8 ms·

We also tried to make educational games and came to a similar conclusion. The truth is, kids (or adults) don't want to play "educational" games. They just want

by shafyy 6y ago

We also tried to make educational games and came to a similar conclusion. The truth is, kids (or adults) don't want to play "educational" games. They just want to play fun games. And, let's be honest, games that try to teach you math or science are just not as fun as Fortnite or Minecraft. Now, you can make the case that some games are educational by mistake. Like Minecraft, Age of Empires, Sim City or Kerbal Space Program. But noone would see them or describe them as "educational" games. So, what we're trying to make now are creative games. In my opinion, creativity is extremley important and there are fun ways to be creative, that are not eductional in the strict sense. For example, Lego comes to mind.

the_af 6y ago
They can't compete with Fortnite or Minecraft, but Castle of Dr. Brain was so good I played it back in the day and didn't think of it as educational ;)
- Polylactic_acid 6y ago
  I used to play so many of those educational point and click games as a kid. Don't remember the details well but it seems the style has died out in the last decade.
- xrd 6y ago
  It's so cool that you can get this on internet archive absolutely free, inside the browser, in a JS emulator! https://archive.org/details/msdos_Castle_of_Dr._Brain_1991 https://archive.org/details/msdos_Castle_of_Dr._Brain_1991
  - teddyh 6y ago
    Review for those who want to see it before playing the entire game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGtw5eOfZ48#t=2m39s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGtw5eOfZ48#t=2m39s
c3534l 6y ago
I would think Maxis actually tells you the best way to be a success. Maxis doesn't say their games are educational and players don't feel like they're trying to be. But they were, and Maxis wanted them to be. I've heard Will Wright talk about giving his kids things like microscopes as "toys" that let them play and explore which causes them to sort of learn against their best intentions. If I were to get into the educational software space, I would go the Maxis route of making games for gamers, marketing them as wholesome for all ages, and then having a secret educational agenda. That is, I'd try to straddle the line, and maybe if I were good at it, word of mouth would spread and the school administrators would hear positive feedback from their students and teachers about how engaging the games are. You would essentially have to create your own market since one doesn't exist; you'd create a need administrators don't know they have. Alternatively, you could go Minecraft and hack in education through mods and stuff to existing games kids are already engaged in. But I fully admit as much as I admire Maxis, I don't work in that space and unless I win the lottery I won't be quitting my job to get into educational software any time soon.
- ksdale 6y ago
  I think the indirect approach is very underrated. Our kids have all learned to read ahead of “schedule” because they wanted to understand what was happening in their games, and they’re all also coming along very quickly at arithmetic because of needing to manage the economy of whatever game they’re playing. As a kid, I picked up a familiarity with history and geography that was miles ahead of my peers due to games like Total War and Close Combat, which aren’t sold as educational at all. I think people innately want to learn whatever they need to know to accomplish their goals, and it’s way easier to give people goals and tools than it is to teach them about tools in the abstract.
  - bananamerica 6y ago
    A personal anecdote: I bought my first English dictionary to understand 1992’s Alone in the Dark. I’d probably not be talking with you guys and girls if not for videogames. I had no interest whatsoever in learning English, I just wanted to beat the games. If someone assigned me the very same game for educational purposes, I’d hate it by default.
klenwell 6y ago
The lesson here reminds me of one of my favorite Malcolm Gladwell essays about McDonald's failure to market healthy fast food back in the 90's: The McLean was a flop, and four years later it was off the market. What happened? Part of the problem appears to have been that McDonald's rushed the burger to market before many of the production kinks had been worked out. More important, though, was the psychological handicap the burger faced. People liked AU Lean in blind taste tests because they didn't know it was AU Lean; they were fooled into thinking it was regular ground beef. But nobody was fooled when it came to the McLean Deluxe. It was sold as the healthy choice--and who goes to McDonald's for health food? https://web.archive.org/web/20081218211703/http://www.gladwell.com/2001/2001_03_05_a_fries.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20081218211703/http://www.gladwe...
- hhs 6y ago
  Indeed, wonder how the McLean would land now almost 30 years later? If they sold it as a healthy choice today, would it face a similar failure? Speaking of choice and marketing, wonder why McDonald’s in the US still lacks a veggie burger. Is it based on a business decision?
  - llarsson 6y ago
    It absolutely must be, because they have even vegan options here and there. Sweden, for instance, has had vegan burgers for several years (first McBean and now McVegan). I know other countries have something similar. It seems to me that US McDonald's must be scared of diluting their brand by also going after the veggie crowd. Perhaps due to McLean failing or that they just bide their time until they can make a whole new set of restaurants under a different brand name like McDonald's Green or something?
    - hhs 6y ago
      > or that they just bide their time until they can make a whole new set of restaurants under a different brand name like McDonald's Green or something? Would be fascinating if they did something like that. Pret a Manger did this recently by adding stores called Veggie Pret. Might be tough for McDonald’s to pull that off, though, since they also cater a lot to kids. By introducing two stores, veggie vs non-veggie, wonder if that would create signaling issues of healthiness with audiences?
mcv 6y ago
> "Like Minecraft, Age of Empires, Sim City or Kerbal Space Program. But noone would see them or describe them as "educational" games." And that's the problem. Because they are educational. And because they are both educational and fun, people are much more engaged to learn from them than from "real" educational games. People who play Europe Universalis learn way more about early modern history than they ever learned at school. As Randal Munroe pointed out, you learn way more about orbital mechanics from KSP. If you want to make truly educational games, you shouldn't focus on the educational part, but take the educational part and wrap it in tons of fun. Of course there are topics where this is going to be hard. I have absolutely no idea how anyone could make a fun game that revolves around German grammar. (Or do I? The best way to learn a language always seems to be to actually use it with a native speaker. Having a friend who speaks the language you're trying to learn would be a great way to do that. There might be something here.) But something like geology could be part of a simulation where you need to find certain resources, and that's easier once you understand how those resources are formed. And then there needs to be something fun to do with those resources, of course.
