The Long Dark in the classroom

[Vylaina]

Hey all,

I wanted to post this mainly as a big THANK YOU to the developers for such an amazing game!! They should be incredibly proud of themselves, and I will be eagerly following them and their creations into the future.

I'm a high school teacher, and I have recently been using The Long Dark as a discussion point/paired text/comparison text in my English classroom. We've been reading Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen, and TLD pairs up nicely! (For any other interested teachers, so does the docu-reality series Alone, set on Vancouver Island.) We've been examining the mechanics of TLD and how they emphasise aspects of the environment and the survival challenges faced, as well as the art style and how the player experiences the game. It's been a HUGE hit with my students! They've been begging me to let them all play the game in class! So I wanted to say "thank you" from them as well. If you guys ever release an education edition/class pack, know that you would have many interested teachers across a whole heap of subject areas - Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS), English, Digital Technology, graphics and design, science... so thank you!!

[peteloud]

I think that you are making a good point about the educational value of games.  In spite of HTL giving a warning the TLD is a games and that you shouldn't use what you learn in TLD in real life, I feel that I have learned a lot about survival in remote wintry conditions from playing TLD.

I saved a special version of Far Cry 3, with nasty and aggressive bits removed, for my young granddaughters.  They loved it and learned a great deal about tropical wild life and the tropical environment.

Two of the best games I know for educational content are Assassins Creed Unity and Syndicate.  They give a very good portrayal of life in Paris in the French Evolution and in Victorian London.

I haven't seen a recent version of the Sims, but what I saw more than ten years ago seemed excellent for teaching and encouraging young people to prioritise life decisions

Many games have very high educational value in a variety of ways, not just geographical and historic.  It irritates me that many non-games think that there is nothing more to computer games than delinquent school kids wasting their time shooting zombies.