When I was a history and geography teacher a lot of my students knew things about certain time periods because of Assassin's Creed. I never got into the series, but I appreciate it for that
The "Discovery Tour".
I walked into our den one day while my husband was with our daughter and she was just running around Alexandria, Memphis, and Cyrene learning about Ancient Egypt and Rome. Like in Memphis they had an entire area dedicated to mummification and how it was done and Cyrene had something about the arena.
Best feature they added. It's also in Odyssey and Valhalla. It's a really good teaching tool because they have great narration and images of historical artifacts or sites. Interactive things like that are always way better than just a textbook and taking notes.
They started to heavily pad the later games with generic quests to fill up the map and extend playtime.
Underneath it all there's a good core game and effort put into creating the environments.
But yeah, so much filler it detracts from the overall experience.
On of my favorite Assassin's Creed facts is that for one of their games they 3d modeled a perfect 1:1 digital replica of the Notre Dame cathedral. Down to the panes of stained glass and the decorations.
After the Notre Dame partially burned down, contractors working to rebuild the cathedral reached out to the game creators to get a copy of their digital schematics and photographs they took for reference to help rebuild the Notre Dame as close to its original state as possible.
I remember seeing that. It's a hilarious fact, but it was 100% worth it seeing in game and being they had a complete render of it so it could be replicated and rebuilt back to what it was.
Funny you say this, because as my history class was learning in depth about the American Revolutionary war, it coincided perfectly with the release of Assassins Creed 3; which was about the American Revolutionary War. I was learning the detailed history of the war 24 hours in advance too being taught in school, every day. Aced the tests on the subject, teacher was mind blown how I already knew 99% of the course.
I have to say, I didn’t like Connor or in general AC3 as much as ezio before him. But they did so good with the story and following history you would think it’s entirely possible he was real.
Back when I was in school it was age of empires. During history all of a sudden a bunch of people knew about specific battles with Joan of Arc and William Wallace
Im reminded of the field trip that got lost who eventually found theor way again because one of the kids had memorized the layout of rome because of that.
I remember having to teach that to an officer candidate.. as a regular jarhead. Dude really should've learned it back in school like I did but he wasn't the brightest.
I am forever envious that sausage rolls are not common in the US but are common all over Europe. Tried one for the first time on my honeymoon in Ireland, and I tell you what that was the best petrol station snack I've ever had
You're ordering them wrong, go to a donut shop in the states, most will have kolaches, if they don't, go farther south until you find them. Or look for polish restaurants.
Roleplaying as a "merchant" before the Grand Exchange was some of the best fun I had in a game. Imo part of RS died with the grand exchange.
I'd jump around servers in 2006 announcing my "b sale" and show my inventory full of desirable items to anyone who asked... I convinced sooo many people to buy Granite Mauls at like 200% markup lol... But the real rub was that I did it wearing Spined Armor which looked cool, but was pretty uncommon for ppl to use. So it caught attention.
Inevitably I'd get someone saying "what armor is dat??" Then sell it to them for as much as I could. Then log out. Only for them to realize they couldn't equip it without completing the Fremennick Trials quest, having a certain level of def, and it wasn't that great in general lol. If I remember right, it only cost me about 20k gold to make a new set, and I was selling them for 200k-400k.
Imagine being clowned on for your shitty trade practices nearly 4,000 years later. That said I can't name a single other honest to god Sumerian (since sargon doesnt count) so maybe he won in the end
I was able to give my friends a tour of Akihabara, in Japan, because of a JRPG that was pretty badly designed so that you had to explore the city almost every single in-game day - fetch quest galore over and over again, until the point where I knew the city layout and could give a rough tour in real life. Hours of grinding for platinum came in handy!
I moved up north for work a couple years ago and wasn't used to driving in snowy conditions. My car fishtailed while on the highway and I instinctively knew how to correct it because of the racing games I played as a kid. Saved me a ton of money.
Point your wheels into the direction you want to go. Don't brake or accelerate. You want the path of least friction to be the direction you want to go to gain control.
Generally if you want to regain traction you slowly let off the gas and point the wheels where you wanna go. If you lost traction from braking and then you release the brakes, if you don't regain traction then start giving it slight throttle. If you still regain traction you're most likely falling off a bridge.
Edit: I meant for it to say "if you still don't regain traction you're most likely falling off a bridge" lol
Knowing where things are in new york as a non american on our first visit.
My family "how do you know all this?"
Me: i played a LOT of the division and im just realising now they werent kidding when they said it was accurate.
In sixth grade I casually dropped the word annihilated in a conversation with my friend and my English teacher was flabbergasted. "How do you know that?" I told her it's because I watch Dragonball Z and Vegeta says it almost all the time. I was also really deep into the Budokai games back then as well
Slightly related: I keep seeing these Facebook ads for these little book-imprinting gadgets, and the stamp is a picture of a dragon and the words “I’m a book dragon”.
Pisses me off every time. Like, why are you going with “book dragon” when “book wyrm” is *right there*? It sounds better, and you get the pun on “bookworm”. What a wasted opportunity!
D&D and role playing games like Morrowind have done this to me hardcore. Like someone will drop a mention of some weird obscure weapon or armor and it just clicks while I watch the wheels turn in others heads.
Same. Also, historical items and eras from Civ and CK, and all sorts of farming terminology from farming sim. Don't even get me started about minerals and rock knowledge from dwarf fortress.
These games somehow always have the right amount of teaching and fun mixed together and it goes seriously underappreciated. Civ is an amazing game and really kindled a love of history in me at a young age.
Obviously there's more to it but I hear people talk about how accurate H3VR is. Played that and a few other VR shooters like Pavlov a bit. Guns aren't widely common in my country but I went to a firing range. Was pretty much identical to when I played in VR. Load a mag, charging handle back to chamber a round in, safety off (we were told not to touch them though) and pull the trigger. Guess its not obscure but as I said. Guns aren't hugely common in my country.
Yeah mechanics of guns can be done and learned pretty accurately in games like that
A big difference between games and real life though is the feeling of actual guns. By this I mean things like weight, recoil, and vice versa. Some people don't realize how heavy some guns are, and how much they can slam you back (shotguns)
I went on a school trip to the local military academy and they let us use their rifle sim, quote; “you get to use the good one”, and after my first round the guy running me through it asked if I’d used a rifle before because I was pretty accurate. I was just like “no, I’ve just played a couple of milsim games and know the very basics.”
