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Agree, education via a game makes lots of sense. Math is one of those that is perfectly suited since repetition helps to learn it. There have been companies th

Agree, education via a game makes lots of sense. Math is one of those that is perfectly suited since repetition helps to learn it. There have been companies that specilized in educational games in the past yet they are no more. In the late nighties there were a few that were giants. If I remember well Software Toolsworks was one of them. It got acquired but now it's gone. I suspect the reason we don't see more of them is that education in the US is mostly free so it make's little sense for parents to spend money on something they already have. And teachers don't want to introduce something that threatens their lively hood and way of working. It's just a guess on my part.

bdw5204 4y ago
That's why you'd probably want to target the homeschool market if you had a startup making educational games. Homeschooling seems to be increasingly popular since the pandemic so that's a growing market and one that is probably not as dominated by very religious families as it used to be.
buscoquadnary 4y ago
> And teachers don't want to introduce something that threatens their lively hood and way of working. It's just a guess on my part. This is wholy untrue, my mother has several decades in elementary education and they would love something like that. The problem is that teachers and schools often don't have the autonomy to acquire these things, a teacher can't buy 20 copies of a game for students as even at 10 bucks that's 200 dollars. So at the budget level required to make games available you then have to go up to the district level. (Stop me if this next part sounds familiar) the District administration is pretty far removed from the students that will be using the product and the teachers using it to teach. Because of this technology companies are incentivized to build their product to the wishes of the district administrators rather than for the students and teachers using the product. This process is helped by the trips, gifts, and "favors" the sales people can use while pitching to the district level decision makers. So the district goes with the product that checks off the most items on a big checklist, as well as if they are a bad administrator, gives them more control over the students and classrooms. Meanwhile the product that was actually purchased doesn't actually help the students, or facilitate learning because it turns out it is way easier to put together a "study" that shows "leading educators" (who were former district administrators) assure that it will increase X metric by Y%. Sorry, had to get this off my chest.

bdw5204 4y ago

That's why you'd probably want to target the homeschool market if you had a startup making educational games. Homeschooling seems to be increasingly popular since the pandemic so that's a growing market and one that is probably not as dominated by very religious families as it used to be.

buscoquadnary 4y ago

> And teachers don't want to introduce something that threatens their lively hood and way of working. It's just a guess on my part. This is wholy untrue, my mother has several decades in elementary education and they would love something like that. The problem is that teachers and schools often don't have the autonomy to acquire these things, a teacher can't buy 20 copies of a game for students as even at 10 bucks that's 200 dollars. So at the budget level required to make games available you then have to go up to the district level. (Stop me if this next part sounds familiar) the District administration is pretty far removed from the students that will be using the product and the teachers using it to teach. Because of this technology companies are incentivized to build their product to the wishes of the district administrators rather than for the students and teachers using the product. This process is helped by the trips, gifts, and "favors" the sales people can use while pitching to the district level decision makers. So the district goes with the product that checks off the most items on a big checklist, as well as if they are a bad administrator, gives them more control over the students and classrooms. Meanwhile the product that was actually purchased doesn't actually help the students, or facilitate learning because it turns out it is way easier to put together a "study" that shows "leading educators" (who were former district administrators) assure that it will increase X metric by Y%. Sorry, had to get this off my chest.