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What's In an Educational Game?
An anonymous reader writes "I work at a non-profit whose mandate is to increase science literacy and awareness. One of the methods that we've started exploring is in making free, online educational games. Our target demographic for the games is kids aged 8-12, but there is no reason the games could not also appeal to a broader age range. What would you look for in an educational game? Does length and depth of gameplay matter to you, or would you rather play a trivial game with subconscious educational value?"
It's too bad that you could only bring 200 pounds of alien meat back to your space-wagon.
A game with emphasis on beauty and immersion could teach me a lot of things. Like the Myst games; immersive enough to have me decipher an alien number system. Could as well have taught me hexadecimals or binary numbers.
My wife is a middle school science teacher. I suggested she should tell the kids that learning science is like learning the cheat codes to the universe.
How about making that a bit more literal. Maybe concepts could be adapted to be "cheat codes" or "upgrades" in actual games. Think of how much time is spent in games trying to improve and optimize character, weapon, or vehicle abilities. What if you had a game that let you upgrade your weapons by applying new concepts. For example, complete a task and you are taught f=ma. You get to modify your weapon by choosing m. Next task and you are given more information, such as how a is a function of m. Start introducing more variables. Every variable and every interaction is a teachable concept.
Heck, eventually you could have some kid working on differential equations for orbital mechanics so that he can kick his buddy's ass during 5th period math. The kid discovers Holman transfers so that he has maximum weapons payload to dump on his friend.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Still, unless they're actually in school, how many people think about the fall of Rome? How many think about Rome at all in their lives, or even ancient history for that matter? Reminding people of history and getting people interested is enough to get some to curiously click a link on Wikipedia and get the real history behind the fall of Rome.
Playing the game makes it real to people, and important.. it turns Rome from "I think I remember that name from school" to something real.
Interesting question and I think Rome Total War answers it well. Just integrate it into the gameplay and don't tack it on. For example you have to understand the impact of the Marian reforms that come around midgame in order to manage your empire well.