How Survival Games Teach Players Resource Management Better Than Real Life

People don't tend to think of video games as educational, but they certainly can be. Of course we have the following obvious educational games: bookworm adventureDesigned to help young children learn to spell. There are also historically immersive games such as: civilization and even Assassin's CreedProvides a side history lesson as a backdrop to the main gameplay or narrative. But other games like Frostpunk, green helland Subnautica It also provides a deeper, more mechanical level of training.

Mechanics are ultimately what sets video games apart from other forms of entertainment. This broad, umbrella term encapsulates almost every interactive element of that game, whether it's a combat system or a set of puzzle rules that the player must adhere to. For survival games, the mechanics are typically designed around the acquisition and management of specific resources, such as food, building materials, or supplies for advanced technologies. This is different from how you manage resources in a survival horror game because traditional survival games 1) revolve much more fundamentally around resource management and 2) offer much more opportunities to invest, acquire, keep and lose those resources. This emphasis on scarcity allows survival games to convey a more powerful message about the natural world than any other.

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Survival games present powerful hypothetical models for resource management.

games like forest and The Long Dark With nothing more than wit and a few basic tools, players can be thrust into the desolate wilderness. From there, it's up to the player to secure shelter, food, water, etc., ideally using more efficient tools they build along the way. Although these are video games and obviously fiction, these mechanics depict the laws of nature more closely than everyday life in an industrialized society.

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my if i want don't starve If your character wants to eat something more hearty than strawberries or carrots, you'll need to gather ingredients, learn how to make a rabbit trap, wait for the rabbit to trigger, and then roast the rabbit over a fire so your character doesn't get sick. In real life, I know an Italian restaurant and a Chinese restaurant in my neighborhood that serve sumptuous rabbit dishes within an hour. It's almost like magic. As long as I have enough digital funds on a special plastic card in my wallet, I can indicate exactly what I want to eat. However, this does not necessarily mean that the production of rabbit stew or pasta is more efficient. Making one rabbit dish requires many resources: rabbit livestock feed, cookware fuel, and the time and energy of everyone involved in the production line (farmers, logistics managers, delivery drivers, chefs, servers). Making food requires resources and labor, but ironically we are more intimately involved in this process in the game of survival than in real life.

This logic can be applied elsewhere too. Take heating, for example. If you want to go in a little warmer The Long DarkYou'll need to find and create fuel for the fire, and monitor your resources to make sure the fire doesn't go out. In real life, you can just turn on the thermostat and feel warmer within minutes. But thermostats aren't without their problems. Our home heaters run on a combination of methane and fossil fuels, neither of which are renewable and will eventually be depleted. Again, I'm so alienated from this process of resource management and consumption that I'm not as intuitively, emotionally, or intellectually connected to it as I am to a survival game, even if I understand it intellectually.

Frostpunk: The Perfect Environmental Survival Game

I've never been shy about my love for 11 Bit Studios. team behind this my war, Frostpunkand Alters We are creating a survival sandbox without compromising on our vision. Probably not as complex or flexible as something like: ValheimIt definitely has a greater emotional impact. Nowhere is this clearer than in the first. FrostpunkThis is one of the most anxiety-inducing gaming experiences you can have.

Frostpunk Players must manage multiple resources such as food (raw and edible/cooked), coal, wood, metal, and steam cores to power automated production machines. In most cases, these resources are finite. For example, you can install a sawmill, but if the forest disappears, wood production will stop. You may eventually have an infinite supply of certain materials, but the game rarely feels generous. It is very easy to find yourself on the verge of mass starvation or freezing to death. The Long Dark, Frostpunk You become responsible not for one person but for an entire civilization.

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Population growth therefore requires new approaches to resource management, and failure to provide for one's people could lead to severe civil unrest, similar to that occurring in developing countries around the world. As an American (although I think this applies to millions of people in the industrialized world), I must admit that I rarely think about where the methane that heats my home comes from, and I am constantly unaware of the sheer volume of resources required to run a single restaurant, public house, or workplace. when i play FrostpunkI literally can't help but consider all of this all the time.

death strandingis not a survival game in the traditional sense, but it's great for gaining a similar perspective. For example, being a person who donates resources to build roads creates a stronger perception of the value of roads.

Even if you don't believe in phenomena like global warming or rising sea levels, you can't ignore the fact that many of the resources we use are finite and will eventually be depleted. The gases that power your car will eventually dry up, as will the veins of copper, gold and zinc that make up the device you're reading this on. Many renewable resources, such as wood, can also be overharvested, creating scarcity and waste. The obvious problem is that in real life, many people don't have to think about this. Roads, buildings, and food seem to be the result of God's will rather than the blood and sweat of workers and the decisions of those who control essential resources. In the same game FrostpunkThese factors become so embedded in your mind that you wonder how you can ever look at a building, a road, or a bowl of rabbit stew the same way again.