runescape and education?

Over at TwitchGuru there’s an interesting article abt Runescape and kids…

Says,

Like most online games, RuneScape has its own economy, with players exchanging goods and sometimes services for gold. Having a certain amount of money is very beneficial in RuneScape, but just as in the real world, many RuneScape players get obsessed with wealth, viewing it as an end unto itself. They spend countless hours earning millions and millions of gold pieces, for the sole purpose of bragging to others about being rich.

This situation is exacerbated by a historical problem that Jagex has not properly resolved. In the early days of RuneScape, Jagex would give out special holiday items, like Christmas party hats, for fun. Since this occurred when there were few players, there are very few party hats in the game, and Jagex discontinued giving them out once they realized people were trading them for money. But they never took them out of the game, so these coveted “rares” have skyrocketed in price. They are now symbols of wealth, and a blue party hat is indeed worth about half a billion gold pieces.

All this in context of Runescape is not the “right kind of education” for children. MMPORGs are “massively” multi-player, meaning “mostly adults”. Duh.

Just because it’s a cartoon doesn’t mean it’s safe.

If grownups can make money, dominate others, cheat, lie, steal, some naturally will. So will kids.

It’s like going out in public. People spit and cuss and cut in line just about anywhere you go.

But hey, the only new thing here is the social dimension.  I played videogames as a kid…  I think I’m alright…  The danger is in the fact that grownups in online videogames can talk to and manipulate kids.

balance in sussing it

1. Be human. Ask questions, lots of questions, but not so many that the patron feels interrogated. Keep it casual, but don’t be flippant.

2. You are their bulldog. You are their advocate in the face of a daunting collection that confuses them. You’re job is to lock onto their need and source it out, sniff to the source, never letting their need get loose in your jaws (until they have the book… then let it go. Let it go.).

3. You better take their need seriously.

4. You better take your interaction with them seriously enough to be human, to be natural, to ask and to listen.

5. Don’t do their work for them. Teach them how to use the collection. Be militant in your attack of the collection by their side. You are not a search engine.  You are not a robot.

scifi thing

Need the pathos of Gilgamesh.

Political complexity of Roman Late Republic.

Tragedy and arc of Lear.

No. Tragedy and arc of Boudica.

Not “Boudica in Space.” Not “Lear on a diffrnt Planet.”

MEAN GODS. A real chance for men to fight ancient, sour gods. Not all the tentacles and goth of Cthulhu. Icy things, but not hoary like Asgardian giants. Stony things cutting through the upper atmosphere, big as cities. What keeps them at bay? Moorcockian balance, but not between Pattern and Chaos — something more local, more political. Something “site specific.” Names drawn from Babylonian sounds. Erdu. Enki. But never the same as the actual mythic characters.

For P.O.V., a Marcus Garvey with teeeeth. Not all the way to a Mua’dib type of guy… but someone who matters in more than one dimension. A sort of a Jesus with recognized Office; a poor farmer you must parlay with; a statesman of ghosts; an Alan Greenspan for the economics of the unseen; a guy who some of these ancient gods are actually afraid of. But not a savior. Not a holy man. A broker of energon. A deal-maker. A realist. A pragmatist. But the people want more — want him to be the savior that he’s not.