Our session on games got me thinking of a game I used to play as a teenager: Age of Empires. I will be teaching grade 8 humanities and we’ll be covering the medieval period/feudal Japan. The different games of Age of Empires covers civilization nearly from its inception to present time throughout its different releases. Fortunately for me, the era that I have to teach is cover by my most favourite of the series “Age of Empires: II.”
Age of Empires is a strategy game. The style of game play that I will be working with is as such: you choose a specific civilization and you begin in the dark ages with about 3 villagers and a town-centre. From there you must begin to gather recourses (food, wood, gold, and stone). In the process you can build different structures, such as houses, a mill, or a port. As more structures are build and wealth and resources accumulated, the civilization can progress through different stages. Accordingly, different aspects of the game change. New structures and materials become available as progress happens. Eventually armies can be formed by building structures that can produce soldiers, knights, archers and so on.
The different structures and the way they appear, the different people and militia and their abilities, are all peculiar to the specific civilization that one chooses.
The challenge before me now is to find a way that I could link this game to the subject and incorporate it into my unit. My options also depend on wether I will be able to have all of the students to play the video game or not. I doubt I will be able to purchase a class set of the video game for the whole class. In addition, I am quite certain I can’t have the students torrent the game. If I am limited in this way, then my remaining option is to play the game myself and project my screen for the students—which, although different, is not really the ultimate engagement for which I was aiming.
I may have an option of having each student download the trial version of the game, but I have yet to find out if they can play as the specific civilizations that we are covering. I need to find a PC in order to do that.
If they are able to have access to the game and play it, my next challenge is to find out how the contents of the game can compliment what is covered in their textbook. I am entertaining a thought or two about basing my evaluation on the contents of the game.
Do you have any ideas or suggestions regarding my challenges?
And please comment if you have any questions or would like to know more about the game.
I am also open to collaborating with someone on creating a lesson plan based on this game.
ps. I didn’t add any links or pictures in fear of copyright infringement—I have been effectively petrified—but you can google it.
1 response so far ↓
Katie // Dec 5th 2012 at 10:52 pm
This is such an awesome idea! I never really thought about how much those types of “building a new world” video games could teach us about that time period – especially with a teacher guiding you through it.
I grew up playing civilization as a child and I can remember how much I learned about different countries and how technology progressed. You would choose a nation to play with and then when you built your first city it would be the name of that nations first capital city. I actually ended up learning quite a bit about different cities, inventions, jobs and even wonders of the world. In fact, I learned quite a bit about politics and how difficult and important it can be to keep a good relationship with other nations while constantly competing to be the most successful nation. If a teacher had asked me to play this game or a similar one in school… well that would have been a dream come true!
Your idea got me really excited, but then… your problem – how DO you get a class set? It is pretty unattainable. I tried to look at see what I could find online for free games… I don’t know what kinds of issues there might be with that but I found a game where you can create your own country. I think that perhaps this sight might be useful for something: http://www.nationstates.net/
I quickly made a country myself and it is a bit interesting – but not quite the same.
There are a series of questions and selections to make to start your own country ? which is pretty fun ? and then once you have made it you can see 7 buttons to click on along the top of the screen, which help you analyze your country.
(Overview ? Factbook ? People ? Government ? Economy ? Trend ? Analysis)
In the Overview section you get messages, telegrams, issues, and other such things.
The factbook is a place where you can log what is happening.
The people button shows you what the leading causes of death are.
Government shows you what the money is going towards.
Economy tells you how much money is private and public.
Trend is a graph that shows economy, civil rights, and political freedoms.
Finally, the analysis shows your productivity compared to the rest of the world.
I just created an empire and it has a great economy… but everything else is pretty bad. It might be interesting for students to try to make a place in which they would want to live… They?d have to deal with money and making the population happy. Anyway, I am not sure how useful it would be long term… but I might keep playing mine in order to get a better idea…
I wonder if you can connect a whole class so that they can compare their countries with their classmates’.
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