The games I played that were made
for educational purposes came from Education.com and Bitesize. The games where
all short and each of them consisted of one specific scenario. The idea is that
the player plays through each game, finishing one then going onto the next. There
isn’t much context given to the games. They feel much more like chores than
games because they’re simply questions/puzzles that have a “game” styled
appearance. One of the biggest differences between these games and recreational
game is that there is no sense of freedom or flexibility.
When it comes to games that have
been adopted into means of education, the first thing I thought of was
Minecraft. Minecraft has the ability of being enjoyable on a recreational
level, yet having the features of a powerful learning tool. From looking at
what the game has to offer, it’s apparent that a large deal of geographical and
scientific learning can be achieved from this game. The process of teaching
this information is far different to the way educational games do it. Most of
the time educational games consist of a scenario where someone must answer
something correctly from a set of options or inputs. A game like Minecraft
requires someone to discover the answers and solutions to problems through
trial and error, which is arguably an important lesson in itself. Not only is
this method more rewarding and effective, it’s also much more involving, and
will most likely result in higher retention rate of useful information.
Out of all the games I looked at
on the “games made for education” side of things, it was absolutely clear that
the games had a fraction of the budget of the games that where adopted to
educate. The reason for this is because the games made for education did not
expected to make much money, there isn’t many people playing them let alone
buying them. The recreational games however receive huge amounts of funding and
advertisement. The fact that they are fun first means that they have a large
widespread appeal. It’s rare that a game can be like this and be a tool for
education at the same time, but if it can be harnessed as a tool for teaching,
it’s almost always going to be more involving, satisfying and ultimately more
effective that a game made on a budget, in a limited amount of time that has
found its way on a teaching website.
