I was born to a poor family in Inglewood and have lived in Inglewood, Compton and a place called Palmdale for the majority of my childhood. The environment I was in and the people around me were all what most would consider illiterate. None of them spoke proper English, and used heavy Ebonics, and reading was “gay.”

Needless to say, the environment I was in was not exactly one to cultivate the proper learning of the English language. The only person around me who actually spoke proper English was my mom, but she was hardly ever home, and my dad isn’t exactly Shakespeare (Not that Shakespeare knew a damn thing about proper English).

Regardless, I have achieved a lot with my current English abilities (I do write here after all ) The problem is, there is a missing piece. I never read books, I loathed English class, and I never really tried hard in it. Yet, I am a outstanding reader and writer, and speak fluent, proper English. To the point I was even ridiculed for my speech mannerisms by those around me. (in the bad environments)

The teachers were vexed and couldn’t understand where this came from, but the truth is it was all from video games.

I am a huge fan of JRPG’s, and ever sense a young age I have been playing games such as Shining Force, Fire Emblem and Chrono Trigger. The problem is to truly comprehend these games it requires high reading comprehension, especially for me. Normal conversational English in my day to day life consisted of “Yo mayne why don’t yu put dat Chinese shit down and come tap dat girl wif me. We ain’t got time for dis shit.” So rather then give up on what to me seemed like magical adventures due to a comprehension problem, I just gradually taught myself how to understand it all.

The more I understood, the more I could not understand why the people around me talked the way they did. So rather then conform to their standards, I simply continued to speak the way I did and isolated myself from them and their activities while engrossing myself in ones that would pleasure me.

Not only did video games vastly improve my English skills, they kept me away from dangers such as drugs, gangs and other things that would harm my progression as a Black American.

I sit here speaking to you now as a Black programmer from Inglewood, who managed to stay away from many social problems plaguing my people currently. Ironically, it is because the very thing that the government and many organizations accuse of rotting my brain. If only I could get them to understand that I may not be the same person typing this today if I was out “reppin my hood” instead of helping Eliwood save his kingdom from invaders.

Video games are a medium that I believe should be respected as much as books. I will choose to use the example of books for a direct comparison because my English teachers most commonly told me “Video Games are OK, but books engage you on a entirely different level which is why we do not use video games to teach in the classroom.”

I am not a avid reader. I actually am not very fond of almost any literature. While I can tolerate or enjoy reading a book, I take less out of it than if I were to say, play a video game or watch a movie. This may lead to the conclusion that I am a visual person, but that is also not exactly the case. The problem for me is one of engagement. When I sit down and read a book, the author generally paints a picture for me. I then imagine this picture how I would picture it in my head, and he goes on to describe the events. I play them out in my head, imaging along the way the scenes and actions that just happened. The problem with this, for me personally, is after I paint these pictures into my head my imagination gets lost. It builds on the idea’s, and soars away to new areas. I begin to flesh out the story in my own way, with the characters I have visualized and now am not simply satisfied with a picture of my imagination. I want it to be physical. I will attempt to draw the characters, and possibly create the scenes. Now I have pictures representing scenes, but I want this to be realized in motion. So I will animate the scene.

Something is lost though. Previously, I created the scene myself, as did everybody with their own imaginations, but now I have this world laid out and it is just something you experience passively. The engagement of imagining it yourself is gone, but I still want the realization of what my imagination was able to produce. When reading a book, I’m engaged in a manner that makes me create pictures in my head that cause me to lose interest in the text and dwindle off into a long tangent destroying my focus, but simply having that engagement laid out for me destroys the interest because I am much less engaged.

Que, video games. Video games create the pictures, but give them to you in a way where you can engage in creating the EVENTS. The scene is there, painted, now interact with it to cause reactions. This brings back the possible lost engagement from mediums such as movies, which are mostly passive (I say mostly because we are still engaged in them, just less and much differently then a book or a video game) while creating a environment where you can take actions that can be satisfied positively or negatively.

In WW2, the Nazi regimen hunted the Jewish population of Europe as if they were dogs. This forced them to live in extreme environments and constant fear. One such recalling of this event is the “Diary of Anne Frank.” Contained in this book are the experiences she went through in what would lead to her untimely death. This book is splendid in a educational sense. It not only helps kids gain a higher understanding of the words and language contained within it, it helps us better understand what it could have been like to live as a Jew in Nazi controlled Europe.