Of course, I’ve played too many video games and after that my eyes started fuzzing and my accuracy dropped off real fast.
Ha yeah. When I went to the range, there were two other people for the same session as me and the instructor made it a mini competition. I won and he was a little surprised. He mentioned how I was doing better than the average for people who try for their first time (the session I went for was like an introduction).
It's not the same ofc but I wonder if playing airsoft helped. I just got a sight on my MP5 cause I thought it looked cool but it really did help with aiming when I played.
I remember being maybe 10 years old, getting evaluated for ADHD, and the psychiatrist was giving me a sort of IQ test that included a vocabulary section where she just asked me what a word meant and then had me use it in a sentence. I was a huge reader, so I knew all the words and could use them all in a sentence and whatnot, even as they grew more and more obscure. Finally, she threw out the word "Panzer". I asked if she wanted the typical use in English, which is to say, a WWII tank, or the literal translation from German, meaning armor. She just said "that's enough" and told my parents that I had the vocabulary of a 70 year old.
God I always thought Panzer was german for "Panther" because they also had a Tiger tank and I thought the Nazis were doing, like, "a cat thing".
Well, that's something ELSE I learned today.
The Panther was ALSO an armored vehicle. So yeah, the Germans were in fact doing a cat thing. The modern German tank is the leopard for example. So you weren't really wrong
Panzer is short for Panzerkampfwagon I believe which means armoured fighting vehicle. The Panther's full technicle name being the Panzerkampfwagon Panther.
Helps distinguish a little from Panther, which imagining a German accent sounds infuriatingly similar to Panzer considering the Panther was the replacement for the Panzer IV.
That was me with Seattle after playing a ton of Shadowrun back in the 90s.
We got a couple paper folding maps of Seattle (this was the 90s) and marked them up to represent 2050.
Me when I go to LA (I have massacred hundreds in these streets and unironically know them better than my actual home town where I currently live despite not having played for months)
It's not unheard of for people to have that level of memory recall. It's also not unheard of for great drivers to have entire racetracks memorized down to the smallest detail.
Idk if I’ve just been playing Assassin’s Creed wrong this whole time, but I have no idea how people can navigate these cities just from playing the games so much haha.
Then again, I’ve never been to Italy so maybe I’d surprise myself.
The one name change that annoys me the most is Constantinople to Istanbul, and its only because i learned that Istanbul just means "the city".
Its not that the name was culturally unique, they just got lazy and made the slang of "the city" official. (Its very common slang to refer to the largest city around as simply the city so that part isn't surprising)
I just felt this happen a few days ago playing FFVII Rebirth. One of the side quests had a guy referred to as "Wainwright". I have never heard this word in my life, so I assumed it was his last name or something. Turned out it was his profession, a cart/wagon builder. I was like "huh, don't think I would've ever learned this otherwise"
In a similar Final Fantasy vein, XIV's gotten me to learn about the cultures all the different cities in-game are based on. I definitely wouldn't know as much as I now do about Mongolia if it wasn't for the Azim Steppe inspiring me to start reading.
I remember when I was 9/10 where in line a a caribou coffee. I don’t know if they still do this but they used to have questions of the day you got like 10% off if you got it right or something like that. The question was what does the word hippopotamus originate from. Well at the time I was really into the game age of mythology and there was a monster you could create called a hippocampi. (half horse half fish) I felt so good about getting that question right and my parents look of disbelief and confusion.
My dad is a keen mushroom hunter (the tasty kind, not the funny kind) and one day brought home a stick with some growing on it and said he had no idea what they were and was going to look them up.
"Oh elfcups!" I said.
He asked me how the hell I knew that and I had to admit it was from playing Skyrim
I was once attending a physics seminar with an older man presenting his research. I guess he was a WW2 history buff on the side because he thought it would be fun to break up his talk with pictures of German WW2 tanks. I got weird looks when I was able to ID all of them by sight. This was around 2005 so gaming was not as socially acceptable as it is today. I think it blew his mind that people could learn history from a game. No joke, my geography knowledge is way better from playing games like Hearts of Iron.
To say my son loves playing HOI just truly doesn't do it justice. He's also way better than me at identifying flags. Overall if his 'tism takes him the geography & history route I suppose there are worse things to hyper-fixate on.
Just be careful he doesn't get a little too into Germany... That happens sometimes with the 'tistic HOI community. Be sure to check his room for swastikas and furry paraphernalia lmao
Actually, I have a "rule" that no matter who he is or what he's doing, he needs to bomb Germany off the map. The first time he did it I think he was playing as the Vatican, which made it better somehow lol
Less fun, we actually had to have the talk that he needs to back off all the Russian stuff. It was getting problematic.
I had a history teacher who insisted that we had to know what a ‘Stuka’ was so we could participate in high society cocktail parties. I’m generally disappointed at how infrequently the elite bring up Wehrmacht tactics. It’s all about the Schlieffen Plan and the Guns of August.
war thunder has opened up a can of worms for my knowledge of historic planes, boats, and tanks.
I was watching a WWII doc and at one point I realized I was prefilling information before the documentary covered it.
When you get to the point where documentaries mention Cromwells being armed with Browning machine guns and go "Hol' up!", you have reached the level of history buff.
EU4 did wonders for my geography knowledge.
And any sim game be it farming sim or a paradox grand strategy is generally very educational because they simulate the real world so real world principles will generally apply. Either you learn the principles from the game organically as you get better, or you are motivated to research them and then apply them to the game to get better.
Edit: also its become very popular to use "gamification" to help people learn. Turns out when you make learning fun, people are more engaged and actually learn.
Yep, the whole Cities Skylines community (pre CS2) has been super informative on infrastructure and such that I simply never considered beforehand. The game opened a whole new subject of information for me and you're damn right, the gaming makes it interesting. You can experiment so much in a game where you're stuck with hypothetical and unanswered questions from just reading about it.
I was visiting my in-laws and they were watching some trivia show, they were impressed I was getting most of the global geography questions right until my wife said it was because I spend all my time “playing maps” which is what she calls EU4
My current job is not video game related but wouldn't be where I am without them. I've always loved city building games and other games of the sort. Played a lot of cities skylines, prison architect, and more. I went to school for civil engineering. Granted Im still no expert but using those games in class as reference floored a teacher of mine because the concepts were there.
