It was a speech that was presented in 2019. Because I'm lazy, so I simply did the copy and paste（and adding some Chinese descriptions). Still, my altitude towards the topic remains the same today.
After seeing the topic of my presentation, don’t you think that I am really going to talk about that games and education are irrelevant? Well it’s a joke.
As a game player, the reason why I’m going to introduce today’s topic is because I have just read an article about the chief creative officer, the CCO(首席创意官） of the famous game company Ubisoft and he said, ‘games should benefit life. Games shouldn’t be only about entertainment. It should also be related to study.
Well, you may ask, ‘why would he say that?’. Ubisoft the famous game company has made lots of successful games, including one of my favorite—Assassin’s Creed II（《刺客信条II》）. It’s the story about the main character here whose name is Ezio. In the game, Ezio was first a boy who only wanted to revenge, because someone killed his father and brothers. After finishing his payback and get to know the assassins’ creed, he became a man who found his life goal. And finally, after years of journey and experiences, he became a wise man who change the history—well, in the game. The story of this game is like teaching us what should we pursue and treasure in our long life. It really blew my mindwhen I first played it because it taught me so much about philosophy and history.
You may think that such a game about philosophy is boring and unpopular. Well, it’s not, totally not. This is what prizes it has won.
And this isn’t the only example.
All these examples teach us one thing, which is ‘good games don’t only have the value of entertainment. And about the value of the games, if someone told you that the value is fun and excitement, then it’s wrong too. ‘n game development congress 2007（世界游戏开发者大会）, one of the game developers carried out an example which is:’ you know that there are many videos of people abusing animals in the internet, once you click the play button, I’m sure that you will fell lots of emotional excitement. But any kind of normal people won’t wee these videos as meaningful things. Games are not like them, are they?
And that’s why the famous director Oshii Mamoru（押井 守，95版《攻壳机动队》导演） said, ‘There must be something worthier than being moved which is broaden your knowledge and (perhaps)help you build your own views of the world.’
You may now think ‘well so the meaning of games turned into total educational, isn’t it?’
There are such kind of serious games in the world but as reports shown, all these games didn’t sold very well and are failures.
Here’s the answer of games and study: We should discover the educational meanings of games instead of editing them into educational things. We cannot separate the uses of games.
And also, the meaning of the old Chinese saying, ‘teaching one to fish is better than giving him fish.’（授之以鱼不如授之以渔） should be learnt by heart. And games are the way to fish instead of reciting the knowledge from the textbooks.
What I mean is that delivering knowledge should not be the final goal of education. Thinking, feeling and understanding the world is the goal. And this is also the meaning of all the forms of art, including games, literature and movies.
All these things should not be the terminal for us to run away from the life and the reality. They should provide us a virtue world for us to explore, to learn something that we cannot see or feel in the reality. They should be the start point for us to face the cruel but wonderful world.
And with this boom message, it’s the end of me presentation, merci!