Now a video game, just as the book could accomplish just this, and more. While reading the book, I often found myself curiously asking “what if?” What if that day they were not quite enough and they were found. What if they attempted to run instead of hide? What if they tried to one day fight instead of hide? A video game has the capability to not only get a point across, but actively satisfy your curiosity and help you understand better a situation and event by letting you interact with it. You can see it through your characters eyes, AND your eyes.

The game starts as you, a nameless young boy who has been marked “Jood.” You begin to wander the streets, but quickly notice that as you attempt to run in certain areas there are soldiers that tell you to come with them. If you refuse, you are quickly dispersed of, and if captured you are brought to a entirely new scenario which object is to prolong your inevitable death. After your first run in and unfortunate end to the game, you realize it may not be best to fight against these soldiers or even be spotted by them. The problem is, even though you can hide from them, they are everywhere, and when you attempt to speak to certain people, they alarm the soldiers making it near impossible to get the food you want and need. Angry, you attempt to take the stance generally taken by us as humans, and even more so in video games. You fight. Sadly, that is quickly ended by a battalion of men armed with much more then you could ever hope to muster up to rebel with. Now, on your third play through you find a character who is willing to station you in their home. Your objective changes slightly, and now it is to stay alive and not be noticed in this home. Even though you attempt your best, it is near impossible for you to stay alive. It’s like the programmers made it so you can’t win.

Then it dawns on you. They DID make it so you can’t win. Why? Because, you can’t win. You are powerless. Hopeless in the face of a great evil, a oppressive force that dominates your life and controls you future.

Coming out of this, a person can fully understand the situation, given the power to attempt and try many different things that they would do in real life, only to have it all end in failure.

Some would argue that a game such as this would not be fun in nature, meaning it wouldn’t have much purpose to play. I would say, you could make the game a enthralling experience without ever blatantly shoving impossible acts and guns to destroy the evil and have a great outcome. You can immerse people in the game, have them care for this boy, and make them have a legitimate fear for the oppressors attempting to attack you. Following this principal, you would not dramatize the events to make them no longer factual, and not have to force absurd gimmicks in the game to make it “fun” so people will still want to play. People can enjoy themselves while not directly having “fun”, it is the reason we watch depressing movies with sad endings or can enjoy stories with experiences that end in tragedy. You are not enjoying yourself, it might even make you sick, but you are so engaged that you cannot simply turn away from whatever you are being presented.

I personally believe that is why video games more then any other medium have great potential as teaching tools. You are so engaged in what your doing, you can feed people information and feelings that you want to be learned, without purposely shoving it down their throat making it a monotonous task that nobody really likes to partake in.

Aside from the fact video games can engage us to teach us experiences from history, they also hold great potential for skills in Language Arts. When a game is full of meaningful conversations, such as those found in the MegaTen series, you can present people with vocabularies greater then those found in what people stereotype game scripts to be. Rather then one character going “I’m going to blow this to hell.” only to be responded with “Bitch yeah!”, you can have a conversation that goes

“While it was coincidental that we met here today, this encounter is sadly now going to be the sole factor deciding our fate. Ironic, isn’t it? Yesterday I smiled in your face assuring you that the future was bright, and to look forward to it’s happenings. Now I stand before you, knife and all, ready to stab you down. Brother. Heh, that word doesn’t truly mean anything. I paraded around calling you mine, but in the end I will have no problem murdering you as if you were a stray dog. It’s sad, I wish our fates could of turned out differently, but you betrayed me. Now, grasp your last breath because I am going to be taking the rest!”

Yeah yeah I know, that is somewhat corny but I wrote it on the spot. The point is it contains a rich vocabulary and many different type of literally devices. Not only that, in a game environment we can present these as text so it can be read, so it is not just spoken to the player. So we have the possibility to let it be spoken and read simultaneously.

This actually brings me back to my personal experience. Video games have the potential to be used effectively in schools to help with teaching of Language. There are many games that I believe could already be used in a school environment with a little modification (mostly RPG’s) to help with the process of learning. Imagine you were in class, and your teacher told you rather then read some book written buy a guy who you could give a crap about with some setting you do not care for, you were told “For this lesson we will be playing Fire Emblem. Please complete chapters 1 – 5 by the end of the week.” You would probably not get anything accomplished, not because you did not want to do the work, but rather you would simply be so ecstatic you would have a heart attack.