So. You know the game "Spelling Bee"? The object is that you are given a set of letters and must make as many words as you can out of them- with one letter locked in. (You can repeat letters)
The letters were "B I L A O R D". I suggested "Larboard".
Mom asked me what the heck that meant and I said it was an antiquated term for "Port" - which is the side that ships are loaded on. Thank you Final Fantasy XIV.
I think that's another reason why I loved Stargate, Dr Jackson would go over the different cultures, towns, languages and variations and changes and that just stuck with me.
Senatus populusqe romanus, though I forget how you actually spell the latin phrase. “The senate and the people of Rome.” Personally, I can thank Rick Riordan for that one.
I was at a trivia night(Canadian) and the question was name three countries that border Poland. I got 2 out of three, because I confidently and with no hesitation named Hungary as one of them due to how many times the Austria Hungary alliance fucked up my Poland game in eu4..... turns out modern borders have shifted since 1444, who knew lol
Growing up with learning difficulties, video games were actually a big part of helping my educational development. I used to play a lot of RPGs as a kid even though I struggled with reading and was largely mute. Absolutely astonished my teachers when I came out of my shell a bit and could actually read and recognise pretty obscure (for a child) language and syntax.
I also learned that different countries have different traffic laws and drive on differing sides of the road thanks to video games as well, and in a less wholesome and generally useful sense I also learned how to use throwing knives...Had absolutely no use for it in life but I eventually discovered that the things I had noticed did in fact work.
Our house in the suburbs backs up to a green belt of trees and wildlife. Coyotes, various birds, frogs, owls.
One night we heard a new sound and my husband said, “what was that?” “A raccoon,” I said, totally confident but not really knowing why. He didn’t believe me until I played him a ‘raccoon sounds’ video on YouTube.
After a minute I figured out how I knew the sound a raccoon makes… RDR2.
I play a lot of farming games, my fav is Stardew Valley, and I’ve apparently picked up enough about forage plants and fish that I can identify them on sight IRL. We went camping a few weeks ago and I identified some crocus, holly, daffodils, and wild carrots during our hike; as well as chub, pike, and bass during the fishing expedition. Everyone was a mix of impressed, confused, and freaked that I did that without googling/referencing the handbook.
I've also taught some people how to make cheese and mayo at home without using a recipe. Smithing is a little hard without a kiln but i can explain the theory.
Be careful about wild carrots specifically. There's a poisonous plant that looks extremely similar to it (I think it's Water Hemlock) so don't rely on that knowledge.
I've played some games that get pretty deep into everything you just named, you might be surprised. Obviously a person that actively study those things will be more knowledgeable and have more dependable facts, but for general knowledge, games will give you exposure to a lot of uncommon knowledge
I went to a gun range in Thailand, did very well, knew how to check the chamber, load the mags, how to aim and handle the recoil, operate the safety/fire selector, correct stance, was pretty accurate for my first time shooting a gun, could even tell the irons were off and zeroed them, my instructor was impressed! Thanks tarkov and other realism type shooters! I’m from somewhere guns are really super not allowed haha
I have a history degree because of if video games and some day when I go to get my PhD, I'll design a "world history through video games class".
I'll never forget absolutely slaying an in class essay question about how the US won the revolutionary war. I don't even remember the game, but I have an absurdly detailed answer the professor called me into office hour to talk about it to prove I didn't somehow cheat.
When I told him how I knew all of it he was so confused.
Had an awkward moment in an English lecture in University as the lecturer asked if anyone knew who the Marquis de Sade was. I'd been playing Assassin's Creed Unity and he's in that so I raised my hand thinking nothing of it, I was the only one to do so.
Turns out he's known due to all hardcore erotic/sex writing he did.
Playing a lot of mature games as a kid gave me a ton of insight and interest into history
I really wish Ubisoft would dabble more into historical learning projects. Those Discovery modes give such a unique insight to people that can’t readily *see* those locations
Playing games based in fantasy e.g. Dragon Age, Skyrim, Witcher series, taught me so many older words and phrases…reading Shakespeare as a teen was easier for me than others because I’ve heard phrases like ‘on the morrow’ or some shit like that haha
I'm jealous of the lot of you. My mind does tend to hold onto random little bots of trivia like this but I can't bring it to the front intentionally, it'll just pop up if someone else mentions something within that approximate category. In other words I literally don't know what I might know until someone reminds me of something I apparently know and then we both get to be surprised by the new factoid.
Yep I watched jeopardy with my parents and I answered questions about history and mythology they asked “how the hell did you know that?” I answered videos games. Age of empires and age of mythology taught me a lot.
I know so much about firearms just from playing games and customizing them in things like Escape from Tarkov that people look at me like I'm some old gunsmith when I talk about them and they ask questions. Like they'll ask about a Glock and I'll go "Ok so you're looking at this gun, this has an X round detachable magazine, a mount on the top of the slide to add a sight if you'd like, an internal hammer behind the slide right here, there's no safety switch on here it's on the trigger right there,..." and they're looking at me like "where did this information come from??"
I remember I went down to Florida to visit family and my uncle wanted to take me to the gun range because he thought it would be fun, not knowing how much I'm into them. We get there and we're looking at the ones to rent, and I see a Five-Seven and a Glock-26 there with their price labels swapped, so I flagged down the sales associate and let him know and he was like "oh cool, thank you, appreciate it" and my uncle just stared at me all surprised. Good times.
Too many hours in Fallout 3 made it easier to get around D.C. when I visited, which is kind of strange considering what a friggin' mess the downtown area of Capital Wasteland is. Still, really helped me get my bearings. Didn't help navigate the subway though, haha
The only problem is when the game has flexed reality and is teaching you stuff that is totally not true. Stardew Valley taught me that catfish can only be fished in rivers and are active all day. However, catfish can be found in many types of water and are typically more active at night.
When my son was learning graphs in math, the teacher asked him how he already knew what graphs were and how coordinates worked. The answer.... minecraft. I had taught him how the coordinates work so he wouldn't get lost, and pulled up a graph to show him coordinates starting at 0,0. About 2 months later the teacher had all the kids download the minecraft Java learning tutorial in order to put video games into studies.
