fact it's a perfect example!
***** On a not-FE video, at that.
As a Dynasty Warriors fan who first played DW4 back in 2004 it's kindled an interest in Chinese history which crops up at least once every season, even hearing it just now got me thinking back to that time, cheers Extra Credits
three words, age of empires, every unit and faction from I,II,III and mythology, come from history. and let us not get start on the total war games.
Oh yeah, the AoM encyclopedia is absolutely glorious.
It basically says which units it's especially good or especially bad against at the top and then goes on to explain the historical or mythological significance of the unit.
Oh Yes... Let's get started on dem total war games... We will now sack Narbo Martius in southern Gaul!!! Where the hell is Missouri?
The Dynasty Warriors example is basically why I am interested in Chinese and Japanese military history. One day, my dad rented Samurai Warriors 2: Empires, and I fell in love with the series. Then I started doing research, and learned all about the awesome people from those times. I may complain about the games all the time, but I still play and enjoy them. I'm proud of being a Warriors fan, and I'm just as proud to be a history fan as well.
Wait, no Dead Space picture when you said dead space? shame
Good job guys. I'm pausing this video like every 20 seconds to google something you refrenced so I can understand it better.
I'm surprised he made no mention of Portal or it's sequel. Great games to teach ya gotta think outside the box sometimes.
I think he's talking about more studious learning as opposed to problem solving skills. Any (good) puzzle game really does the latter.
Two things.
1. This is a underrated episode
2. The reason I learn better that others, is because I want to learn.
& Game Theory was born
I had an experience similar to tangential learning in the most unlikely of games, FIFA 12. While I didn't necessarily become smarter, I started getting interesting in European soccer/football. I started actively following the Premier League in England and the Liga BBVA in Spain. So while I didn't "learn" anything per say, FIFA 12 nonetheless got me interested in a certain part of the real world I had never cared about before. Because of that I can speak to the power of tangential learning.
I'm playing PAYDAY2.
I'm learning communication and cooperation, right?
Captain Mac no you are learing how anoying the dc police force is
One of my favourite examples of this is the loading screens in the Total War series. They list a quote from a famous person and often reference a famous place or battle. So many times I've gone to look up the reference and often that's lead on to something else.
So games like
Assassin's Creed (Nobody looked up what the Templars REALLY were after finishing it?)
The Total War series
And others I don't care enough to list are secretly teaching us?
Interesting.
***** Well, The AC series WAS inaccurate, and we knew it, but since it was so inaccurate, I have no doubt that people wanted to know what the Templar's REALLY were, and then googled them, and learned.
***** Hey, the only thing I knew about the templar's were that peopole thought they were the first bankers. So I think that, because the game depicted them so obviously falsely, that those who knew just as much as I learned at least a little about them.
funny thing is I got into total war because I LOVE history.
Tristan Yam some mods make it even more historical,like total realism and europa barborum
***** no problem dude ,any favourite faction ?i like the getai personally faux men kick ass!
I learned a few things from Runescape back when I used to play it, specifically from the crafting things. For example, I once took a beginner's glass blowing class. Thanks to runescape's crafting skill, I actually already knew a few of the things that I had to do to blow glass. And I knew a fair bit more then most of the other students in the class. And that was with me never, ever having looked up glass blowing, it was just from runescape.
I also learned that bronze is made from a mixture of copper and tin, and a couple of other things.
So... Just me who thought people would spam with "Found this from Game Theory"?
No, that's what I was expecting as well.
i found game theory from this about a year ago....... was from a suggested video or something
MatPat was inspired by EC, wasn't he? I remember hearing about that somewhere.
jpheitman
He said so in the first video he made of GT.
***** he also mentioned it in his 'draw my life' when he reached 1 million subscribers.
I always explore things from my games, I read up on the history of japan from samurai warriors, learned a lot about fighter jets from Ace combat, explored the Napoleonic era from interest in mount and blade warband: Napoleonic wars. So developers I love being introduced to topics through games.
Or you can go the route the new Wolfensteins did and just have WWII with a bunch of weird crap. Then you want to find out what really happened!
when I was a kid, I was huge into RTS, and Age of Empires 2 was one of the first ones. cue me delving into any book I could find about medieval times and going from there. props for that.
One game series I think utilizes this VERY well (and doesn't get the attention it deserves) is the Nancy Drew PC game series. The first game I played was actually the sixth one, Secret of the Scarlet Hand. There was a period of time where I was OBSESSED with Mayan culture and history because of that game, and it's a subject that I don't think is really introduced until high school or college, and even then only in very specific courses like World History and very briefly. Most of these games teach a variety of topics and because of the many puzzles and optional minigames within them also teach critical thinking skills. I recommend these games to any child or even any adult who's into point and click adventure games. 8)
0:52 Aaaaaah!! I never thought I'd see Lemonade Stand again! X )
For me, a great example of tangential learning is the Total War series. Playing as England in a Medieval 2 campaign might get you interested and learning about england. also, I love learning about armies and units in TW.
Hotline Miami got me interested in the drug wars in miami in the early 1980s. Settings of games and references really make me learn. In my final year of primary school I completed a whole ww2 project from information and references in call of duty world at war. I even learned off ww2 weaponry from the multiplayer. Games should definitely be part of education. Extra credits has the answers people!
For me DayZ is one of these titles that used some tangetial learning. In the game you have to be able to read a map, navigate by landmarks and stars and figure out where you are without a compas. I read real life guides on how to navigate with the stars and how to use a clock to determine south because it enabled me to navigate the map of DayZ better. Now whenever I go on a camping trip I won't get lost so easily thanks to that.
300 single-handedly made my favourite military action the fabled Last Stand.
I'm a huge ace attorney fan, and it actually ended up motivating me to join a law program in my high school and am now thoroughly interested in the topic. i also want to learn about the japanese legal system and how it influenced the development and writing of the games upon seeing just how jarringly different the system is from the US legal system. tangential learning made me take a whole new class i never would've taken otherwise!
Tangential Learning explained in two words: this video. Tangential Learning explained in two other words: Extra Credits. Seriously, I come here, because I am interessted in games and have some experiance in making games. Extra Credits has very interessting topics and most of the time they only scratch the surface. Which gets me even more interessted in digging deeper. Great work. :top:
3:35 I recognized The beattles, Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, the members of LEd Zeppelin, Elvis, Ann and Nancy Wilson, Freddie Mercury, and Madonna
My teenage mind were blown away when I first saw the word sephiroth outside of FFVII ... But kaballah is even more comvoluted than the plot of FFVII xD
Honestly, I found the total war saga a great mix of learning and entertaining. After every historical battle I used to check how generals used their armies, as I learned that I got interest in the reasons why these wars/ battles were fought in the first place
I am personally an example of Dynasty Warriors inspiring an interest in Chinese history. I've always been a history buff, but like many Westerners it was quite Eurocentric. Then I bought Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires and a few years later I now have three books on the Sui period, let alone all of the things about the actual Three Kingdoms period.