- cptnapalm 6y ago
  When Islamic State was up and coming, the news reported that its capital was Al-Raqqa. I didn't bat an eye. I did bat an eye at my own non-eye batting. EU4 and the (save scumming) glorious return of the Byzantine Empire had forever seared into my brain where the place is.
- eru 6y ago
  Geology is a big part of Dwarf Fortress. They take their different stone types very serious. About 'German Grammar': check out Heaven's Vault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Vault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Vault But honestly, humans don't learn languages by understand their grammars with the logic part of their brain. Games would be ideal to produce comprehensible input, and test players on their comprehension via actions, instead of making them reply with words. There's some evidence that trying to produce language to early in your learning just ingrains bad habits. So instead you can just follow increasingly complex instructions to show that you understand. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis
usrusr 6y ago
Every game that contains an element of simulation that strives for realism is educational in that you walk out knowing a lot more about the simulated topic than before, often more than you ever wanted, and often more than what's in the sim. E.g. when I was playing counterstrike I found myself embarrassingly well-read in the Wikipedia pages about the history of modern firearms. Who would have guessed that "the Startgate gun" isn't just a very creative movie prop? But this kind of knowledge acquisition only ever teaches the lowest hanging fruits, it's no substitute for drilling in the basics. Even lifetimes spent passing KSP won't bring you to a point were you could design your own rocket.
- eru 6y ago
  > But this kind of knowledge acquisition only ever teaches the lowest hanging fruits, it's no substitute for drilling in the basics. Even lifetimes spent passing KSP won't bring you to a point were you could design your own rocket. Yes. Though it can probably teach you enough that you have enough scaffolding already in your brain that you can get through a textbook without getting lost?
  - antepodius 6y ago
    I think the real value of KSP is orthogonal to textbooks. Like it says in that one xkcd strip, it gives you an intuitive understanding of orbital mechanics by letting you interact directly (and with a goal) with orbital trajectories. I think you'd have a hard time getting the same visual intuition about how the ellipse stretches and rotates depending on whether you burn retrograde or radially out from a textbook. The great value, here, I think, is that you can have a process completely alien to humans and get an intuition of it about as good as what we can get from playing around with a ball. In high school physics, ballistics (and therefore gravity) is taught using a ball being thrown in the air for a reason- most people have this sort of intuition for that process, and find it easier to get from there to the mathematical model. Before games/simulators like KSP, the only way to get an intuition of orbital mechanics like that would be to simulate it in your head a bunch, arduously. I think this is a potential great source of value: games/simulator can give you otherwise-very-hard-to-get intuitive knowledge of (models of) subjects. Not a replacement for the maths and the crunch, but would probably make it easier in a revolutionary way. I wonder if this is already happening? There must be a generation of aerospace engineering students now who have sent rockets to the Mun.
Balgair 6y ago
There's an old adage in screenwriting: Don't give the audience 4, give them 2+2. This is the Kuleshov Effect [0] for scripts. By giving them the little details, you engage the audience (well, most of them) and make the work more compelling. Medical and Crime procedurals are this in spades. Sherlock Holmes is still idolized. Educational genres are explicitly against the Kuleshov Effect. The whole point is to get to 4. The audience is not exactly unengaged (video games are engaging by definition), but they aren't drawn in. There are no compelling mysteries or 'flaws' that they help solve with the story of the game. Just a computer holding back an answer. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuleshov_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuleshov_effect
- Kye 6y ago
  The progression of the Sherlock subplot in Star Trek: The Next Generation is a good example of this. It starts with Data trying to solve a case too fast, then ends with the computer creating a holographic life form to outwit Data.
dangoldin 6y ago
I learned a ton of SAT words just by playing Diablo 2 over and over again searching for magical and unique items. Kind of incredible.
app4soft 6y ago
> For example, Lego comes to mind. And as a "video game"-like free alternative to 'real Lego' there are LeoCAD app + LDraw Parts Library, which are suitable for creating 'digital Lego' models by kids.[0,1,2] [0] https://github.com/Symbian9/AWESOME-LDraw https://github.com/Symbian9/AWESOME-LDraw [1] https://github.com/leocad/leozide https://github.com/leocad/leozide [2] https://ldraw.org https://ldraw.org
shafyy 6y ago
This discussion prompted me to write a blog post about this topic: https://shafyy.com/post/education-starts-with-a-spark/ https://shafyy.com/post/education-starts-with-a-spark/
jmcqk6 6y ago
>And, let's be honest, games that try to teach you math or science are just not as fun as Fortnite or Minecraft. Only if you try to do it very naively. Most of the time, these "games" are "lets put blinky lights around match equations." That's definitely not how you turn math and science into games. You turn them into games by making engineering games. There was a really great paper I ran into a decade ago that looked at the theory making by players of World of Warcraft. Players were coming up with complex mathematical models for how to play the game most efficiently. THAT is how you make math a game. The goal of the game shouldn't be "let's solve these math problems." The goal of the game should be anything but that, and then you setup the game so that the best way to reach that goal is to use math. Science opens the door even further, because hypothesis and experimentation is a fundamental part of playing games. There was a recent post on here regarding the best ways to learn electricity. One of the top replies was to use some minecraft mod. I don't know anything about that mod, but that fact that it was one of the recommendations really said a lot to me.