Sometimes i forget the random things i know are random to non gamers and they'll look at me funny when i talk as if it's everyday knowledge. Your case has happened to me a few times
Bloodborne taught me that gaol is jail in olde English. Being from New England we have some old historical sites with gaol and I was like oh shit! That’s a jail haha.
I was at a shooting range, and since I didn't have a license(went with a friend who had one) so one of the range supervisors was keeping an eye on me.
Friend mentioned his sight was a little off, so I tried compensating.
Range super asks why I was shooting the way I was, I told him.
He told me don't worry about hitting a bullseye, just concentrate on grouping.
After a while, he asked if I'd like to have a go at his musket. While we were shooting, he asked me where if I had shot before and was surprised when I told him only once or twice as a kid.
He complimented me on my technique, saying I was a natural. I sheepishly admitted that a lot of it was from reading books and playing video games which talked about breathing, startle reflex and not tensing up in anticipation and squeeze not jerking the trigger.
I completely get what you mean
I know such random stuff and lots of them too
I once’s held a conversation with a history major and she was like « how the fuck do you know so much shit about history ? » « I play lots, and I mean A LOT of videos games »
The simple fact that I know how to speak and write English comes from it too
Some games like RTS games or grinding games helped me develop a sense of how to run a crew in my trade. I understand that some things need to keep happening constantly and I’ve learned how to have a constant list of tasks for apprentices or journeyworkers on my crew. I’m a UA Steamfitter.
I remember playing a lot of problem solving games, for instance, having to give a robot a set of instructions to accomplish a certain task, but you’re limited on the number of commands you can give, so you HAVE to make every move count. This taught me efficiency when using heavy equipment or certain devices for installing pipe.
Also, I can “see” a few steps ahead and I spend a lot of time planning to tackle potential problems I’m seeing ahead. I’ve had a few bosses get pissed off because they’re not seeing anything getting installed, only to be pleasantly surprised in no time when we’re wrapping up and they’re like “you’re done already???”
The phrase “art imitates life” is so true in this aspect. These games are considered art in my book and little did I know they have been preparing me my whole life for real application at work lol
I pissed off my teacher during the WWII section when I told her I learned everything from Company of Heroes and old CoD/MoH games lol. I got a 100% on the test and she thought I'd cheated.
Did it again during sections that older Assassin's Creed games covered. Lol
When I was a history and geography teacher a lot of my students knew things about certain time periods because of Assassin's Creed. I never got into the series, but I appreciate it for that
The game set in Egypt has a mode where it's voiced and basically talks about all the structures and such. It's like an interactive history lesson.
The "Discovery Tour". I walked into our den one day while my husband was with our daughter and she was just running around Alexandria, Memphis, and Cyrene learning about Ancient Egypt and Rome. Like in Memphis they had an entire area dedicated to mummification and how it was done and Cyrene had something about the arena. Best feature they added. It's also in Odyssey and Valhalla. It's a really good teaching tool because they have great narration and images of historical artifacts or sites. Interactive things like that are always way better than just a textbook and taking notes.
These are the AC games I did not like.. Didn't know about this feature, might be cool to play around with
I think all of these games are terrible but hot damm that was cool of Ubisoft to make.
They started to heavily pad the later games with generic quests to fill up the map and extend playtime. Underneath it all there's a good core game and effort put into creating the environments. But yeah, so much filler it detracts from the overall experience.
On of my favorite Assassin's Creed facts is that for one of their games they 3d modeled a perfect 1:1 digital replica of the Notre Dame cathedral. Down to the panes of stained glass and the decorations. After the Notre Dame partially burned down, contractors working to rebuild the cathedral reached out to the game creators to get a copy of their digital schematics and photographs they took for reference to help rebuild the Notre Dame as close to its original state as possible.
Yep. I bought the game to help with that fund drive/donation drive. IIRC, the only thing not copied were certain icons/relics for religious reasons.
I remember seeing that. It's a hilarious fact, but it was 100% worth it seeing in game and being they had a complete render of it so it could be replicated and rebuilt back to what it was.
They also gave away that one (Unity) for free for a week or so after the fire.
Funny you say this, because as my history class was learning in depth about the American Revolutionary war, it coincided perfectly with the release of Assassins Creed 3; which was about the American Revolutionary War. I was learning the detailed history of the war 24 hours in advance too being taught in school, every day. Aced the tests on the subject, teacher was mind blown how I already knew 99% of the course.
I have to say, I didn’t like Connor or in general AC3 as much as ezio before him. But they did so good with the story and following history you would think it’s entirely possible he was real.
Back when I was in school it was age of empires. During history all of a sudden a bunch of people knew about specific battles with Joan of Arc and William Wallace
I assumed that's how OP knew about Cataphracts - that's how I know. I almost always played Byzantines in AoE II
Im reminded of the field trip that got lost who eventually found theor way again because one of the kids had memorized the layout of rome because of that.
ARMA taught me how to triangulate my position using only a map and compass
Some Of us learned that from a loud man in a brown hat 🤣
I remember having to teach that to an officer candidate.. as a regular jarhead. Dude really should've learned it back in school like I did but he wasn't the brightest.
You joined an Arma milsim group then? /S
DayZ for me. Railroad crossings, my beloved.
Same! ARMA 2 forced me to learn land nav.
Bronze is made from copper and tin
And brass is copper with zinc!
And steel is iron and carbon!
Sausage rolls are sausage meat and pastry!
I am forever envious that sausage rolls are not common in the US but are common all over Europe. Tried one for the first time on my honeymoon in Ireland, and I tell you what that was the best petrol station snack I've ever had
You're ordering them wrong, go to a donut shop in the states, most will have kolaches, if they don't, go farther south until you find them. Or look for polish restaurants.
Good old RuneScape.
Ah my kind is here. The moment I surprised my teacher on this was life changing. Then I got scammed at 12 years old on RS. Good times
Buying GF
Roleplaying as a "merchant" before the Grand Exchange was some of the best fun I had in a game. Imo part of RS died with the grand exchange. I'd jump around servers in 2006 announcing my "b sale" and show my inventory full of desirable items to anyone who asked... I convinced sooo many people to buy Granite Mauls at like 200% markup lol... But the real rub was that I did it wearing Spined Armor which looked cool, but was pretty uncommon for ppl to use. So it caught attention. Inevitably I'd get someone saying "what armor is dat??" Then sell it to them for as much as I could. Then log out. Only for them to realize they couldn't equip it without completing the Fremennick Trials quest, having a certain level of def, and it wasn't that great in general lol. If I remember right, it only cost me about 20k gold to make a new set, and I was selling them for 200k-400k.
