Hacker News Reader

Comment by dschuetz | Hacker News Reader

"Every move has consequences" - That is absolutely brilliant! Is there any better way to explain such an abstract life concept to kids who can't see the consequences of whatever they do?

View on HN

I know a few "problematic" kids, from slackers to convicted violent robbers, and none of them deny the existence of consequences. What I see is overconfidence in their ability to predict them, or a fatalism about their lack of real options.

I can see chess helping with some aspects of their mental health (training calm logical thinking, coping with losing), but I don't think it actually teaches anything about consequences.

At the wake of all these concerns around video games, I am gonna risk it still and say Video Games.

It teaches a lot about consequences. Perhaps not on par with chess, because, most popular games demands much less exercise in deliberation and strategic(/critical?) thinking.

What are the consequences? Respawning?

Losing the game, you might get a few chance to respawn, but most games have some sort of scoring system. It is not much different than a game of Chess, in many ways.

With chess at least you have to restart from the beginning, like starting your life over I guess, making you rethink your strategy. With video games you typically regain health and restart from the last save...

There are many games where death is permanent. It seems to be the default for roguelikes. Unfortunately the games of this kind are harder the longer you can play them, which means that the best ones are almost impossible to beat. That reminds me to try my hand at nethack again...

Not all video games are like that, what does it matter if the "typical" video game is like that?

> Not all video games are like that, what does it matter if the "typical" video game is like that?

I guess because the comment was talking about "most popular video games"?

In the middle ages, backgammon was more popular than chess as it was seen as a closer to real life than chess. In backgammon, you have the concept of luck playing a role too. The meta lesson is: Luck can play a big role, but you still need a strategy.

Life isn't quite as nondeterministic as backgammon!!

It depends on the game. They could play Civilization which gives someone an intro to strategy, history, politics and science all in a friendly looking package, and when you lose you have to start over from the ancient era.

Is Civilization different from, say, Age of Empires in this respect? Because in AoE you keep your card deck etc. and merely restart the battle, which still puts you at an advantage compared to when you started off.

Yes, there's no carryover between games of Civilization. Then again, I'm pretty sure the card deck you're referring to only exists in AoE 3 which makes it pretty unique in the genre. Almost every other RTS has you start from scratch each match.

Haha, yeah, I was referring to AoE3, since I haven't played the others. Good to know!

Then you better save first.

Not just direct consequences, but indirect consequences such as opportunity cost.

Yes you took that pawn, but now your knight is in a vulnerable position... maybe there was a better play.

X-COM 2 has the same effect.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com