by shafyy 6y ago

the_af 6y ago

They can't compete with Fortnite or Minecraft, but Castle of Dr. Brain was so good I played it back in the day and didn't think of it as educational ;)

Polylactic_acid 6y ago
I used to play so many of those educational point and click games as a kid. Don't remember the details well but it seems the style has died out in the last decade.
xrd 6y ago
It's so cool that you can get this on internet archive absolutely free, inside the browser, in a JS emulator! https://archive.org/details/msdos_Castle_of_Dr._Brain_1991 https://archive.org/details/msdos_Castle_of_Dr._Brain_1991
- teddyh 6y ago
  Review for those who want to see it before playing the entire game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGtw5eOfZ48#t=2m39s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGtw5eOfZ48#t=2m39s

c3534l 6y ago

I would think Maxis actually tells you the best way to be a success. Maxis doesn't say their games are educational and players don't feel like they're trying to be. But they were, and Maxis wanted them to be. I've heard Will Wright talk about giving his kids things like microscopes as "toys" that let them play and explore which causes them to sort of learn against their best intentions. If I were to get into the educational software space, I would go the Maxis route of making games for gamers, marketing them as wholesome for all ages, and then having a secret educational agenda. That is, I'd try to straddle the line, and maybe if I were good at it, word of mouth would spread and the school administrators would hear positive feedback from their students and teachers about how engaging the games are. You would essentially have to create your own market since one doesn't exist; you'd create a need administrators don't know they have. Alternatively, you could go Minecraft and hack in education through mods and stuff to existing games kids are already engaged in. But I fully admit as much as I admire Maxis, I don't work in that space and unless I win the lottery I won't be quitting my job to get into educational software any time soon.

