Life is competition. When you are an adult, everything you do is a competition. Your career, dating, buying a house, trading stocks, etc. Kids need to be taught and exposed to healthy competition early, not sheltered from it.
"Montessori does not encourage competition in the traditional sense," Goodwin said. "The idea with Montessori is that children strive to do the best that they can do."
therein lies a problem, for children as well as for gamers. it's infinitely more gratifying to win a competitive game than it is to "explore and enjoy failures". it's competition that separates the boys from the men
@JahB: "it's competition that separates the boys from the men"this is where the problem is.sure it feels good when you win but winning isn't everything.i get a pretty good feeling when i get to play a challenging and loose many many times(shinobi)but i learn from my failure and got better.this is one of the reasons i don't play multiplayer games because there's always someone the thinks is a championship and they need to win or else they will die because the didn't win.so i got a question for you and everyone else here at kotaku when was the last time you play a game just for the fun of it?
@JahB: true you and all of us have a desire to win but to say the "it's infinitely more gratifying to win" is just plain wrong not just in video games but in real life as well
@Curse_Lily: sorry Lily, but i wholeheartedly disagree here. nowadays, thanks to that horror known as "political correctness", winning is almost being disencouraged, and that is plain wrong.
competition brings out the best (and worst) in people. in video games, it makes you a better gamer; in real life, it makes you a better person. winning might not be everything, but if you never strive to be better than others, you'll never realize your full potential.
@JahB: "in real life, it makes you a better person" trust me the not always the case i work at target and because of the little speech"strive to be better than others, you'll never realize your full potential". a friend and co-worker almost loose his life just because we were up for promotion but when i got it he went into a depression and try to take his life.so you can call it "political correctness" or whatever but competition never brings out the best of anyone.
@Curse_Lily: that's the flipside of the coin. no matter how good you are, you can't always win, and how to deal with losing is quite an important lesson to learn as well.
your comparison is a bit unfair though, since that concerns somebody's livelyhood, and at that state it's no game anymore; i was more thinking about sports etc. when i said "in real life". i'm sorry about your colleague though, and i hope he'll get better soon.
@JahB: Oh my God, this whole argument is so ridiculous.(Not just this comment in particular, but the whole back and forth.) Some people are more competitive than others. Some people are very focused on winning, others are more interested in open-ended exploration and cooperation. It's good to have balance. It's good to know how to win and lose gracefully, and it's good to be able to cooperate.
It seems to be fairly NEW gamers who are entirely driven by competition when they game, people who only came into things with Guitar Hero and Halo and achievements.
Some of us out there really just enjoy narrative, interesting gameplay, and exploring a robust world.
@Curse_Lily: It's not childish though. What do you think discussion is for?
I know you're not really being serious but I always like to at least learn something from discussing things. Rather than, let's say, winning an argument... =p
@JahB: Intersting statement. Interesting in that, like most communal animals in nature, mankind's greatest accomplishments and fullest potential has always been reached by collaboration with each other; not against each other.
Not saying that competition has not place in games or life, like some of the others seem to imply with their posts. Competition does have it's place, and if handled correctly, is a very healthy not to mention natural expression of the species. At the same time, direct competition never yielded results like the Great Pyramids or the Great Wall of China. Even the design stage of those accomplishments, was the result of many humans collaborating. Even the greater accomplishments like oral language, reading, writing, philosophy, mathematics, art, cultivation, engineering, civilization itself (all the things we take for granted far too easily in the modern age), are not possible to purely competitive species. I was reading a paper a few years back, where a group of anthropologist discovered evidence that the very evolution of homo-sapian-sapian, may not have occurred had our direct predecessors on the evolutionary scale, had not learned to stop competing all the time, and to cooperate on some rudimentary level.
Again, not saying there is no place for healthy expressions of competition for the species. However, to state, as you have, that competition brings out the best in our species, is like saying that competition brings out the best in lions or sharks, as the end results would be near identical. That is not political correctness, that's just looking at the last 3.2 million years of anthropological and scientific evidence, and stating the obvious. Competition while healthy, was ever going to take our species so far. To get anywhere beyond where the rest of the animal kingdom seems doomed to dwell, that took just enough competition to keep driving us forward, all the rest was cooperation. And at any point where the importance of competition overshadowed cooperation, we've only wound up destroying much of the forward progress that was made during the periods where we kept competition and cooperation in balance.
@MPSai: I would argue that. It might be the case with you or others you know, it isn't with me and most of the gamers I know.
As far as gaming is concerned I am extremely competitive in multiplayer games such as Halo. I like winning. I feel good about it, and I don't apologize it. However, I also love games like Rock Band, or co-op shooters. Working together with a team mate to gold star songs in Rock Band is just as fun to me as pulling off a nice headshot in Halo. I also enjoy purely single player experiences like Bioshock, competing against the computer using only my own wits.
I think there's a time and place for all types of gaming, and competition. It's important for kids to learn the value of constantly striving to do their best, while also realizing that winning is not everything, they won't always be the best and they shouldn't expect to be. You can learn important lessons from winning and realizing what made you the best in that situation, as well as losing, realizing your mistakes and trying harder next time.
@Apo7heosis: You know what is funny about this whole argument, what gave rise to the "pusssification" of children in school was the previous mentality: Winning is everything.
