View source for Game Culture Analysis

'''Games: Nintendo Arcades Small Research Project / BY ABDIKADIR ABIKAR'''
Date: March 29, 2019.

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PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

'''Introduction''' 

In this assignment, I executed a small research project which involved a visit to a small Nintendo arcade in the IFO refugee camp. This is where a number of school age children were engaged by a businessperson (anonymous); there are four screens or monitors and The Nintendo Switch Pro Controller (Controllers) which is, according to Wikipedia, described as a video game controller manufactured by Nintendo for use with the Nintendo Switch video game console. These children play with each other and available games involve sports, mainly football play within various professional leagues. As a small research project for a graduate course on games and learning, I was interested in 1) finding out why children are more curious to come to the market to play video games rather than attend school and 2) what and how children might learn through playing games in the Ifo Nintendo arcade. 

I first asked for the consent of the owner; I then entered the arcades as a neutral observer (not a teacher) as most children play these games were present without their parents’ knowledge or permission, and occasionally engage with this kind of play instead of attending school. Further, parents don’t see these games as a helpful technologies for their children’s cognitive or social development. I told them that they should remain calm and no one should feel oppressed playing today, because I also came to play with them. So I picked a student who was at that time wearing a school uniform (green clothes) but did not have coins (money) to play. Hence, I told him (anonymous), today you will play with me, and I will pay for you. He also gave me permission to capture gameplay with photos and use it on my small research project. I also captured some photos and short video clips of others with their verbal consent.

'''Data Collection''' 
According to the children I interacted with, they told me that the in-game commentaries of the different matches help them to increase vocabularies and verbs, as well as sentence constructions; some kids pay attention to the commentator’s voice while others don’t care and listen to the music that was connected for them by the business owner. In my observations, I saw that a few players understood the English commentary while the rest focused on the screen. 

According to the business owner of the arcade, “the Nintendo is a station of enjoyment and not a school, so for me, I don’t want to waste the children’s time, but given free time they can open up and do what they want. I found out that many children were playing using smartphones [to play games] so this idea really helped me to expand from the smartphone to open a business so that I can engage the kids and gain some financial support for my family”.
“We also used speakers for playing music to entertain them; if these situations are put into school, I hope it may help them to free themselves up. For the idea of [game] integration, to my understanding, the educators need to be serious in thinking about the integration of gaming activities with learning by revisiting their curriculum and finding out how best this can be put into the schools”. 

I interviewed the owner of the place: he shared why children like this area and what gave him the idea to open such a site in the market when he could have opened other business. The Nintendo arcade is made of iron sheets and timbers, 5m x 4m, with one moving fan for cooling players when they feel hot inside; inside the room it was dark so players could clearly see the screen; they used pieces of clothing to cover the door and, without proper ventilation, it was very hot. Nevertheless, children in that situation did not feel those conditions as they were only concentrating on the games on the screen.

'''Data Analysis''' 

Most of the children in the camps (IFO), during Saturdays and Sundays, watch live premier league which makes the feel good and relieves them well, as they go to school from Monday to Friday: the weekend stands as a rest period, and they use this time to watch those football matches. So, many young people copy these skills of football and practice it on the physical playing fields in the camps; some young people don’t play on the pitch but come to the play in the market or the Nintendo arcade, and play with their favorite Nintendo teams, or play and compete against their friends.
They learn through trial and error, as I did against my first opponent; they practice; they play with their friends, they are defeated or defeat their opponents and cheers erupt at the end of the game. The young boy, when he defeated me with six goals to my zero, he was so happy as that was the first time he defeated another person by so many goals. So, his reactions were dramatic that he even shared that event with fellow friends with a smile on his face.
I also interacted with certain friends of mine at home during one of the evenings, who were playing another different game – an application installed in smartphones known as “Ludo”– and captured some photos. It was an interactive multiplayer game, so I also played with them; when I asked them they told me that it relieves them from stress or, when they come back from school or work and they don’t tasks awaiting them, then they sit down to roll the dice.

'''Conclusion''' 

To summarize, at the end I chatted with an old man in my block about games who was also around the scene where we were playing. According to his view, Luda games are made for men during early age, and women always knew that this was part of the men’s private entertainment games: men meet, play and tell stories. But as we speak, there is a different change of those trends since women also play such games in their own private areas, as the culture does not allow women to be present around men in public; but the married women can play together and make jokes and that is what is happening these days; on top of that ladies who stay together during their free times in their homes, when daily duties are over, that is that they do. 

In my own review, I concluded that games are very important to children’s social and cognitive development and learning, it enhance their language development since the games were displayed alongside English sport’s “live commentary” (situated meaning, Gee, 2003) and they “learn by doing”: at the early ages, this is an opportunities for many children to be engaged and that is why I argue that many teachers can use simple pedagogies like video gaming approaches to teach them the language. For example, I watched a video clip uploaded on UNHCR, which showed the training of some Syria refugees who learned English through playing football in the pitch: like “shoot”, “sit”, “cross”, “pass” and so on, and that is why many children like watching the premier league: it helps them gain the language and skills of football through imitating those skills in the fields of the camps, as well learning simple English words and sentences through listening keenly to the commentators and connecting words to objects and actions. 

Lastly, children skip schools in favor of attending to playing video games, so the possible consequences for such children in schools are punishments such as sweeping or watering trees. This is due to the ignorance of many of the teachers not knowing the opportunities of video games for the children in schools (for example, language learning). While for parents they ignore games because they believe that games make the child dull and makes the children fail from school, as well as lowers their self-respect in the community; so many parent don’t want their children to go to such areas like the arcade since they describe it as a place for lazy children only, those who failed from the formal learning, where they go and waste their time.