"What are you doing?" "Homework." "You're playing Fallout." "Right. Homework."

[SimuLord]

I'm taking a class in Operations Management this semester as part of my business degree. The latest assignment we have is to test the consistency and quality of a given process. Examples the teacher gave for something students could do included stuff like going outside and shooting baskets, throwing baseballs and counting balls and strikes, really anything with a binary result (either you succeeded or you didn't) that is easily repeatable. He then said "Get creative with your decisions here, I don't want to read 40 papers about students sitting in chairs throwing crumpled up pieces of paper into wastebaskets."

So I decided to design an experiment using...the Anti-Materiel Rifle from Fallout: New Vegas! I'm going to use Gypsum Train Yard and the flats near Vault 19, both areas infested with Deathclaws (a fairly large target) as my test bed. Every shot will result in (thanks to perks and such) either a dead Deathclaw or a missed shot (and thus an alarmed Deathclaw and dead Courier, but this is FOR SCIENCE!)

I will then use that as my baseline for an acceptable range of accuracy for a gun in the game. My conclusion will be "if shot quality falls below this baseline acceptable range, I'll know I've spent too much time playing and it's time to either go get another energy drink or go to bed and get some sleep because I'm too groggy to shoot straight. And if quality goes over the maximum range established in the baseline test, it's time to turn off the game and go brag on the Internet about how good I am at video games."

The test data (not the paper, just the data part) isn't due until the 14th, so I've got 10 days to play New Vegas and test everything under the sun (Sniper Rifle and Cazadores---a low-percentage shot---or Scoped Varmint Rifle and Powder Gangers on a low-level character...) This paper is gonna be awesome. And since the teacher DID say "get creative" I figure to get some bonus points.

For Discussion: Ever use video games to do homework? If so, how?

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

well one time my teacher gave me a spare copy of axis and allies for me to use(love that game), and i manipulated and recorded it to how a bunch of battles went(had to do this quite a few times to get numbers semi accurate to work) in the background while i gave a speech on it (battle of stalingrad and a few others nearby)

so it was basically an interactive experience, it was really fun and he gave me +5 extra credit for going "above and beyond" the average

 

[SilkySkyKitten]

I myself have not, although I'd love to be in a situation where I could use a video game for homework.

I do have a friend who used Garry's Mod to do a presentation on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in his 11th-grade English class, though. His teacher was rather impressed as well, from what I remember.

 

[EternalFacepalm]

I used the Source SDK for a presentation about terraforming and such with a couple of friends. That was quite fun, although we never got to actually *do* the presentation. I also remember going way too ambitious. Heh.

 

[BRMXJzjsoawk321]

In the 8th grade I was forced to use Sim City 4 for some hippie/engineering project that I was supposed to present at a university.

I was supposed to take care of the city in-game, but I got really bored with it. Failed that and screwed over my year average in that class. I actually went back to the game a few months later and had a city 10x more successful than my previous within a day.

 

[Chal]

Not really, though occasionally I'm more familiar with world history in general than the rest of the class thanks to Civilization (as sad as that sounds, it's true) and on one test in Art History I only remembered that a statue was made of diorite because of Dwarf Fortress, though that didn't make a difference because the instructor let "stone" slide as a correct response.

That's definitely a creative use of Fallout though, so props for that.

 

[Trolldor]

I would like to. In fact, there were a lot of times I wanted to refer to Video Games (Like Max Payne) as examples of genre in new mediums.

Couldn't because the Uni wouldn't accept them.

Well, the lecturer wouldn't.

 

[Jamboxdotcom]

that is awesome. but, then again, i've come to expect a degree of awesomeness from your posts. i tip my imaginary hat to you, SimuLord.
sadly, i've never used video games for homework, per se. i have, however, used comic books. can't remember in what exact capacity i used them, though...

also, to the poster 2 posts above me, it's always acceptable to post something awesome, even if there is no inherent discussion value. why? because it's awesome. that's why.

 

[Ih8pkmn]

I used Spore creature creator for a project on evolution once. I got an A.

 

[lacktheknack]

I nearly used Molyneux's "The Movies" for an English project, but didn't follow through.

If my computer science classes present me the opportunity, though, I'm going to Dwarf Fortress them so hard that <spoiler=fun>http://pubvo.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/dwarfy1.png shall be had by all.

 

[RabbidKuriboh]

used many games for ideas for short stories and essays

 

[soniceric]

Me and my friend used Garry's Mod for a project on a mousetrap car, it's ridiculously silly and the beginning looks terrible, and I got a C on the project but it was worth, it you can see the video here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcuA0dLtjVk

 

[Woodsey]

Nah, I usually just play the games instead of doing homework.

 

[SimuLord]

y'know, if you have to add a line at the bottom of your post saying "for discussion" then you probably shouldn't be posting this on a forum...

You're fairly new here, so I'll explain this nicely the first time.

"For Discussion" has been my catchphrase in threads I've created since oh...someone help me out here. It's been a pretty long time, over a year I think.

I do it because there was a point where a lot of threads were getting locked for "lack of discussion value" (like REALLY inane threads that were little more than an image macro or demotivational poster or something without even so much as a "what do you guys think about this?") My threads have always (at least I like to think they have) brought something to the table as far as sparking a discussion is concerned.

So at the end, after telling a story, I boil things down to a question about the post I've just made and say "For Discussion!" in boldface. Originally just a little tweak of the nose of the forum, it's something of a tradition.

 

[Artina89]

I have never used a videogame for homework, though I wish I could. It's all essays and lab reports for me, I think I could use a change in the type of the assignments I am given.

 

[Eumersian]

First of all, that's an awesome use of the game, and good luck killing them all (unless you're level 30 already, it was easy for me at that point).

In a discussion paper about answering the call to arms and dealing with your superiors and whatever, I brought up the story of Marathon and its sequels many times.

This doesn't really count, but in my Probability and Statistics class last year, we were told that at the end of the year we would have to test something, whatever we wanted, using any method we had learned. Unfortunately, the class (save most of the females, myself, and my good friend in the class) was a bunch of complete morons, so we had to make up in the end of the year some of the things that we fell behind on. But my idea was to play Pocket Tanks for hours, over a number of days, and determine what categories of weapons were picked more often for the weapon set (the game randomly chooses 20 out of 250 weapons for each player to pick evenly from before a match). Or something to that effect.

 

[Megacherv]

YES!

GCSE Science, Biology, Year 11

2-part presentation in LittleBigPlanet for my Research Study (actual work for the GCSE)

A*

Bitches

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

I used Valve as my business to impersonate for my business studies A-level. We had to pick a business to act as an interviewer for, so I chose Valve Software, knowing that they had at least 2 jobs going. It was more about the process of interviewing rather than Valve.

 

[Sp3ratus]

Well, I remember me and two other friends doing this project, where we had to a paper and at the end a presentation of said paper. We chose the subject of video games, as the overall theme of the project was something along the line of leisure time, as far as I remember.

Anyway, we had about two weeks in total to do the project, so we thought "hey, we could try and get some interviews or something". Well, we tried, but we only really got an interview with a guy owning a PC cafe. We decided to celebrate this by going out for pizza and staying at that PC cafe, playing games the rest of the afternoon. It wasn't really productive, but our product was video games, after all, so it wasn't for nothing! Or so I'd like to think.