
Poland puts computer game “This War of Mine” on school reading list - Reedx
https://notesfrompoland.com/2020/06/18/poland-puts-computer-game-this-war-of-mine-on-school-reading-list/
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RangerScience
This is amazing. There are other games of this quality and artistry, but IMO
no other games with the kind of impact TWOM has. There's something special
that happens when you play TWOM that isn't possible in other mediums. It
manages to actually create circumstances where you feel like you're making
hard choices.

IMO, only two other games accomplish something comparable. Portal (as a
masterpiece of gaming in every respect) and Stanley Parable (as being another
masterpiece that has a "message" inexpressible in any other medium).

If you'd add to that list, I could do with more maximum quality games to have
played ;)

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lacker
I found Detroit: Become Human to be quite thought-provoking.

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WrtCdEvrydy
Yeah, but it's a bit on the nose...

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musingsole
Depends on your play through

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indy
Jonathan Blow gave an interesting talk yesterday about videogames and the
future of education:
[https://www.twitch.tv/videos/678729516](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/678729516)

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Stevvo
Starts 24:30

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ceceron
Interesting move. Sadly kids nowadays (at least in Poland, where I live) don't
like reading books and tend to skip even very important titles. This may be a
good way to bring some interest in the history via a genuinely entertaining
medium.

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q3k
> don't like reading books and tend to skip even very important titles

That's because the list of mandatory [1] reading in Poland is 90% haphazardly
thrown together nationalistic martyrdom bullshit with terrible state-mandated
interpretation.

I used to _hate_ literary analysis, partly because of the works we were
studying and how we were forced to interpret them. Then, years after leaving
school I've discovered that this can actually be interesting and
intellectually stimulating, especially if you care for the work, and doubly so
if you're actually explained the point of this sort of analysis in the first
place. Every single peer of around my age that has gone through the same
system has had the exact same experience, regardless of school or district.

[1] - as I've experienced it 10 years ago

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Lev1a
In your neighbouring country Germany some of the entries for our 8th grade
group reading and analysis project were:

\- book about an anorexic girl (which IIRC was assigned by the lottery to the
recovering anorexic girl in my class)

\- book about a teenage boy falling in love with a drug-addicted girl and
falling down into that swamp as well (names "Einbahnstraße" => "one-way
street")

\- some other books about adipositas and fat kids/teenagers hating themselves
for being fat (IIRC some even contemplating suicide)

\+ a bunch of other books in the same vein

Needless to say that was a very fun few weeks while presenting the books and
their analyses...

~~~
q3k
Our literature teacher did have some spare student-time to throw in some of
her selected books (in 10th grade I think?), and one of her choice was ”Wir
Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo”. It was certainly a formative experience, so I kinda
do envy the program you went through :).

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Lev1a
I vaguely remember we had to read that as well but I don't exactly remember
when that was during school.

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YeGoblynQueenne
To be honest, when I first played This War of Mine, I wanted to throw the
controller. The thing is, as your characters' health decreases, becaue they
get wounded or the are hungry or sick, etc, they start dragging their feet-
literally. They take ages just to go from one room to the next. So play
suddendly morphs into long stretches of just pushing a stick (or a button, I
guess) to advance at a snail's pace.

I fully appreciate that this is meant to get you into the spirit of the game,
but in the end it just ends up breaking immersion completely and makes you
wonder what the hell you're doing in your life, pushing virtual people around
a virtual house for hours on end.

I gave up on playing the game after a few tries, when I realised this was
going on. I picked it up again a few months later and I enjoyed it much more,
precisely because for some reason I didn't experience the same slowdown. I
don't know if the game changed, possibly I was more aware of the things that
could make my characters slow and managed to avoid them- but I'm not 100%
sure.

I've had similar experiences with other games. Sunless Sea, forced me to push
a virtual boat around a virtual sea in what felt like real time, because it
was the game creator's vision that travel should be slow and you should go
over the same empty tracts of sea again and again and again and again, always
at a teribly slow pace, even with the most expensive engine upgrades. I didn't
pick that one up again, after I found out that this was actually a design
feature (I think I read an interview with the creator, or some thread in the
game's forums on steam?) (edit: I think this was the thread:
[https://steamcommunity.com/app/304650/discussions/0/14832329...](https://steamcommunity.com/app/304650/discussions/0/1483232961041375775/?)).

Merchant of the Skies, that I've been playing a lot recently can also be
tedious though, honestly, not that much. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, well I
guess that was a walking simulator and it's my fault for playing it for as
much as I play it. The list goes on for a bit.

Just, don't take away from my time to live and give me nothing back in return,
mkay?

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humaniania
Playing "This War of Mine" was one of the most powerful and emotionally
stirring experiences that I have ever had with a video game. It really is a
beautiful work of art. Highly recommend playing it.

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goda90
It's a different gameplay experience, but I highly recommend Valiant Hearts
for another emotionally stirring experience about people going through war.

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zanmat0
Seconded, an absolute masterpiece of a game that was.

I would really love to have a save feature in TWoM, I feel like its sorely
missing.

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atq2119
Not being able to save is kind of the point though, isn't it? You don't get to
save when you're stuck in a bombed out city under siege...

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alasdair_
The thing that I found very important in this game is that there is no clearly
defined end-goal like “survive for 100 days” - this really helps the game
capture the feeling of “will this never end?”

Having a defined end date would make things easier psychologically.

There is also a board game ([https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/188920/war-
mine-board-ga...](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/188920/war-mine-board-
game)) that I’ve heard good things about.

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beyondcompute
I am surprised why it took school system so long. And despite the apparent
collapse of traditional education, it is surprisingly resistant to change. I
would also include some works from Demoscene, some newer electronic music (at
least from the 80s :)).

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vanderZwan
The Demoscene definitely needs some artistic recognition, but maybe not in the
form of being put on the _reading_ list ;)

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neiman
Respecting video games is great, but like you don't respect a movie as "the
best meal I ever had", you also don't respect a game by putting it in a
"recommended reading list".

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TheNorthman
It's certainly a valid position to interpret games as text to be interpreted.
In fact, if structuralism and semiotics have taught us anything it is
precisely this.

In danish education we have the concept of an "udvidet tekstbegreb" that means
any references to texts can also refer to any other kind of cultural medium.

If we look outside Denmark, the European institutions also have this view. If
we, for example, look at the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for
Languages), they give us this exact definition of text [0]:

> _Text_ is any sequence or discourse (spoken and/or written) related to a
> specific domain and which in the course of carrying out a task becomes the
> occasion of a language activity, whether as a support or as a goal, as
> product or process.

[0]: [https://rm.coe.int/1680459f97](https://rm.coe.int/1680459f97), pp. 10.

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Minor49er
They should put Deus Ex on the list

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RangerScience
DX is one of the few games I've played through more than once. DX is a lot
longer, and is fundamentally a FPS. It's a work of art of gaming, and were
this a school on game design, I would absolutely agree with you.

TWOM is a work of literary art. If you haven't played it, do so, but be
warned: it hits hard, emotionally.

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indymike
It's about time that games get their due as great literature/media. Love it.
So many great stories.

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wobbly_bush
This was a very difficult game to play. The difficulty was not in the
gameplay, but in the emotional content of the game. If the other games help in
escapism, this is the opposite where you can feel what the characters are
going through in a war zone.

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LandR
I've had this game sitting in my backlog for months.

I've got a few days off work this week so need to give it a shot. I was never
sure looking at videos and screenshots what sort of game it actually is.

