Other games like kerbal space program11/5/2023 In other words, games that are actually games and not just teaching tools. We need more Kerbal Space Programs to balance out the onslaught of Shootathon 20xx Editions-games that let us be better, let us experience and play with ideas we might not have a chance to otherwise.Īnd simultaneously, games like Kerbal Space Program that allow you to disengage with the learning aspect entirely if you so choose. In many ways, games can teach better than any textbook. You’re still learning, in a way, but it’s more like watching TV or reading a fictional book than anything intrinsic to games. I feel like the games industry has by-and-large lost that “teaching new mechanics” feel in favor of a focus on driving players through stories using the same old rehashed game design. Games are at their best when they’re teaching us something, even if that “something” is just how to shoot people more creatively. It’s creative, it’s complicated, and when you succeed in KSP it’s not because the game let you succeed-it’s because you actually learned something new and applied those concepts appropriately. It’s an adult Lego set (or K’Nex set) given life. Story-driven games certainly have a place in the industry, and I’m actually drawn towards narrative games more than purely mechanical games.īut Kerbal Space Program is one of the best of its kind. I’m not saying every game needs to be in this mold. There, too, you had a physics simulator cleverly disguised as a sandbox game. In that regard, KSP reminds me of another PC classic, The Incredible Machine. Where the flight simulator genre is intrinsically “adult” and “boring,” Kerbal Space Program somehow feels more like a game-even though it is, at heart, still a simulator. And if a few Kerbals need to suffocate in the vast vacuum of space so I can test out a new rocket design, well, so be it. There are so many possibilities for spaceflight when pesky real-life constraints like “Will people die?” and “How will we fund this?” go away. Or fly halfway to space and then force your Kerbals to jump out of the cockpit. Or strap sixteen rockets in a helix pattern around a girder and see what happens when they all ignite. like a pretty boring game (it's the premise of Gone Home), but once we model. You can play it as a serious rocketry simulator, putting satellites into orbit and heading to the moon or even further, to the edges of the solar system. Surviving Mars is a science-fiction city-building game about colonizing Mars and surviving the process. For obvious reasons, game designers want. It’s more flight simulator than first-person shooter, if we’re being honest, and yet it’s friendly enough to rope in people who might never give Microsoft Flight Simulator X or X-Plane a second look. The “edutainment” label is a bad word in the games industry, but that’s exactly where KSP fits. Because you could skip those concepts entirely and still have a ton of fun.Because the game is engaging enough to make you want to learn about those concepts.Because complicated aerospace concepts are built into the game.Kerbal Space Program is incredible for a number of reasons. Your first rocket will probably look something like this. I’ve spent many nights poring over forums, trying to better understand. But I learned-sometimes on my own, sometimes through KSP’s built-in tutorials, sometimes through reading Wikipedia pages on, for instance, aerobraking. Please remember these good men this Memorial Day.Yeah, I didn’t either. I am sure that when I leave this world, my last thought will be of my family and my comrades. It was a part of the bargain we all made, the reason we were so willing to die for one another.Īs long as I have memory, I will think of them all every day. They would have carried my reputation, the memory of me. They were willing to guard something more precious than my life. But I know them in a way I know no other men. They were delivered by fate and the military. Comrades gather because they long to be with the men who once acted at their best men who suffered and sacrificed, who were stripped of their humanity. Not to tell stories or look at old pictures. "I now know why men who have been to war yearn to reunite. I miss being able to do that so please indulge me. For the last several years when we would end up at our house having come out of DC, I would read this poem. We would always reflect on and raise a toast for those that didn't make it home. For many years, before a series of events took it away from us, many of us would get together to ride our motorcycles and take the long way to Washington DC for Rolling Thunder, gathering along the way at Tom's Cabin in WVA for some liquid and military prowess embellishment.
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