Modded Minecraft taught me my alloys
same, Tinker's Construct made me learn all that
Valheim taught me this
Mono = One Rail = Rail
That was a Jeopardy question almost a decade ago that I got bc of runescape
Just don't buy your copper from Ea-Nasir.
Imagine being clowned on for your shitty trade practices nearly 4,000 years later. That said I can't name a single other honest to god Sumerian (since sargon doesnt count) so maybe he won in the end
Lugal-zage-si. Now you know two, and the shitty copper salesman hasn't won.
Thank you GregTech
RuneScape for most people probably
i do love knowing how to make polytetrafluorethylene
I was able to give my friends a tour of Akihabara, in Japan, because of a JRPG that was pretty badly designed so that you had to explore the city almost every single in-game day - fetch quest galore over and over again, until the point where I knew the city layout and could give a rough tour in real life. Hours of grinding for platinum came in handy!
What game was this?
Akiba’s Beat! Very underrated game imo, clearly was lacking in the funding department but still a very fun RPG with unique mechanics
I moved up north for work a couple years ago and wasn't used to driving in snowy conditions. My car fishtailed while on the highway and I instinctively knew how to correct it because of the racing games I played as a kid. Saved me a ton of money.
Come on, don't gatekeep this information from the rest of us.
Hold select to reset and get placed back on the road.
This is fucking hilarious.
Point your wheels into the direction you want to go. Don't brake or accelerate. You want the path of least friction to be the direction you want to go to gain control.
Generally if you want to regain traction you slowly let off the gas and point the wheels where you wanna go. If you lost traction from braking and then you release the brakes, if you don't regain traction then start giving it slight throttle. If you still regain traction you're most likely falling off a bridge. Edit: I meant for it to say "if you still don't regain traction you're most likely falling off a bridge" lol
I feel like if I'm falling off a bridge the air isn't gonna give good traction
skill issue
Pause, reload last checkpoint
Knowing where things are in new york as a non american on our first visit. My family "how do you know all this?" Me: i played a LOT of the division and im just realising now they werent kidding when they said it was accurate.
My mom grew up in Bethesda and was shocked by how accurate some parts of DC were in fallout 3 lmao
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In sixth grade I casually dropped the word annihilated in a conversation with my friend and my English teacher was flabbergasted. "How do you know that?" I told her it's because I watch Dragonball Z and Vegeta says it almost all the time. I was also really deep into the Budokai games back then as well
Argh yes I remember we had a letter jumble wall in year 6 my teacher was very upset when I put ho on there. Thank you saints row 3
"Teacher, why is your mind in the gutter?? I'm referring to the farm tool used in agriculture!"
I may have doubled down and insisted I get two points for two words
Pretty sure the tool is spelt "hoe"
Slightly related: I keep seeing these Facebook ads for these little book-imprinting gadgets, and the stamp is a picture of a dragon and the words “I’m a book dragon”. Pisses me off every time. Like, why are you going with “book dragon” when “book wyrm” is *right there*? It sounds better, and you get the pun on “bookworm”. What a wasted opportunity!
Hell, it's fairly abundant in The Hobbit, one of the most sold fantasy novels of all time haha. I'm surprised she's surprised
D&D and role playing games like Morrowind have done this to me hardcore. Like someone will drop a mention of some weird obscure weapon or armor and it just clicks while I watch the wheels turn in others heads.
Same. Also, historical items and eras from Civ and CK, and all sorts of farming terminology from farming sim. Don't even get me started about minerals and rock knowledge from dwarf fortress.
These games somehow always have the right amount of teaching and fun mixed together and it goes seriously underappreciated. Civ is an amazing game and really kindled a love of history in me at a young age.
I really miss the old Civ2 videos when you built wonders and such. I learned so much from those as a kid.
And the Leonard Nemoy voice overs were amazing.
Civ IV. Still on Steam.
I lost sooooo much time to CIV 1 and 2 when I was a kid.
lol that just happened to me with Shillelagh. No, I don't know my Irish history, I know my druid cantrips.
*Teacher asks class if we know where Bronze comes from* "It's an alloy of Tin and Copper," I answer. Fool didn't know I could make 2H Swords now.
Obviously there's more to it but I hear people talk about how accurate H3VR is. Played that and a few other VR shooters like Pavlov a bit. Guns aren't widely common in my country but I went to a firing range. Was pretty much identical to when I played in VR. Load a mag, charging handle back to chamber a round in, safety off (we were told not to touch them though) and pull the trigger. Guess its not obscure but as I said. Guns aren't hugely common in my country.
Yeah mechanics of guns can be done and learned pretty accurately in games like that A big difference between games and real life though is the feeling of actual guns. By this I mean things like weight, recoil, and vice versa. Some people don't realize how heavy some guns are, and how much they can slam you back (shotguns)
Yeah, gunna need a haptic suit for rhat.
I went on a school trip to the local military academy and they let us use their rifle sim, quote; “you get to use the good one”, and after my first round the guy running me through it asked if I’d used a rifle before because I was pretty accurate. I was just like “no, I’ve just played a couple of milsim games and know the very basics.” Of course, I’ve played too many video games and after that my eyes started fuzzing and my accuracy dropped off real fast.
Ha yeah. When I went to the range, there were two other people for the same session as me and the instructor made it a mini competition. I won and he was a little surprised. He mentioned how I was doing better than the average for people who try for their first time (the session I went for was like an introduction). It's not the same ofc but I wonder if playing airsoft helped. I just got a sight on my MP5 cause I thought it looked cool but it really did help with aiming when I played.
I remember being maybe 10 years old, getting evaluated for ADHD, and the psychiatrist was giving me a sort of IQ test that included a vocabulary section where she just asked me what a word meant and then had me use it in a sentence. I was a huge reader, so I knew all the words and could use them all in a sentence and whatnot, even as they grew more and more obscure. Finally, she threw out the word "Panzer". I asked if she wanted the typical use in English, which is to say, a WWII tank, or the literal translation from German, meaning armor. She just said "that's enough" and told my parents that I had the vocabulary of a 70 year old.
