Have Video Games helped you with your understanding of computers?

[thechez99]

Hi!

I'm doing an essay in English about how Video Games are better for us that most people seem to think and I wanted to use the point: Video Games have helped me, and many others develop their understanding of computers.

And I wanted to make sure that it was actually true, so that's why I'm posting here. It's a poll to ask you guys, Have Video Games helped you better understand computers?

Thanks to all of you that help me by voting in this poll

- thechez99

 

(P.S. Sorry if this is in the wrong place or is repetitive, mods)

[mikat]

video games? no (one exception is minecraft with the computercraft mod, that's where i learned programming)

youtube? yes

forums? yes

[BoredErica]

Well...

The reason why I started looking at computer hardware and learning about all of it was so I could play Oblivion back in the day. Modding Skyrim and Oblivion taught be some stuff which are specific to modding Bethesda games, but also some general game stuff like textures, meshes, resolution, ...vram limit, anti-aliasing, anisotrophic filtering, parallax... spotting CPU vs GPU bottlenecks, overclocking, storage benchmarks...

[desertcomputer]

Playing video games? No.

Learning what runs a video game, that another story. 

[JuztBe]

Yup. Video games indirectly got me in to tech and taught me how to use windows.

 

After some time my games started lagging. Had to look look for a solution - CPU was overheating. After some time went as far as lapping CPU. Later started OC'ing. This got me in to tech.

 

Windows and games used to crash. Had to find a solution for it as well. Learned about basic windows functions, registries, drivers etc. because of it. 

[LokiFire]

I started in my PC journey with a Pentium D 930 and a Radeon X1550, i wanted to run Frontlines Fuel of War... was not happening above 15FPS lol.

[Minzo]

Yeah I guess so. When I used to torrent games things where difficult and I had to research how to do certain things.

That counts right?

[Kiol]

Further clarification of the argument is needed for me to understand it completely. I'm not getting what aspect of video games you're talking about that is indirectly improving people's understanding of computers. I'm not even sure if "indirectly" is being used correctly here. Many people play video games all the time and still know next to nothing about what a computer is or how they operate.

[thechez99]

2 minutes ago, Kiol said:

Further clarification of the argument is needed for me to understand it completely. I'm not getting what aspect of video games you're talking about that is indirectly improving people's understanding of computers. I'm not even sure if "indirectly" is being used correctly here. Many people play video games all the time and still know next to nothing about what a computer is or how they operate.

Yeah, sorry wasn't being the clearest with that. I just want to know if by playing video games or by wanting to play video games helped you to understand computers better, whether it be hardware, software of anything in between.

[LukeTim]

If it wasn't for video games I probably wouldn't have got as interested in computers as I am. So, definitely.

[DimasRMDO]

I don't know if this counts as "Yes", but I've gained new interest because of video games. IT security, you know.... Games.... Breach this, breach that.... This makes me think I should learn IT security....

[PCEnthusiast543]

I would say Video Games indirectly got me interested in computers, I was sick of my games running at 30 fps locked and 720p usually, so I started searching for a different solution and got super interested in computers.

[racer243l]

Well games brought me into PC´s in like 2003. I started learning how they work, how to improve them, optimize them for specific tasks. And they even helped me in school, because my presentations in PP kicked ass for better grades, and in the final year I took computer science lessons, which appeared to be a walk in the park for me (and saved me from oral exams).

[Humbug]

when I started playing in the early 90s I was a kid and used to just ask my dad to launch games for me from the dos prompt. I then learned to use dos myself and took it from there. When I had to start using windows I was like "WTF is this shit, give me back my command prompt".

[dcb-z]

Yeah, I grew up playing computer games and that's how I learned to use a computer.

[nims0c]

I learned to build my own computer so I could play video games. Does this count?

[Vivilacqua1]

yes, because I wanted my games to look and run better so it made me learn about computers.

tbh though, I fall under the " uses videogames as an excuse to have a badass computer, but doesn't really play them" category.

[GeekJump]

Not at all...

 

They have helped me learn how to be a ninja tho if that counts?

[Kenji6]

I can say that specific games have lead me to learn more about how computers work, but certainly not all of them. If you look up a little game called "Kerbal Space Program", a space sim game with real data and a huge modding community, I first learned how to manage files and mod from their forums. Additionally, since I got my new 64-bit computer, I learned that the current version of that game is only 32-bit and that I couldn't use all 16Gbs of RAM or else the game would crash. From there, I found out why developing a game from 32 to 64-bit infrastructure in the code was such a pain in the dev's posterior (especially for such a heavily-modded game, where some mods are whole gigabytes of data added on), and the rest is history.

[TetraSky]

No?
I mean.. Why would a game help me get a proper understanding of computers... If that were the case, then console gamers would also know a lot more about PCs.

 

Well, I guess you could argue that video games could've caused me to want to learn more about computers when my PC couldn't run a game and I wanted to find out why and how to "fix it", be it software or hardware... but that's really far fetched. Then there's the whole learning that recommended specs aren't absolute and are more of a "suggestion". But even there...
I personally learned about computers by actually being interested in computers and not just because of games.

[AshleyAshes]

Sure.  It helped me understand that computers are a pain in the ass.

[TacoSenpai]

Well yeah.  I can remember my first console being the N64 and it was really the first thing tech wise I ever had aside from my TV.  So I'd say it spurred my interest more than anything. 

[Ddave]

I learned to type fast and without looking at the keyboard while typing GTA:SA cheat codes.

Also, I got into pc hardware when I planned to build a PC that'll run games better.

[byalexandr]

Not really, they're more of a demonstration of the principle than something to learn from.

[GigaSnow]

Not really... I mean, to me, video games are just software programs. It'd be no different than saying Microsoft Word helped me understand computers.

 

I suppose I got into PCs BECAUSE of gaming, and it was my "gateway drug" to learning about hardware and computer science, but them by themselves, no.