Basically, both extremes are bad. I defiantly notice that kids below my graduating class are too sheltered and thus cannot take bad news or "loosing" well.
However, it was not until I was older and they taught kids that the experience is good by playing in competition that I got the "good game" scenario.
In the past, all they taught is "winning is everything". That led to over machoism and guess what? When you lost at tennis they would mob you, steal your shit and beat the shit out of you when you fought back by spitting soda on you. And when you tried to get justice, they said "well winning is everything."
No joke. "Winning is everything" and "wining is not everything" both breads assholes. The main problem is that people cannot be people and remain civilized. They always go between extreme thoughts. Nobody is political, they are either Liberal Democrats or Conservative Republicans. Nobody is spiritual, you are either a white trash racist Christian or a Anti-Semitic blow yourself up Muslim.
The game would have been even more like a montessori education if it had stuck to Wright's original vision and depth and had not been dumbed down by EA.
03/24/09
That makes no sense what so ever. what an overrated moron.
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Still, I don't think I'll be revisiting it, or any of the dlc that inevitably comes out.
03/23/09
therein lies a problem, for children as well as for gamers. it's infinitely more gratifying to win a competitive game than it is to "explore and enjoy failures". it's competition that separates the boys from the men
03/23/09
03/23/09
it's like you say: you fail numerous times and still you come back - because you have a strong desire to win in the end.
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03/23/09
competition brings out the best (and worst) in people. in video games, it makes you a better gamer; in real life, it makes you a better person. winning might not be everything, but if you never strive to be better than others, you'll never realize your full potential.
03/23/09
03/23/09
your comparison is a bit unfair though, since that concerns somebody's livelyhood, and at that state it's no game anymore; i was more thinking about sports etc. when i said "in real life". i'm sorry about your colleague though, and i hope he'll get better soon.
03/23/09
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It seems to be fairly NEW gamers who are entirely driven by competition when they game, people who only came into things with Guitar Hero and Halo and achievements.
Some of us out there really just enjoy narrative, interesting gameplay, and exploring a robust world.
03/23/09
I know you're not really being serious but I always like to at least learn something from discussing things. Rather than, let's say, winning an argument... =p
03/23/09
03/23/09
Not saying that competition has not place in games or life, like some of the others seem to imply with their posts. Competition does have it's place, and if handled correctly, is a very healthy not to mention natural expression of the species. At the same time, direct competition never yielded results like the Great Pyramids or the Great Wall of China. Even the design stage of those accomplishments, was the result of many humans collaborating. Even the greater accomplishments like oral language, reading, writing, philosophy, mathematics, art, cultivation, engineering, civilization itself (all the things we take for granted far too easily in the modern age), are not possible to purely competitive species. I was reading a paper a few years back, where a group of anthropologist discovered evidence that the very evolution of homo-sapian-sapian, may not have occurred had our direct predecessors on the evolutionary scale, had not learned to stop competing all the time, and to cooperate on some rudimentary level.
Again, not saying there is no place for healthy expressions of competition for the species. However, to state, as you have, that competition brings out the best in our species, is like saying that competition brings out the best in lions or sharks, as the end results would be near identical. That is not political correctness, that's just looking at the last 3.2 million years of anthropological and scientific evidence, and stating the obvious. Competition while healthy, was ever going to take our species so far. To get anywhere beyond where the rest of the animal kingdom seems doomed to dwell, that took just enough competition to keep driving us forward, all the rest was cooperation. And at any point where the importance of competition overshadowed cooperation, we've only wound up destroying much of the forward progress that was made during the periods where we kept competition and cooperation in balance.
03/23/09
As far as gaming is concerned I am extremely competitive in multiplayer games such as Halo. I like winning. I feel good about it, and I don't apologize it. However, I also love games like Rock Band, or co-op shooters. Working together with a team mate to gold star songs in Rock Band is just as fun to me as pulling off a nice headshot in Halo. I also enjoy purely single player experiences like Bioshock, competing against the computer using only my own wits.
I think there's a time and place for all types of gaming, and competition. It's important for kids to learn the value of constantly striving to do their best, while also realizing that winning is not everything, they won't always be the best and they shouldn't expect to be. You can learn important lessons from winning and realizing what made you the best in that situation, as well as losing, realizing your mistakes and trying harder next time.
Balance, balance, balance.
03/23/09
Basically, both extremes are bad. I defiantly notice that kids below my graduating class are too sheltered and thus cannot take bad news or "loosing" well.
However, it was not until I was older and they taught kids that the experience is good by playing in competition that I got the "good game" scenario.
In the past, all they taught is "winning is everything". That led to over machoism and guess what? When you lost at tennis they would mob you, steal your shit and beat the shit out of you when you fought back by spitting soda on you. And when you tried to get justice, they said "well winning is everything."
No joke. "Winning is everything" and "wining is not everything" both breads assholes. The main problem is that people cannot be people and remain civilized. They always go between extreme thoughts. Nobody is political, they are either Liberal Democrats or Conservative Republicans. Nobody is spiritual, you are either a white trash racist Christian or a Anti-Semitic blow yourself up Muslim.
THAT is the problem. Nobody just...PLAYS anymore.
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