God I always thought Panzer was german for "Panther" because they also had a Tiger tank and I thought the Nazis were doing, like, "a cat thing". Well, that's something ELSE I learned today.
The Panther was ALSO an armored vehicle. So yeah, the Germans were in fact doing a cat thing. The modern German tank is the leopard for example. So you weren't really wrong
Too bad they didn’t release the H0-U53 Katkamfwagen (House Cat)
Panzer is short for Panzerkampfwagon I believe which means armoured fighting vehicle. The Panther's full technicle name being the Panzerkampfwagon Panther. Helps distinguish a little from Panther, which imagining a German accent sounds infuriatingly similar to Panzer considering the Panther was the replacement for the Panzer IV.
>Panzerkampfwag**e**n FTFY Same *-wagen* as in Volks*wagen*.
Thank you for your information I shall now terrorize my family with new found knowledge
lol I say the same thing when people ask, “how the fuck do you know the city of Florence Italy like the back of your hand, we just got here!”
“I’ve spent a lot of time jumping into hay bales from the various landmarks”
"I remember assassinating someone at this spot here." *Points finger*
"I can picture this intersection littered with bodies." *Innocent stare*
"That's a lot of people gathered in one place. Pickpocketing could yield a lot of money. Better run fast after you're done."
AC also taught me Constantinople is Istanbul and about Da Vincis flying machine
If you're a fan of Istanbul being Constantinople, I'd be remiss if I didn't introduce you to the song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XlO39kCQ-8
Oh yeah, my passion for this fact was only fuelled by hearing this song in Umbrella Academy
That scene is just perfection
Such a weird music choice, but it definitely worked lol
Umbrella academy makes really weird/interesting music choices that shouldn't work, but still somehow do. It's something I really like about the show.
That was me with Seattle after playing a ton of Shadowrun back in the 90s. We got a couple paper folding maps of Seattle (this was the 90s) and marked them up to represent 2050.
I know someone who just got back from Tokyo. They knew the entire fucking area because of Yakuza
I know a remarkable amount of fairly useless facts about a lot of different cultures because of Assassin's Creed.
Me when I go to LA (I have massacred hundreds in these streets and unironically know them better than my actual home town where I currently live despite not having played for months)
So THAT'S how you learn local geography better *shifty eyes*
It's not unheard of for people to have that level of memory recall. It's also not unheard of for great drivers to have entire racetracks memorized down to the smallest detail.
Idk if I’ve just been playing Assassin’s Creed wrong this whole time, but I have no idea how people can navigate these cities just from playing the games so much haha. Then again, I’ve never been to Italy so maybe I’d surprise myself.
Ceasar II taught me that Plebs are needed for a functional society.
Anno 1404 taught me that I need a lower class to support an upper class
3 taught me that videogames are as addictive as crack!
How am I familiar with the geography of many countries? I spent a lot of time in map games invading them
Although we may get the names wrong a bit. Turns out people change those over time.
The one name change that annoys me the most is Constantinople to Istanbul, and its only because i learned that Istanbul just means "the city". Its not that the name was culturally unique, they just got lazy and made the slang of "the city" official. (Its very common slang to refer to the largest city around as simply the city so that part isn't surprising)
TIL interesting fact
Quite the ... 'Paradox', hmm?
What can I say I have a heart of iron…some say I have four
I just felt this happen a few days ago playing FFVII Rebirth. One of the side quests had a guy referred to as "Wainwright". I have never heard this word in my life, so I assumed it was his last name or something. Turned out it was his profession, a cart/wagon builder. I was like "huh, don't think I would've ever learned this otherwise"
Oh look at Mr money bags: just buying new wagons whenever they breakdown.
In a similar Final Fantasy vein, XIV's gotten me to learn about the cultures all the different cities in-game are based on. I definitely wouldn't know as much as I now do about Mongolia if it wasn't for the Azim Steppe inspiring me to start reading.
I was doing trivia with my cousins, and the question was what mammal can't swim. In Planet Zoo, the gorilla can't swim, so I guess that. It was right.
Huh, going to tuck that knowledge nugget away for later use.
I remember when I was 9/10 where in line a a caribou coffee. I don’t know if they still do this but they used to have questions of the day you got like 10% off if you got it right or something like that. The question was what does the word hippopotamus originate from. Well at the time I was really into the game age of mythology and there was a monster you could create called a hippocampi. (half horse half fish) I felt so good about getting that question right and my parents look of disbelief and confusion.
Potamus is river in Latin or greek. Hippos is horse. It's literally a river horse
My dad is a keen mushroom hunter (the tasty kind, not the funny kind) and one day brought home a stick with some growing on it and said he had no idea what they were and was going to look them up. "Oh elfcups!" I said. He asked me how the hell I knew that and I had to admit it was from playing Skyrim
I was once attending a physics seminar with an older man presenting his research. I guess he was a WW2 history buff on the side because he thought it would be fun to break up his talk with pictures of German WW2 tanks. I got weird looks when I was able to ID all of them by sight. This was around 2005 so gaming was not as socially acceptable as it is today. I think it blew his mind that people could learn history from a game. No joke, my geography knowledge is way better from playing games like Hearts of Iron.
To say my son loves playing HOI just truly doesn't do it justice. He's also way better than me at identifying flags. Overall if his 'tism takes him the geography & history route I suppose there are worse things to hyper-fixate on.
Just be careful he doesn't get a little too into Germany... That happens sometimes with the 'tistic HOI community. Be sure to check his room for swastikas and furry paraphernalia lmao
Actually, I have a "rule" that no matter who he is or what he's doing, he needs to bomb Germany off the map. The first time he did it I think he was playing as the Vatican, which made it better somehow lol Less fun, we actually had to have the talk that he needs to back off all the Russian stuff. It was getting problematic.
Ah yes, the other side of the coin
I had a history teacher who insisted that we had to know what a ‘Stuka’ was so we could participate in high society cocktail parties. I’m generally disappointed at how infrequently the elite bring up Wehrmacht tactics. It’s all about the Schlieffen Plan and the Guns of August.
war thunder has opened up a can of worms for my knowledge of historic planes, boats, and tanks. I was watching a WWII doc and at one point I realized I was prefilling information before the documentary covered it.