ksdale 6y ago
I think the indirect approach is very underrated. Our kids have all learned to read ahead of “schedule” because they wanted to understand what was happening in their games, and they’re all also coming along very quickly at arithmetic because of needing to manage the economy of whatever game they’re playing. As a kid, I picked up a familiarity with history and geography that was miles ahead of my peers due to games like Total War and Close Combat, which aren’t sold as educational at all. I think people innately want to learn whatever they need to know to accomplish their goals, and it’s way easier to give people goals and tools than it is to teach them about tools in the abstract.
- bananamerica 6y ago
  A personal anecdote: I bought my first English dictionary to understand 1992’s Alone in the Dark. I’d probably not be talking with you guys and girls if not for videogames. I had no interest whatsoever in learning English, I just wanted to beat the games. If someone assigned me the very same game for educational purposes, I’d hate it by default.

klenwell 6y ago

The lesson here reminds me of one of my favorite Malcolm Gladwell essays about McDonald's failure to market healthy fast food back in the 90's: The McLean was a flop, and four years later it was off the market. What happened? Part of the problem appears to have been that McDonald's rushed the burger to market before many of the production kinks had been worked out. More important, though, was the psychological handicap the burger faced. People liked AU Lean in blind taste tests because they didn't know it was AU Lean; they were fooled into thinking it was regular ground beef. But nobody was fooled when it came to the McLean Deluxe. It was sold as the healthy choice--and who goes to McDonald's for health food? https://web.archive.org/web/20081218211703/http://www.gladwell.com/2001/2001_03_05_a_fries.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20081218211703/http://www.gladwe...

hhs 6y ago
Indeed, wonder how the McLean would land now almost 30 years later? If they sold it as a healthy choice today, would it face a similar failure? Speaking of choice and marketing, wonder why McDonald’s in the US still lacks a veggie burger. Is it based on a business decision?
- llarsson 6y ago
  It absolutely must be, because they have even vegan options here and there. Sweden, for instance, has had vegan burgers for several years (first McBean and now McVegan). I know other countries have something similar. It seems to me that US McDonald's must be scared of diluting their brand by also going after the veggie crowd. Perhaps due to McLean failing or that they just bide their time until they can make a whole new set of restaurants under a different brand name like McDonald's Green or something?
  - hhs 6y ago
    > or that they just bide their time until they can make a whole new set of restaurants under a different brand name like McDonald's Green or something? Would be fascinating if they did something like that. Pret a Manger did this recently by adding stores called Veggie Pret. Might be tough for McDonald’s to pull that off, though, since they also cater a lot to kids. By introducing two stores, veggie vs non-veggie, wonder if that would create signaling issues of healthiness with audiences?

mcv 6y ago

> "Like Minecraft, Age of Empires, Sim City or Kerbal Space Program. But noone would see them or describe them as "educational" games." And that's the problem. Because they are educational. And because they are both educational and fun, people are much more engaged to learn from them than from "real" educational games. People who play Europe Universalis learn way more about early modern history than they ever learned at school. As Randal Munroe pointed out, you learn way more about orbital mechanics from KSP. If you want to make truly educational games, you shouldn't focus on the educational part, but take the educational part and wrap it in tons of fun. Of course there are topics where this is going to be hard. I have absolutely no idea how anyone could make a fun game that revolves around German grammar. (Or do I? The best way to learn a language always seems to be to actually use it with a native speaker. Having a friend who speaks the language you're trying to learn would be a great way to do that. There might be something here.) But something like geology could be part of a simulation where you need to find certain resources, and that's easier once you understand how those resources are formed. And then there needs to be something fun to do with those resources, of course.

cptnapalm 6y ago
When Islamic State was up and coming, the news reported that its capital was Al-Raqqa. I didn't bat an eye. I did bat an eye at my own non-eye batting. EU4 and the (save scumming) glorious return of the Byzantine Empire had forever seared into my brain where the place is.
eru 6y ago
Geology is a big part of Dwarf Fortress. They take their different stone types very serious. About 'German Grammar': check out Heaven's Vault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Vault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Vault But honestly, humans don't learn languages by understand their grammars with the logic part of their brain. Games would be ideal to produce comprehensible input, and test players on their comprehension via actions, instead of making them reply with words. There's some evidence that trying to produce language to early in your learning just ingrains bad habits. So instead you can just follow increasingly complex instructions to show that you understand. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis

usrusr 6y ago

Every game that contains an element of simulation that strives for realism is educational in that you walk out knowing a lot more about the simulated topic than before, often more than you ever wanted, and often more than what's in the sim. E.g. when I was playing counterstrike I found myself embarrassingly well-read in the Wikipedia pages about the history of modern firearms. Who would have guessed that "the Startgate gun" isn't just a very creative movie prop? But this kind of knowledge acquisition only ever teaches the lowest hanging fruits, it's no substitute for drilling in the basics. Even lifetimes spent passing KSP won't bring you to a point were you could design your own rocket.

