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7:19pm on Thursday, 31st January, 2019:

Old Game Time

Anecdote

Every year, I give my second-year students some homework: play six particular games from the past. The games are Pong, Frogger, Zork, Rogue, Asteroids and Tetris.

Next class, I ask students what they like the most. Almost always, the top three are Tetris, Asteroids and Frogger. For the other three, more people dislike them than like them, by quite some way. Last year, the liked-most to liked-last list was:
Tetris
Asteroids
Frogger
Zork
Pong
Rogue

This split in the rankings has almost always been the case. The only deviation was 2015, when Zork was in second place.

That was until this year. From liked-most to liked-least:
Rogue
Pong
Tetris
Zork
Frogger
Asteroids

When I asked, the students this time round were more willing to read the instructions for Rogue. That still doesn't explain the popularity of Pong, of course. There were 15 students in the class when I took this poll (another 17 appeared late), and the Like/Dislike/Meh votes each game received were as follows:
11/2/2 Rogue
9/2/4 Pong
8/3/4 Tetris
6/4/5 Zork
6/5/4 Frogger
5/3/7 Asteroids

It's not as binomial as in previous years; there is a gap between Tetris and Zork, but then there's one between Rogue and Pong, too.

I have high hopes for this batch of second-years, as they seem to be really engaged. If only the lectures and classes weren't at 9am...




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