When I was back in the US, I used to play quite a bit of video games, especially in middle school and high school since I had an abundant amount of free time because I finished my homework quickly. Then at Dartmouth, my playing time decreased a lot unless it was the weekend or during a major holiday and Dartmouth wasn't holding classes. And now in Russia, I almost never play a video game... except for Clash of Clans.
Of the many possible games I could have on my smartphone, it's the only one. I prefer using my smartphone to read books on my kindle app or articles on the internet. In fact, I wouldn't even have a game on my phone if it weren't for one of my students downloading it onto my phone after trying to convince me for weeks that I should play it. Now that I've got Clash of Clans (CoC) on my phone, he wants me to download World of Tanks... yeah, that ain't happening.
I'm not surprised though that my students keep wanting me to download all sorts of games. They're big fans of World of Tanks, Clash of Clans, Assassin's Creed and other war-related video games. Some even like to pretend they're the main character of the latest installment of Assassin's Creed. In some ways, it reminds me of myself when I was a kid and I would reenact WWII battles with my toy soldiers.
Still, I shouldn't get addicted to video games, now that I'm a working member of society and I prefer spending my free time walking with friends or coffee shops. And if I don't meet with friends, instead of playing games, I should try to finish one of the many novel projects I've started.
If only doing were as easy as saying. Genre-wise, Clash of Clans isn't even my type of game. I have always preferred sports games like Madden, NCAA football and FIFA, or first-person shooters like Call of Duty and Halo. The rare ventures outside those two genres were for Star Wars games like Battlefront and Knights of the Old Republic (by the way, it saddens me that Disney just declared the entire expanded universe as non-canon). And when I played a computer game, it was almost always for a real-time strategy game like Age of Empires or Star Wars Empire at War.
While Clash of Clans is related to most of those games in that it's conflict-based, the mechanics are fairly different. You have your own small clan village that you upgrade over time using gold and 'elixir.' The most common ways you receive gold and elixir are by generating it yourself with gold mines and elixir rigs or you can use a small army to raid someone else's village and steal their gold and elixir. You can upgrade your town without attacking but it's a very slow process that can be made even more tedious by other peoples' attacks on you. In other words, if you want to upgrade and not be left vulnerable, you must go on the offensive.
Here's where the departure from other games occurs.
In almost every game I have played on computer or console, I exercised a great deal of control on what happens. Even in Age of Empires, when I'm attacking another person's colony, I can direct individual members of my army and tell them where to attack. This is impossible in CoC. The only control you have is where you place your soldiers when you start attacking, which requires you to know the priority targets for each type of unit. Once you put all your soldiers on the battlefield, the computer controls the rest.
As I've played, I've gotten more used to this mechanic, and in some ways, I enjoy it. The lack of necessity to micro-manage battles is somewhat refreshing, although there are still moments when I'm shaking my head at how units progress through a village. But it's a nice feeling to sit back and watch the cinematic aspect of the battle.
I understand why it's a game my students like to play. You need only a 5-10 minute window of free time to check your village, upgrade something, attack someone and start rebuilding your army. For students who should avoid showing teachers their smartphones, it's an excellent game whereas games like Halo or FIFA require at least 20 minutes to play through a level or a game.
But the philosophic aspects of the game are also interesting. By going through the game, it makes the points, intentionally or unintentionally, that the best one to become better (upgrading your village) is to be active (attacking). Sitting around and waiting will go nowhere quickly, as was my experience when I didn't want to mount many attacks and risk getting my butt kicked attacking a village. Eventually, however, I learned in the game that if I wanted to make my village even better, I needed to be proactive.
There's also an interesting element regarding investing. When you choose to upgrade your gold mines or your elixir rigs, they will stop working for a period of time dependent on how advanced they already are. This forces you to strategize and priotitize which upgrades you want to complete first and which will help you most.
I also mentioned the inability to micro-manage battles. This can also be construed as a lesson that not everything will go perfectly, because in real life, people can't micro-manage. Often the worst leaders are those who try to control every element down to its smallest detail. This prevents their followers from really developing into well-rounded people who can become leaders in their own right. Conversely, the best leaders are those who trust their followers to do the right thing for the right reason. The leaders give their followers a task and allow their followers to accomplish the task however necessary.
I'm reminded about one of my friend's short stories about Bill Gates (at least I think it was Bill Gates). My friend said that Bill Gates would give the hardest tasks to his laziest workers because he knew they would find the most efficient way of accomplishing the task.
Anyways, I doubt my 12-year old students will pick up on these elements of the game considering how young they are, but maybe in time they'll notice these small lessons.
Anyways, in the next week or so, I'll write a blog post that recaps what's currently happening as well as my experience organizing a short class on public speaking in English. I just felt like writing a shorter, more light-hearted post that held a couple interesting anecdotes.
I will provide you with some pictures of the view outside my apartment last week. We had some snow during the night that stuck around for the morning before melting away.
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