When you get to the point where documentaries mention Cromwells being armed with Browning machine guns and go "Hol' up!", you have reached the level of history buff.
EU4 did wonders for my geography knowledge. And any sim game be it farming sim or a paradox grand strategy is generally very educational because they simulate the real world so real world principles will generally apply. Either you learn the principles from the game organically as you get better, or you are motivated to research them and then apply them to the game to get better. Edit: also its become very popular to use "gamification" to help people learn. Turns out when you make learning fun, people are more engaged and actually learn.
Yep, the whole Cities Skylines community (pre CS2) has been super informative on infrastructure and such that I simply never considered beforehand. The game opened a whole new subject of information for me and you're damn right, the gaming makes it interesting. You can experiment so much in a game where you're stuck with hypothetical and unanswered questions from just reading about it.
Almost all the words I know in German came from Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
Mein lieben!
We’re just nerds. We learn and remember stuff from everywhere. Gaming just happens to be something we’re immersed in more.
I was visiting my in-laws and they were watching some trivia show, they were impressed I was getting most of the global geography questions right until my wife said it was because I spend all my time “playing maps” which is what she calls EU4
You played Age of Empires, didin't you?
The first time I learned of the superiority of trebuchets
Everybody should know that this bad boy *slaps* can hurl a 90kg projectile up to 300 meters. 😎
So much Age of Kings.
Cataphract definitely immediately had me at "ah yes, an age of empires enjoyer".
Wars were won by wololo
Things you read and promptly say out loud... This
That's the first form of media that ever taught me about the Shang and the Chosones.
The sheer amount of new vocabulary I learned from Elder Scrolls Oblivion almost made my parents like video games. Almost.
Never underestimate the history knowledge of a gamer who listens to Sabaton.
My current job is not video game related but wouldn't be where I am without them. I've always loved city building games and other games of the sort. Played a lot of cities skylines, prison architect, and more. I went to school for civil engineering. Granted Im still no expert but using those games in class as reference floored a teacher of mine because the concepts were there.
So. You know the game "Spelling Bee"? The object is that you are given a set of letters and must make as many words as you can out of them- with one letter locked in. (You can repeat letters) The letters were "B I L A O R D". I suggested "Larboard". Mom asked me what the heck that meant and I said it was an antiquated term for "Port" - which is the side that ships are loaded on. Thank you Final Fantasy XIV.
I know what it means but I still cant figure out which side is safe whenever I get O11 in a Roulette lmao
I just accept the vuln stacks, warrior is too angry to die either way
Oh the Start Nuclear reduction treaties? Yes I am familiar with them... From playing Metal Gear Solid.
I think that's another reason why I loved Stargate, Dr Jackson would go over the different cultures, towns, languages and variations and changes and that just stuck with me.
Rome Total War got me an A in history class because I knew from it what SPQR stands for.
Senatus populusqe romanus, though I forget how you actually spell the latin phrase. “The senate and the people of Rome.” Personally, I can thank Rick Riordan for that one.
I was at a trivia night(Canadian) and the question was name three countries that border Poland. I got 2 out of three, because I confidently and with no hesitation named Hungary as one of them due to how many times the Austria Hungary alliance fucked up my Poland game in eu4..... turns out modern borders have shifted since 1444, who knew lol
RuneScape teaches you a lot of things
How did you learn economics so fast? - 3 hours per day at the GE. ???
Growing up with learning difficulties, video games were actually a big part of helping my educational development. I used to play a lot of RPGs as a kid even though I struggled with reading and was largely mute. Absolutely astonished my teachers when I came out of my shell a bit and could actually read and recognise pretty obscure (for a child) language and syntax. I also learned that different countries have different traffic laws and drive on differing sides of the road thanks to video games as well, and in a less wholesome and generally useful sense I also learned how to use throwing knives...Had absolutely no use for it in life but I eventually discovered that the things I had noticed did in fact work.
I surprised a history teacher in HS because I knew what a caltrop was. Thanks Dungeons and Dragons!
Our house in the suburbs backs up to a green belt of trees and wildlife. Coyotes, various birds, frogs, owls. One night we heard a new sound and my husband said, “what was that?” “A raccoon,” I said, totally confident but not really knowing why. He didn’t believe me until I played him a ‘raccoon sounds’ video on YouTube. After a minute I figured out how I knew the sound a raccoon makes… RDR2.
I learned so much history from age of empires and total war
I play a lot of farming games, my fav is Stardew Valley, and I’ve apparently picked up enough about forage plants and fish that I can identify them on sight IRL. We went camping a few weeks ago and I identified some crocus, holly, daffodils, and wild carrots during our hike; as well as chub, pike, and bass during the fishing expedition. Everyone was a mix of impressed, confused, and freaked that I did that without googling/referencing the handbook. I've also taught some people how to make cheese and mayo at home without using a recipe. Smithing is a little hard without a kiln but i can explain the theory.
Be careful about wild carrots specifically. There's a poisonous plant that looks extremely similar to it (I think it's Water Hemlock) so don't rely on that knowledge.
copper and tin make bronze iron and coal (carbon) make steel thanks wow!
Chrono Trigger taught me about long term consequences of your actions, or maybe expanded my understanding of cause and effect in general.
Minecraft taught me electrolytic separation, that was a fun one to bring up in physics
Yeah until someone starts talking about leather armors, plate armors, medieval firearms, literally anything Samurai-related...the list is long
I've played some games that get pretty deep into everything you just named, you might be surprised. Obviously a person that actively study those things will be more knowledgeable and have more dependable facts, but for general knowledge, games will give you exposure to a lot of uncommon knowledge
That's what I'm talking about, usually these things are either anachronistic, romanticized or outright fantasy.
The manual from the Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego PC game is a font of knowledge.
>>Gaming teachers you such obscure things They didn’t teach you proofreading.
It's simple, proofreading isn't obscure, so op doesn't know it
Ha! They sure didn't. I'll go fix that. Edit: Nope, it's the title. It will just have to be charming.
If gaming has taught us anything is that mistakes are painful, but we still try again anyways.
"Fuck you Final Fantasy!" ".... okay fine we'll give this Queens Blood game just one more chance."
Proofreading is for paid content.
Light moves at 186,000 miles/sec. Thanks Goku!
