Re: [pygame] Philosophy of Educational Games

[Shandy Brown <sjbrown@xxxxxxxxx>]

I've thought about this subject a lot recently.  The artificiality is
indeed something that needs to be avoided.  I think kids see anything that
is obviously trying to teach them to learn as bad.

I'll take math games as an example.

Games where you actually see the numbers printed out immediately look like
educational games to kids.  The Number Munchers game you describe seems
like gussied-up flash cards.  I think a better approach for games would be
to teach the abstract concepts, and not actually write out the numbers.

You could present the user with a problem, like needing to cross a gap
5 tiles long, they could then collect bricks, and bricks of the same color
could be attached.  Somewhere on the level would be a set of 3 red bricks,
and elsewhere would be 2 red bricks.  The user would have to figure out
that they need to put them together to cross the gap.

Or you could have a puzzle game where you need to construct a Rube
Goldberg machine, and the user decides how many teeth they want to put on
a gear, which could be used to teach multiplication.

For division or fractions, you could have a lumines-type game where you
give the user blocks made up of smaller segments, and the user can
eliminate segments before dropping them down.  Different blocks could have
different sized segments, and the user is challenged to create wholes.
This could either be arcade-style or puzzle-style like sokoban.

Just some random ideas,

-sjbrown

On Mon, 25 Apr 2005, Dan wrote:

> I'm interested in your input on how to design better educational games.
>
> Many educational games are based on having the user answer questions to
> gain power-ups, etc. This is artificial: the educational part and the
> fun part are clearly separate. What about an educational game where
> knowledge was as central to the game as good shooting? Users seem to
> enjoy learning how to defeat the different monsters in a game; why can't
> it be just as much fun to learn something educational?
>
> When I was a child our school had a game called Number Munchers, in
> which you had to eat only numbers that matched a certain criteria (e.g.,
> prime numbers, fractions in lowest terms) while avoiding enemies. This
> game was simple but popular. The game was later expanded to include
> eating other things, such as chemical elements.
>
> I've come up with two possibilities for educational games. The first is
> a standard 2D game in which there happen to be a lot of chemicals lying
> around. You throw one chemical onto another to get the desired result,
> such as blowing up an enemy. The chemical reactions would mimic the real
> world (that's the educational part). Part of the challenge might be to
> identify the chemicals: for example, since many chemicals simply look
> like white powder, you throw a little acid on it to see if it reacts
> like a base. This would be a good reason to include non-explosive
> reactions.
>
> Another possibility is a game in which you choose various historical
> figures to accomplish some kind of goal. For example, Marx speaks well,
> but he get sidetracked all the time trying to liberate employees. This
> introduces a lot of technical difficulties because computer games are
> notoriously bad at handling dialogue.
>
> So if you have any ideas or suggestions or musings, I'd be interested to
> hear them.
>
> By the way, the only educational game on the PyGame web site is Tux Math
> Scrabble.
>
> --
>  The first time the [artificially intelligent] creature was put down
>  in the game world, he just stared at his feet. I was puzzled, but
>  after debugging found that the creature was trying to eat himself.
>  He was hungry, and had spotted himself as a nearby convenient object!
>      - Richard Evans, creator of the AI game "Black & White"
>
>
>