~~~
augusto-moura
Nothing that new in terms of gameplay, but the art style and the background
story (inspired in real conflicts) are something else

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machiaweliczny
I think they could also try movies analysis, there's ton of great content and
it's more approachable.

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seemslegit
The German translation would need an alternate title.

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elcapitan
Why?

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Thelordofalamut
Mein Kampf.

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swift532
Couldn't they use Krieg or am I wrong / is this is just joke?

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occamrazor
“Kampf” means “battle” and can also have, like in “Mein Kampf”, the
metaphorical meaning of “struggle”. “Krieg” means “war”. E.g. WW2 is Weltkrieg
2, not Weltkampf 2.

Having not played TWOM I don’t know which translates would be more
appropriate. The GP is however most likely a joke (and not a bad one IMHO).

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jccalhoun
It about trying to survive in a city in a fictional country during a war
(similar to the Yugoslav Wars). So I think that krieg is appropriate but I
haven't taken German in nearly 30 years so I'm rusty!

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elcapitan
It would be "Mein Krieg", not "Mein Kampf". Source: I'm German.

Also, "Kampf" would be active fighting, and this game is about people who are
in the opposite situation and become subjects of violence.

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christiansakai
It reminds me I have to finish this beautiful game

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dubcanada
I fail to see why this is news. I had games we played 20 years ago in school
which taught me tons of stuff, math blasters for example.

Putting a game on a school reading list when there is already 100's of games
on there, is not really news.

Kind of just seems like a ad than anything else.

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happytoexplain
Give the article a read, or play the game if you have time - it doesn't make
sense to compare the qualities of This War of Mine, educational or otherwise,
to those of Math Blaster. The fact that it's on a "reading list" should be the
first clue. It really is a pretty interesting decision.

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dubcanada
Your comment sound better if you where not implying I did not read the article
(because I did multiple times).

"It doesn't make sense to compare the qualities of This War of Mine,
educational or otherwise, to those of Math Blaster. The fact that it's on a
"reading list" should be the first clue. It really is a pretty interesting
decision."

Is much better. People take away different things from articles all the time.

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nix23
How many times you had to read the article to understand it?

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dubcanada
Ouch...

Obviously going to ignore the rather aggressive undertone. I clearly missed
something in the article so I reread it. There is nothing wrong with that.

My comment was in reference to the guidelines, which clearly state

> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read
> the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions
> that."

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nix23
That's why the question...2 Times? 3 Times more? I mean its not Peace and War
or Dr Schiwago ;)

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Bjartr
Don't be an ass

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juskrey
The education system, as always, sends the signal that should be received with
great suspicion and scrutiny. Here the case is slightly more complex: any
game, however rich, is a closed system with predictable outcomes, while real
life is all about choosing opaque options, rarely obvious.

Academia likes and itself all about first type: actually it is just another
computer game, especially with recent remote/online movement. Surviving in
real life situation like that, is nowhere near the computer game, but quite
the opposite.

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dreen
I think you're missing the point. That game doesn't teach you anything about
survival nor does it aim to, I think. It's more like a book about the people
who go through some hardship, you read about how they cope and maybe learn a
lesson applicable in everyday life. That is the point with some narrative
literature in the first place.

