We make educational games for school students, age 7-18; we can't have any violence or blood in them.
I have scoured Google Play and YouTube for good examples of educational games.
So far I found this math game. The cannon fires at number-enemies, to score, the player should bring their values to exactly zero. As levels advance, the bigger numbers occur - 10, 20, 30, etc. 
Why is it hard to make educational games that are not boring? It seems violence is what attracts most young people nowadays! One big exception could be puzzles.
Answer
The reason you see so few high-quality educational games is because the most educational games do not look like they are educational. They don't even pretend to be.
As a kid I learned English mostly from playing non-localized RPGs on my Sega Mega Drive. I discovered the scientific method for myself as a teen by analyzing online games and trying to figure out the game mechanics. I obtained the ingame resources necessary to test my hypotheses by applying economical theory to corner the ingame markets and get rich. And even now that I am an adult, I keep discovering games which teach me something. For example, Kerbal Space Program taught me a lot about spaceflight and lately Crusader Kings 2 awoke my interested in medieval history.
What do we learn from that?
Do not hammer down the point "This is the thing I am going to teach to you, no matter if you want it or not". Design the look and feel of the game so it appears to be about something completely different. But design the game mechanics so that the player needs to reach your educational goal to progress in the game.
This, of course, begs the question "Then how do I market it as an educational game to pedagogues and parents when it doesn't look educational"? Well, you didn't ask about that :). That's the reason why many games marketed as educational suck so much. They are not designed to appeal to the young players, they are designed to appeal to the adults who buy them to educate their children.
No comments:
Post a Comment