We used to play games alone at home for fun and relaxation, sometimes to de-stress our stressful lives. However, with the help of the internet, we can now play games with our friends without having the hassle to travel to their homes. Online games now have another “mission”: to help us connect to each other. For example, popular games, such as Wii and xBox, allow people to connect via wifi at home to play games together, for example fighting together as a team against the other team.
There are also other online platforms and website, such as Facebook and BigFishGames.com, which supply us with lots of different kinds of online games. However, there intention may be different. For example there are lots of online games on Facebook and they are mostly free. These games provide us another way to be connected to our friends such sharing and sending gifts or working together to accomplish certain task. However, we may need to BE online every several hours to check on our progress. Thus, these games also help to maintain the popularity of the websites.
However, games could really help us in other ways such as improving our language ability. I have lots of friends who admitted that they learned Japanese just because they needed to play Japanese games. It is not difficult to know why. We need to learn, at least, adequate amount of English if we want to play a game. From reading the user manual to reading the instructions all the way when we play, we need to read and understand it. Not to mention when we have to search the internet and consult other players for help when we cannot accomplish a task.
Learning English with adventure games is an article about learning English with adventure games and why it is good. Please click, read and enjoy.
Some people may get addicted to online games and cannot stop. It is quite frequent to have news on the newspaper saying people addicted to online games and fainted or even tried to commit suicide when they lost their “tools” in the game. However, games can also help us in other ways we may not notice. Again, everything has there constraints and affordance. It’s completely depends on how we use and treat them.
Thank you for the interesting article. I like your point which games are used to maintain the popularity of some websites. I didn’t realize that before!
ReplyDeleteI agree with Apple that you have pointed out games are used to maintain the popularity of some websites. Just like the game "Restaurant City" and "Cafe World" on Facebook, they attact you to keep going back to the game to "feed" the staff in your restaurant and by that time, people will find themselves logged in to Facebook again and again in a day.(or they won't even log out!)
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