If you told a king from 500 years past that in the future there is a magical "other" world inside a crystal crafted by the finest of mages where conquest, diplomacy, and economics can be practiced to perfection without risking no lives nor resources but that of time, and that this endeavor is both stupid and a complete waste of time, he'd think you're not only mad, but foolish to squander such an opportunity to learn how to govern a kingdom, and by extension, yourself.
Your mistake is not one of playing games, but of thinking there's nothing to be learned from doing so. Sid Meier's Civilization is not some slot machination to drain you of everything. It is the design of one of our era's greatest minds, in the pursuit of understanding the systems underlying our Earthly existence, and the democratization of that research to the fingertips of all.
For someone who enjoys balancing the needs of a kingdom, you've yet to learn to balance the needs of your own body.
> conquest, diplomacy, and economics can be practiced to perfection
This is a ridiculous analogy. The vast majority of video games have so little application to the real world as to be effectively useless. This is relevant in the particular case of Dota 2, which, while an incredibly interesting game, has virtually no relevance to the real world.
"Virtually" because if I say "no relevance" then pedants will quickly point out that you can learn some basic economics by looking at the skin marketplace, or something. Yeah, sure, and you can learn more about human anatomy by having sex. The ratios of learning for those things compared to doing dedicated learning (textbooks, classes, internet research, practice) are at least in the ratio of 100 to 1, if not more, for all but the tiny minority of games explicitly designed to have a significantly amount of learning potential (e.g. Kerbal Space Program).
Using your own analogy, if you told said king that using this crystal took you 100 to 1000 times longer to learn about things than the magical libraries that we also have available to us, which also only cost your own personal time, and then advocated for their use, he'd definitely think that you were crazy - and you would be.
> It is the design of one of our era's greatest minds, in the pursuit of understanding the systems underlying our Earthly existence, and the democratization of that research to the fingertips of all.
Sid Meyer is not "one of our era's greatest minds" even in the particularly narrow field of video game development.
> For someone who enjoys balancing the needs of a kingdom, you've yet to learn to balance the needs of your own body.
There is no "balancing the needs of a kingdom" going on. The Civilization games are optimized for entertainment first, and if educational value is optimized for at all, it's definitely not in the top 5. If you take someone who has put thousands of hours of Civilization into any position of authority (and no other relevant training), they'll a pathetic, miserable mess, and not able to keep up with someone who's read a just few dozen hours' worth of well-chosen history, economics, and military strategy books.
If you could learn to rule merely by playing Civ, then American anime enthusiasts would be able to learn Japanese merely by watching anime, which virtually never happens, and it's pretty well known that it's not a feasible learning strategy.
Sid Meier's Civilization is considered one of the most influential computer games in history, in addition to being a critical and commercial success, and a pedagogical boon to humanity.
The statements you make only reveal your utter ignorance to the subject at hand, as even the most cursory of web searches will squarely establish these facts.
> particularly narrow field of video game development
Video games are almost bigger than TV, movies, and radio combined. I hate to ad hominem but you're talking out of your ass.
You completely failed to respond to any of my points about anything substantive except quarreling about how great a video game Civilization is using subjective opinions.
> Sid Meier's Civilization is considered one of the most influential computer games in history
An extremely subjective list with hundreds of viable candidates for it. What does "one of" even mean here?
> a critical and commercial success
Which, alongside "one of the most influential computer games in history", are all literally completely irrelevant to the topic at hand, which is "does it have educational value".
> a pedagogical boon to humanity
Citation needed. I've never heard anyone call Civ anything like this, let alone anyone who is a professional educator.
> The statements you make only reveal your utter ignorance to the subject at hand, as even the most cursory of web searches will squarely establish these facts
Incredible arrogance, the old trope "look it up for yourself", and blatantly false. You know what my very first result is for searching "most inflential video games of all time" on Google is? A list of ten games[1] that doesn't have Civ at all. My next result[2] puts it at position 73. Then another list of five games[3] without it.
The very fact that you consider these subjective opinions, which are literally the opposite of facts to be "facts" proves that you have no idea what you're talking about, nor the most basic understanding of logic. (the fact that you don't know what search engine bubbling is doesn't help either)
> Video games are almost bigger than TV, movies, and radio combined.
Which is, again, completely irrelevant, because (1) you're ranking those by some consumer metric, not educational value, and (2) every one of those are entertainment fields. Which is more important: video games, or the study of physics or history itself? (this is a rhetorical question, and again, regardless of the truth of these claims, they simply do not matter to the discussion)
If you seriously think that video games are at all comparable in educational value to actual education, then you better provide some extremely convincing evidence, because it's pretty clearly false at first glance.
To sum up: aside from the small part of your comment that is objectively false, this entire thing is purely subjective opinion with absolutely no substantiation whatsoever, in addition to being utterly irrelevant to the rest of the thread. Please make points that are actually related to the subject at hand.
I know and agree that there are lessons to be learned from civ and dota. I never said it was a complete waste of time, but it is an addiction that takes over your life.
Tiktok, reddit, binging netflix, in contrast are probably directly harmful.
I will add learning teamwork, and learning incentivisation, and learning how to bend or manipulate rules. It is a great time to be alive if you have any sociopathic tendencies.
Your mistake is not one of playing games, but of thinking there's nothing to be learned from doing so. Sid Meier's Civilization is not some slot machination to drain you of everything. It is the design of one of our era's greatest minds, in the pursuit of understanding the systems underlying our Earthly existence, and the democratization of that research to the fingertips of all.
For someone who enjoys balancing the needs of a kingdom, you've yet to learn to balance the needs of your own body.