The fact that the game is called "Angry Birds" confuses me because it makes me so happy! It is seriously the most addicting game I have ever played. Angry Birds is a game that allows you to slingshot a bird into stacks of wood and ice blocks. There are pigs placed under different parts of the woods, or ice blocks and the goal is to have the bird cause the tower of items to fall and kill the pigs. There is a lot of problem solving that comes with this game because the higher the level, the more complicated the obstacle of wood and ice gets. Also you are given different colors of birds that have different strengths, so you have to figure out which bird best hits which spots of the obstacle to make it fall. It definitely took me a few tries to figure out my strategy. Angry Birds uses critical thinking and learning because I had to figure out what angle the sling shot needs to be at and how far it needs to be stretched to hit the weakest part of the wall so the wood and ice fall onto as many pigs as possible. I also had to learn each birds strength and abilities, so I could strategize which bird needed to hit which spot on the wall, which meant each bird needed to be thrown at a different angle and speed. I started to look at the game as coming up with ways to manipulate the game in certain ways to achieve my goal. Experiencing new things about the game is what James Paul Gee calls active learning. For example learning that after I let the bird fly off of the slingshot, if I touch the blue birds before they hit the wall they separate into three birds. This gives me a clue that with every new type of bird that comes with a new level, if I touch them before hitting the wall they might have more abilities that could help me succeed. I was forming new affiliations and this prepared me for future learning for the levels to come.
Another thing that I noticed about the game was the more I failed, the more I learned. When I failed to hit the right spot on the wall, or I aimed the wrong type of bird at the wrong spot because it was too weak to knock that part of the wall down, I was able to figure out not only how to fix it and make it work consistently. This could be James Paul Lee's principle of psychosocial moratorium because in a video game learners can take risks where real world consequences are lowered. Where there is more room for error, the more learning can go on. Another one of James's principles that definitely applied to my success with Angry Birds was the practice principle. Obviously we all know that practice makes perfect, but when the practice is not boring and I have constant ongoing success, mastering Angry Birds will definitely happen more quickly because of how consumed I am with this exciting virtual world. A game that I played yesterday however, (Call of Duty 3) I did not have a similar experience with, but I will get into that in my next blog. Overall I am learning so much more about how video games are not a waste of time through the Gee book, and I have actually been arguing with people who think the opposite. I may not be turning into a gamer per say, but I am definitely getting on board with understanding why my brother is so into games!
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