eru 6y ago
> But this kind of knowledge acquisition only ever teaches the lowest hanging fruits, it's no substitute for drilling in the basics. Even lifetimes spent passing KSP won't bring you to a point were you could design your own rocket. Yes. Though it can probably teach you enough that you have enough scaffolding already in your brain that you can get through a textbook without getting lost?
- antepodius 6y ago
  I think the real value of KSP is orthogonal to textbooks. Like it says in that one xkcd strip, it gives you an intuitive understanding of orbital mechanics by letting you interact directly (and with a goal) with orbital trajectories. I think you'd have a hard time getting the same visual intuition about how the ellipse stretches and rotates depending on whether you burn retrograde or radially out from a textbook. The great value, here, I think, is that you can have a process completely alien to humans and get an intuition of it about as good as what we can get from playing around with a ball. In high school physics, ballistics (and therefore gravity) is taught using a ball being thrown in the air for a reason- most people have this sort of intuition for that process, and find it easier to get from there to the mathematical model. Before games/simulators like KSP, the only way to get an intuition of orbital mechanics like that would be to simulate it in your head a bunch, arduously. I think this is a potential great source of value: games/simulator can give you otherwise-very-hard-to-get intuitive knowledge of (models of) subjects. Not a replacement for the maths and the crunch, but would probably make it easier in a revolutionary way. I wonder if this is already happening? There must be a generation of aerospace engineering students now who have sent rockets to the Mun.

Balgair 6y ago

There's an old adage in screenwriting: Don't give the audience 4, give them 2+2. This is the Kuleshov Effect [0] for scripts. By giving them the little details, you engage the audience (well, most of them) and make the work more compelling. Medical and Crime procedurals are this in spades. Sherlock Holmes is still idolized. Educational genres are explicitly against the Kuleshov Effect. The whole point is to get to 4. The audience is not exactly unengaged (video games are engaging by definition), but they aren't drawn in. There are no compelling mysteries or 'flaws' that they help solve with the story of the game. Just a computer holding back an answer. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuleshov_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuleshov_effect

Kye 6y ago
The progression of the Sherlock subplot in Star Trek: The Next Generation is a good example of this. It starts with Data trying to solve a case too fast, then ends with the computer creating a holographic life form to outwit Data.

dangoldin 6y ago

I learned a ton of SAT words just by playing Diablo 2 over and over again searching for magical and unique items. Kind of incredible.

app4soft 6y ago

> For example, Lego comes to mind. And as a "video game"-like free alternative to 'real Lego' there are LeoCAD app + LDraw Parts Library, which are suitable for creating 'digital Lego' models by kids.[0,1,2] [0] https://github.com/Symbian9/AWESOME-LDraw https://github.com/Symbian9/AWESOME-LDraw [1] https://github.com/leocad/leozide https://github.com/leocad/leozide [2] https://ldraw.org https://ldraw.org

shafyy 6y ago

This discussion prompted me to write a blog post about this topic: https://shafyy.com/post/education-starts-with-a-spark/ https://shafyy.com/post/education-starts-with-a-spark/

jmcqk6 6y ago

>And, let's be honest, games that try to teach you math or science are just not as fun as Fortnite or Minecraft. Only if you try to do it very naively. Most of the time, these "games" are "lets put blinky lights around match equations." That's definitely not how you turn math and science into games. You turn them into games by making engineering games. There was a really great paper I ran into a decade ago that looked at the theory making by players of World of Warcraft. Players were coming up with complex mathematical models for how to play the game most efficiently. THAT is how you make math a game. The goal of the game shouldn't be "let's solve these math problems." The goal of the game should be anything but that, and then you setup the game so that the best way to reach that goal is to use math. Science opens the door even further, because hypothesis and experimentation is a fundamental part of playing games. There was a recent post on here regarding the best ways to learn electricity. One of the top replies was to use some minecraft mod. I don't know anything about that mod, but that fact that it was one of the recommendations really said a lot to me.