I was
playing dungeon defenders with my children and realized that it provided an
interesting team building exercise. My daughter and I were playing on my X-Box down
stairs, my son was on his in his room, and my daughter’s boyfriend was on his
in Kansas. The X-box has internet connections, and headphones, which allowed us
to talk as if we were in the same room. The game pits four players against an
almost never ending horde of mythical creatures. At the start of the game there
is a limited amount of resources to create blockades. We have to figure out
were the best placement of these blockades, and which character’s style of
blockade is better in that position. We then plan out the best starting position
for our characters, and as the horde make their advance we keep each other
informed on our status and our position. If one of starts to get overwhelmed we
ask for some back up and one or more of the others can then move to assist.
There are
several games out that use this same type of cooperation, games like Halo, Call
of Duty, Plants vs. Zombies, just to name a few. Everyone playing these games
is working together to complete a goal the game provides. Usually this goal
becomes more complicated as the players progress through the levels. The people
who are playing these games are all over the world. This dynamic not only helps
people practice teamwork. The internet provides some anonymity so the issues
with age, race, religion, and sexual preferences are not even approached. Most
gamers just want to have fun playing their game with the help from someone.
With
the games and technology of today, people have a fun way to practice the team
work skills. To survive in the world you have to be able to work with anyone.
I like that you spend time and play with your kids; I hope all fathers give their children time because in these days fathers spend most of leisure time sit on the internet.
ReplyDeleteI also like playing video games with other people. Though for a long time, I didn't have an internet connection so playing with other people was often difficult. During that time, I remember often wishing that there were more games that offered an offline cooperative mode like the original Halo games or Left 4 Dead, even those games were fun, they got kind of boring after a while. But now I have internet and playing online is much more fun because you can play with a variety of different people from all over the world.
ReplyDeleteAfter you explain how the game is organized, I was hoping you would go back to how this team-building exercise impacts your relationship with your kids.
ReplyDeleteBe aware of editing at the sentence level; there are a lot of spelling errors in all of these posts.