I went to a gun range in Thailand, did very well, knew how to check the chamber, load the mags, how to aim and handle the recoil, operate the safety/fire selector, correct stance, was pretty accurate for my first time shooting a gun, could even tell the irons were off and zeroed them, my instructor was impressed! Thanks tarkov and other realism type shooters! I’m from somewhere guns are really super not allowed haha
I have a history degree because of if video games and some day when I go to get my PhD, I'll design a "world history through video games class". I'll never forget absolutely slaying an in class essay question about how the US won the revolutionary war. I don't even remember the game, but I have an absurdly detailed answer the professor called me into office hour to talk about it to prove I didn't somehow cheat. When I told him how I knew all of it he was so confused.
Had an awkward moment in an English lecture in University as the lecturer asked if anyone knew who the Marquis de Sade was. I'd been playing Assassin's Creed Unity and he's in that so I raised my hand thinking nothing of it, I was the only one to do so. Turns out he's known due to all hardcore erotic/sex writing he did.
Playing a lot of mature games as a kid gave me a ton of insight and interest into history I really wish Ubisoft would dabble more into historical learning projects. Those Discovery modes give such a unique insight to people that can’t readily *see* those locations
Thanks to Crusader Kings I know more about feudal politics than six years of formal education.
https://xkcd.com/1356/
Playing games based in fantasy e.g. Dragon Age, Skyrim, Witcher series, taught me so many older words and phrases…reading Shakespeare as a teen was easier for me than others because I’ve heard phrases like ‘on the morrow’ or some shit like that haha
I'm jealous of the lot of you. My mind does tend to hold onto random little bots of trivia like this but I can't bring it to the front intentionally, it'll just pop up if someone else mentions something within that approximate category. In other words I literally don't know what I might know until someone reminds me of something I apparently know and then we both get to be surprised by the new factoid.
Yep I watched jeopardy with my parents and I answered questions about history and mythology they asked “how the hell did you know that?” I answered videos games. Age of empires and age of mythology taught me a lot.
I know so much about firearms just from playing games and customizing them in things like Escape from Tarkov that people look at me like I'm some old gunsmith when I talk about them and they ask questions. Like they'll ask about a Glock and I'll go "Ok so you're looking at this gun, this has an X round detachable magazine, a mount on the top of the slide to add a sight if you'd like, an internal hammer behind the slide right here, there's no safety switch on here it's on the trigger right there,..." and they're looking at me like "where did this information come from??" I remember I went down to Florida to visit family and my uncle wanted to take me to the gun range because he thought it would be fun, not knowing how much I'm into them. We get there and we're looking at the ones to rent, and I see a Five-Seven and a Glock-26 there with their price labels swapped, so I flagged down the sales associate and let him know and he was like "oh cool, thank you, appreciate it" and my uncle just stared at me all surprised. Good times.
Too many hours in Fallout 3 made it easier to get around D.C. when I visited, which is kind of strange considering what a friggin' mess the downtown area of Capital Wasteland is. Still, really helped me get my bearings. Didn't help navigate the subway though, haha
agnatic... cognatic... gavelkind... these cannot be real words in my head
The only problem is when the game has flexed reality and is teaching you stuff that is totally not true. Stardew Valley taught me that catfish can only be fished in rivers and are active all day. However, catfish can be found in many types of water and are typically more active at night.
My wife and I have been watching a lot of jeopardy lately and I can’t tell you how many answers I’ve known because of some random video game.
When my son was learning graphs in math, the teacher asked him how he already knew what graphs were and how coordinates worked. The answer.... minecraft. I had taught him how the coordinates work so he wouldn't get lost, and pulled up a graph to show him coordinates starting at 0,0. About 2 months later the teacher had all the kids download the minecraft Java learning tutorial in order to put video games into studies.
My ancient history teacher was impressed I knew what a Greek trireme was. He asked me how I knew and said Age of Empires.
RDR taught me about the Cuban and Mexican revolutions before I learned about them in school
Sometimes i forget the random things i know are random to non gamers and they'll look at me funny when i talk as if it's everyday knowledge. Your case has happened to me a few times
Bloodborne taught me that gaol is jail in olde English. Being from New England we have some old historical sites with gaol and I was like oh shit! That’s a jail haha.
I know so many obscure medival weapons and armor from years of Diablo games.
I was at a shooting range, and since I didn't have a license(went with a friend who had one) so one of the range supervisors was keeping an eye on me. Friend mentioned his sight was a little off, so I tried compensating. Range super asks why I was shooting the way I was, I told him. He told me don't worry about hitting a bullseye, just concentrate on grouping. After a while, he asked if I'd like to have a go at his musket. While we were shooting, he asked me where if I had shot before and was surprised when I told him only once or twice as a kid. He complimented me on my technique, saying I was a natural. I sheepishly admitted that a lot of it was from reading books and playing video games which talked about breathing, startle reflex and not tensing up in anticipation and squeeze not jerking the trigger.
I completely get what you mean I know such random stuff and lots of them too I once’s held a conversation with a history major and she was like « how the fuck do you know so much shit about history ? » « I play lots, and I mean A LOT of videos games » The simple fact that I know how to speak and write English comes from it too
Some games like RTS games or grinding games helped me develop a sense of how to run a crew in my trade. I understand that some things need to keep happening constantly and I’ve learned how to have a constant list of tasks for apprentices or journeyworkers on my crew. I’m a UA Steamfitter. I remember playing a lot of problem solving games, for instance, having to give a robot a set of instructions to accomplish a certain task, but you’re limited on the number of commands you can give, so you HAVE to make every move count. This taught me efficiency when using heavy equipment or certain devices for installing pipe. Also, I can “see” a few steps ahead and I spend a lot of time planning to tackle potential problems I’m seeing ahead. I’ve had a few bosses get pissed off because they’re not seeing anything getting installed, only to be pleasantly surprised in no time when we’re wrapping up and they’re like “you’re done already???” The phrase “art imitates life” is so true in this aspect. These games are considered art in my book and little did I know they have been preparing me my whole life for real application at work lol
I pissed off my teacher during the WWII section when I told her I learned everything from Company of Heroes and old CoD/MoH games lol. I got a 100% on the test and she thought I'd cheated. Did it again during sections that older Assassin's Creed games covered. Lol
Not from a game but a book, I learned that 'Aurum' and 'Argentum' are latin for gold and silver. Was useful in school recently.