Many years ago, I was volunteering at a summer school program for kids with special needs. I was hanging out with one of the children when he was told that the computer room was opened. He was looking over the game options and simply said “These are learning games, I hate them”. These “learning games” included titles like Number Munchers, Math Blasters, and Reader Rabbit- all games that I remembered playing back in elementary school. I asked why he didn’t like them and he told me that he preferred “fun games” like Mario and Sonic.
At the end of the day I was speaking to the child’s mother (we were expected to give a full report of the day to the parents) and I mentioned that he didn’t like educational games. She laughed and said: “I don’t think those kinds of games are fun, I can understand why he likes Minecraft better.” I brought up an old series of games that I loved when I was a kid: the Junior Adventure series from Humongous Entertainment. She said she would investigate.
At the end of the program, I was speaking to the mother again when she told me that she had downloaded one of the Putt-Putt games- and her son was enjoying it. She then asked if there was anything newer in that same genre. I felt a pang of guilt when I admitted that games like Putt-Putt went out of fashion years ago, and any game marketed today as educational was one of those “learning games.”
For the unfamiliar, the Junior Adventure series was a number of game franchises created by Humongous Entertainment, a company founded by veteran game designer Ron Gilbert. These games were point-and-click adventure games: games played entirely with a mouse that focused on presenting the player with obstacles that would prevent progress and could by passed by solving puzzles or using items obtained elsewhere in the game. The point-and-click adventure genre revolved around critical thinking and problem solving, both necessary skills for children to develop, but most of these games were designed for a 13+ audience, so elementary schoolers would have much greater difficulty with the challenges. The Junior Adventure games were an attempt to rectify this situation after Gilbert realized that small children could understand the controls and how to interact with the game, but had difficulty solving harder puzzles or keeping pace with a more complicated story.
So why did kids enjoy these games despite the educational label? The conversations I’ve had with children over the years led me to a conclusion: kids are smarter than we tend to think, and they can tell when a game is trying to teach them something. A game like Number Muncher tells the player up front that it’s there to teach them math, and while most children would certainly prefer doing mathematics in a game environment then a school environment, they wouldn’t play games like this for fun. The Junior Adventure games worked because they didn’t advertise themselves as educational- they were adventures. The kid playing wasn’t made aware that the game was an educational tool and therefore saw the game as, well, a game. Anything learned from this series was seen as more of a happy accident and didn’t impede the fun. Basically, if you want somebody to learn from a video game, it needs to be a side effect.
A perfect example would be the Assassin’s Creed series. While not appropriate for children (rated M and all) the accuracy to history causes a lot of true, historical facts to be communicated to the player. But people don’t play a game like Assassin’s Creed to learn about history; they play it to jump off of rooftops and stab guards. But, in spite of that, middle school me went on Wikipedia to look up the history of the Borgia family and their impact on Rome during the Renaissance. A game not designed with educational intent got me to study something, and I’m not the only one. There are similar cases with other M-rated games: Uncharted teaches the player about Sir Francis Drake, God of War explains Greek Mythology, and Watch Dogs is like a Cybersecurity 101 lecture.
So what’s the lesson in all of this? The idea of education being secondary to fun and player engagement should be applied to modern video games with an E for Everyone rating. A game should be fun and advertise itself accordingly, rather than by its educational value, and present facts and/or educational challenges to the player as part of the fun. It’s like a Trojan Horse where the education only begins once the player is so engaged that they don’t realize they’re being “tricked” into learning.
I think point-and-click adventure games work especially well for this because they, by nature, are dependent on presenting puzzles and challenges that the player must overcome. It’s very easy to incorporate learning into these challenges while still presenting a story to engage the player. There’s a part in the first Pajama Sam game where you have to get past two talking doors. If you participate in their quiz show and win, they will let you through. I (age 6, by the way) proceeded to research how much solid fuel was necessary to boost a space shuttle via the internet, not because I necessarily wanted to learn about space travel, but because I wanted to unlock the next area of the game. Regardless of my intention, however, the fact remains that I willingly researched and retained this information.
(The answer is “more than a kilogram,” by the way.)
This brings me to the key issue edutainment games face: developers simply aren’t making games for children as much as they used to. Games have started to tackle more mature subject matter, and while that’s great and all (I’m ecstatic to see the growing freedoms developers have to write stories and deliver experiences), most games like this get an M for Mature rating and aren’t designed for an all-ages audience. Additionally, point and click games today exist mainly in the indie scene. While it’s wonderful that these sorts of games have persisted, it means that there’s not a lot of marketing and advertising going on for them. Most young children don’t follow the games industry and new announcements; their games tend to be bought for them by their older relatives, who typically base their purchases on ads (the kinds of which your average indie developer can’t typically afford.)
Video games have amazing potential for educating children and enriching their lives, and I’m sure there’s a lot of game developers who agree with me. I think about the impact games like these could have on those kids I worked with, the things they could learn while being introduced to enjoyable media, and I think about their parents, who I know would absolutely buy these games for their children, especially the kids loudest about their dislike of education. But for this to happen, major publishers need to invest in the edutainment genre. E-rated games aren’t as popular as they once were, but there’s still an audience for them.
Creators love to hear about the impact that their games have within people’s lives, and that holds true for their educational value. I hope that one day we’ll have a second golden age of edutainment games that are fun and enriching for everyone who plays them.
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