Now I understand games are not for everyone. Some people would loathe the idea of playing “Final Fantasy 7” over reading “Dante’s Inferno,” but I am a firm believer that would should allow kids to learn in ways that will benefit them. We are all different, not everybody could of got as much as I did from “Tales of Destiny.” However, many possibly could, and with these alternative learning methods we could possibly help those who struggle and put a genuine interest back into learning for said students.

School for me was always a chore. Those around me were always struggling, and if they were not, we were all collectively bored from finishing whatever we were assigned. I liked to learn, but the pace was too slow. When moved to classes for gifted students, I found myself not liking the pace, and the methods to be absurd. In a particular class, I listened to my teacher ridicule video games, AS I played Fire Emblem on my GBA. She noticed, and then challenged me to cite a bunch of words that we were not expected to know until she presented them in a attempt to gain my attention. After I quickly named all the words definitions, I added on “and I never really read any books to figure these out, but Video games and TV have helped me a lot. If it wasn’t for TV and games I would probably have no clue what you were talking about like everybody else, so I can see why you may not like them. After all, they seem to do your job better then you do.”

Needless to say, she, and my principal were not very happy with my little outcry. However, if we look past the punishment or my beautiful witty remarks, we can see one thing that was true. I WAS learning much more then she was presenting (and this was the gifted class) and more effectively because I taught myself through ways I liked to learn, without even realizing it half the time.

It’s unrealistic to have a program for everyone. Sometimes we have to conform to other learning methods because that is just how life is. Sadly, in schools only one way of learning is generally presented. Aside from this, options are hardly even given to the students in how they go about learning the information. So not only are other learning habits and methods encouraged, commonly used ones at that, but you are PUNISHED for not conforming to their standards you may not even use except to appease to their pointless standards. Some would say that this is how the real world works, and helps prepare students for facing real life challenges, but I would argue that this not only does not help them adapt to the real world, it makes them feel like they cannot face the real world in any situation, leading them to live lives that they could of possibly prevented if given some other learning method they got into.

I have a brother, who in school is attending some classes for children who are slow and need special attention. His teachers attempt to teach him and give him special attention, but he still has great trouble learning. He often time says he feels stupid and has no motivation to accomplish his task because he feels he will not get anywhere regardless of how hard he tries, because it seems like he can’t do it. He also likes to play video games, and just as me RPG’s. The problem is, he isn’t as bright as me, so he often times will get stuck and ask me for help because he has no clue where to go or what to do. Eventually I thought to myself, “Maybe this can be a opportunity to help teach him.”

We have a game called “Shin Megami Tensei : Persona 3 FES” (mouthful, isn’t it) and in the game, probably 50% of your time consist of reading interesting dialogue. My brother had a great interest in the game, but I told him I would not help him at all if he chose to play it. So, he choose to attempt to play it, and quickly realized he had to be able to read all the events that were taking place to have any clue what he was doing whatsoever. Rather then give up and miss out on a great experience, he sucked it up and just continued to read and read and read. Little does he realize, even though it’s not a book, he is becoming a much better reader (he can even now follow subtitles on anime, another thing he likes to do but has difficulty doing so because of his reading problems) because he was engaged in what he was doing, enjoying it and it did not even cross his mind it was educational.

Presenting students with new ways to learn can help them immensely, and video games are a new horizon that needs to be looked into greatly. Rather then attempt to find a plethora of educational games though, or develop these, we should look to already made classics and possibly future made games with a heavy historical or narrative driven plots to aid with this learning. Video games are a untapped goldmine in terms of potential to teach, and I believe breaking the cap on this sucker can help with many problems presented in school systems and with teaching today.

So, while you may disagree, I see video games as a art form that have just as much value to society as a book does. Simply because we only associate a task with fun, doesn’t change the fact that we can get so much more out of it then just a good time. Rather then write off video games simply as “entertainment tools only,” you should think about the possibility for education found in them. Especially the ones that original purpose did not have anything to do with video games in the first place.

DMitsuki analysis