All my life I've been playing games of all kinds of genre's. I have a fair understanding of gameplay mechanics and what makes a game good or bad. But I have to make an educational game for my class and this is one genre of game I have absolutely no experience with. The only thing that pops in my mind is interactive tutorials. I am supposed to turn in a concept with ideas tomorrow and even sketches (only two days to do this in a class that is not focused on game design at all) and I'm not even sure what my subject of my game will be. We're allowed to make a game about anything as long at its educational--that does not mean rated "C." It just must be educational. I'm going to be researching games that are educational but if anyone has any games in mind, let me know.

To make a game that is educational, you must either know the "lessons" or know the relevant forces to discover the lesson. So you start with the question: What do you know that you want your player to learn? Once you know the lesson then you design the game depending on the effective mode that a player would learn the lesson. There are many ways.


Suppose the "lesson" you have for your player involves a set of declarative knowledge. An effective way to learn declarative relations is by repetition. Design Example:

Game: Magical Fighter - Night of the Latin Roots Zombies

In this game the player character uses elemental magics to defeat monsters with names that are English words with Latin root words. Each monster can only be defeated by one chain of magic spells that spells out the meaning of its name.

Monster: Neolithic

Required spell chain to defeat the monster:

"Of" "New" "Stone"

Since there are so many "spells", perhaps the interface would just let the player type out the spell: "Of" [enter] "New" [enter] "Stone" [enter]. While the player is entering the spell chain, the PC is graphically casting the spell. When the spell is complete all monsters of that name are defeated at once, leaving monsters of a different names still need to be dealt with.


The game generate monsters with names that the player had not encountered. When the player gets the wrong chain, the monsters smite the PC and spell out the roots of their names.

In most cases, I'd agree with Wai. In practice, you start out having material that needs to be taught and then try to come up with a game to teach it. Your situation is a little bit different because you get to pick the topic.

What I think might help you focus is to use your working knowledge of common game types to decide the kind of game you want to make. Then analyze the activities that the player performs in the game. Is the player going to be engaged in long-term planning? Are actions going to be based on reflexes?

Now try going back and deciding what you want to teach. Given the kinds of decisions the player must make, what type of exercises can be merged into the player actions?

Some examples:

- If you want to make a strategy game, you can think of a concept where the player's decisions demonstrate it. How about marginal utility from economics? Perhaps a key gameplay element could be that the more of an item or unit the player makes, the more common it becomes. The result is that it becomes less effective.

- If you want to make an action game where a lot of quick decisions are made with minimal long-term impact, this would be a good chance for repetitive practice of a skill. At the most recent Games-Learning-Society conference last year, Nathan McKenzie demonstrated a Zelda-esque game (http://www.icecreambreakfast.com/cadenza.html) where attacks were driven by hitting keys that corresponded to musical chords. And who could forget dodging Troggles in Number Munchers to learn practice basic arithmetic.

- If you want to make an RPG, you have an excellent chance of making the story, puzzles, and battles driven by the content. Maybe the game sends the player back in time to a major war where they must use their knowledge of where the battles took place to move the story along. Another possibility is to use the battles for repetitive practice, such a sci-fi RPG where attacks are performed by successfully balancing chemistry equations.

Sirkibble, any updates?