While we'll have to see how it works out in practice, I'm happy to see that someone is finally trying to attack this problem in a more systematic, organized way. It's more and more important, as the world we live in becomes increasingly complex.
BTW. personally I don't really trust 'educational games' at all, especially the ones that target children. Most of the stuff I've seen is silly and is barely deserving the name 'games'. I believe that it's much better for an educational game to be a game first, and education second, not the other way around. I don't like the attitude of treating education like a pill for a cat, so that we try to trick children into swallowing it.
I grew up playing a lot of educational games. Some of them were great, others not so much. My favorite by far though, was The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis [1]. It was fun, and it wasn't forceful in trying to "teach" things, but it did force me to think logically and consistently, and did a good job of ramping up the difficulty at appropriate times.
On the other hand, you have games like Jump Start Second Grade [2], which are incredibly forceful in trying to "teach". I can't remember learning anything from them.
I think the big difference between these games was that in one case, there is a finite set of actions that one can perform and all that the player learns is the result of one of those actions (jump start second grade). In the other case, there is a much larger set of actions, where there is not one right answer, but instead lots of correct actions, which are correct because they follow consistent and rigorously defined criteria (The logical journey of the zoombinis).
This may just be a personality trait for me, but I still have this preference. It's why I prefer Minecraft to Final Fantasy.
I agree on that explanation; I feel I learned a lot from educational games that had a more simulation/exploration flavor. We played some oil-prospecting game in elementary school that was pretty informative (I doubt I otherwise would've learned in school how searching and drilling for oil works). I also learned most of what I know about bridge engineering from the game Bridge Builder, though it was an indie game not explicitly targeted as "educational".
There is some vague background knowledge you can also learn just be making a game fun against a backdrop that kids can pull in via osmosis. There are miscellaneous things I know about the American west's geography mainly due to Oregon Trail, for example.
> There is some vague background knowledge you can also learn just be making a game fun against a backdrop that kids can pull in via osmosis.
I think this concept is heavily underexplored and I'd be happy to see more of this kind of games.
I also wonder if anyone tried to embed some learning into gameplay in a more goal-oriented way. I personally had some ideas about what would be an arcade/logical platform game with physics oriented gameplay. The game might ask you to e.g. solve an equation to succeed or reach the goal faster (like, find a right angle for cannon to fire at, so that it knocks down a bonus thing you need, opens a door, etc.). Maybe not force you to do it, just hint towards it while allowing for a more direct solutions - creating an environment in which using maths can help player achieve better in-game results. Real game results, not silly 'multiply this-and-that to get 1000 points'. Game first, education second. I wonder if anyone ever tried that.
I was at the aerospace data facility, Colorado (ADF-C) on Buckley AFB on Sep 17th for an open day (rare for a secure environment like this) and played with a 3D walkthrough training app Lockheed had on display that was very game-like. It's built from recent arial reconnaissance photos and turned into a very realistic walkthrough for mission planning. Raytheon, the NSA and NRO are in the same facility.
It depresses me to see BBN Technologies referred to as Raytheon. Although they were acquired, it's as if Bell Labs were referred to as Lucent or Alcatel.
The current Bell Labs is a spin off of only the US Government contracts that were in place when the Lucent-Alcatel merger occurred. This was done because Alcatel is a foreign owned company and cannot be a part of sensitive government contract. All of the other research was kept with Lucent-Alcatel. So what's now known as Bell Labs is really just a name.
I hadn't heard of the spinoff; thanks. I worked at both Lucent Bell Labs (pre-Alcatel) and BBN (pre-Raytheon). I definitely keep track of BBN, it's an amazing company and I hope it continues to have it's own identity under Raytheon. Lucent Bell Labs was already dying when I was there back in 2003–but even then had some great active projects and Unix gods still around. So yea, perhaps the real "Bell Labs" is now AT&T Labs or perhaps Bell Labs is really dead.
BTW. personally I don't really trust 'educational games' at all, especially the ones that target children. Most of the stuff I've seen is silly and is barely deserving the name 'games'. I believe that it's much better for an educational game to be a game first, and education second, not the other way around. I don't like the attitude of treating education like a pill for a cat, so that we try to trick children into swallowing it.