The Edutainment Discussion Thread

[TrickWithAKnife]

I figured it might be good to have somewhere where those of us interested in creating or playing educational VNs could talk about them.

Personally I think they have a massive amount of potential, as they can do everything books can do, but are far more interactive, and can be more enjoyable. It's even possible to give the users feedback on what they are studying if it's coded to do so, which is incredibly useful.

Anyway, feel free to steer the discussion in whatever directions you like. I'm curious to hear the thoughts of other people, especially considering I have a lot of opinions and ideas myself.

[Greeny]

There's great potential for educational stories, but even pure education is made possible with the medium: Imagine an illustrated lecture first, and then a quiz about it with menus...

[TrickWithAKnife]

I wonder how many people have been considering making educational titles, and the methods they'll employee.

Personally I'm working on a game to teach survival and some conversational Japanese, Hiragana and Katakana. Possibly a little Kanji too, but I'm still deciding how realistic that is.

[Tempus]

My initial thought is that they probably aren't going to be very popular ... ever. I think games that encourage tangential learning would be much more effective. A lot of the new words in my vocabulary from age 8 - 12 came from video games, mostly RPGs. I'd see a word which was important to understanding a particular scene or the plot and not know what it meant, so I'd get a dictionary and find out (or ask someone). And that's largely still the way I am -- if there's some concept that needs to be understood to comprehend the story, I'll learn it. The games themselves aren't even oriented toward learning, but by making their worlds rich with references and interesting diction they subtly encourage it. And some candidly encourage it, like the Age of Empires series, but most of their focus *still* isn't on education.

Of course, I'd be happy to be proven wrong, I don't want them not to be popular. Still, I think the kind of learning where you don't realise you're learning is always going to be much more popular even if it is less comprehensive and efficient. What's most important, in my opinion, is fostering curiosity, not explicit teaching. Curiosity is aroused much easier if the concept being learned is bound to an interesting story.

This is how I would approach learning in a VN of my own. I'd like to educate (as best I can) on certain subjects, but I don't think tests, quizzes and so on are going to help. Tests and quizzes are boring without context. Why am I doing this test? If there's not a good in-game reason, I'm going to get bored. If my motivation is external to the game I'm going to start wondering why I'm playing a game to learn something I could learn faster without it.

[TrickWithAKnife]

I strongly agree with what you are saying. I actually teach English for a living, and 5 years of practical experience has proven it to be effective. People learn better when they are having fun, and tests are not fun.

Not only that, but people may resist education simply because they have their own psychological barriers, telling them that education must be difficult and stressful.
People are far less likely to resist if they see it as an enjoyable experience, where they can just enjoy, and by the time they are finished, they have also learnt something.

As someone once told me, why would anyone learn from a game (especially if it is commercial) if they can learn the same thing from a book or a website?

Personally I use a large number of methods in my own game, and while there are direct lessons, these are optional, and the vast majority of the education and review is done incidentally.

Some people may prefer more direct methods of teaching, and there's nothing wrong with that. But people who play VNs tend to have decent attention spans, which means learning can be spaced out, and woven into the entertainment side of it.
If you were to ask a high school class if they wanted to do 30 minutes of study with a textbook, or 4 hours playing a VN, I'm fairly confident that not many would opt for the textbook.

Figuring out how to do this kind of thing well isn't going to be easy. There will be a lot of trial and error, but hopefully we can share those trials and errors and help other edutainment creators with their own goals.

[dramspringfeald]

Actually this is a common issue in the US Adult industry. By Law ALL adult material has to be educational... I'm not kidding It's federal. Most chock it up to "the study of personal relationships in an adult setting" but I would LOVE to see Actual learning tied in with smut.

Beyond that having a game teach currently accepted sciences or even thoroughly detailed Theories as best understood by the author and their sources would do VERY well in progressing man kind. Not only are you "Enjoying the game" but you are learning actual things that could be better used in your life... and if done right the player wouldn't know they were learning about the Wormhole theory while riffling through a Cat Girls laundry.

[Boomsickle]

"Go! Go! Nippon! ~My First Trip to Japan~"

Proof that some form of educational tool does exist in visual novel form.

[TrickWithAKnife]

I remember hearing about that game. While it apparently does provide a bit of interesting information about Japan, the dating sim side of it might be problematic. It might be useful for existing VN fans, but I can't imagine a school recommending it, due to possible complaints from parents, or potentially offending students.

Then again, what dramspringfeald brought up was interesting. If people are focussed on the entertainment element enough, they may not even notice they are learning.

I did say that dating sims could limit the potential audience, but they have an advantage too. Imagine trying to impress potential partners in a game with your knowledge of their favourite topics, through the research you did in game, or possibly even outside of the game.

[PyTom]

By Law ALL adult material has to be educational... I'm not kidding It's federal.

Please cite this law.

[PyTom]

Honestly, one of my favorite educational VNs is https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... d.hayabusa . You learn quite a bit about Hayabusa, while at the same time having this incredibly moving story. (It can't help that Hayabusa is the closest to a nakige that a space mission can be.)

[dramspringfeald]

The Miller test (also called the Three Prong Obscenity Test[1]), is the United States Supreme Court's test for determining whether speech or expression can be labeled obscene, in which case it is not protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and can be prohibited.
===
The Miller test was developed in the 1973 case Miller v. California.[2] It has three parts:

Whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards", would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,

Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law,

Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.[3]

The work is considered obscene only if all three conditions are satisfied.

As a way to pass one of the tests Most pornography is labeled as a Human case study or interactions or observations between people.


Warning links my lead to adult subject matters procede with caution. Links provided as instructional material.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscene
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/p ... 13/15.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/porno ... ensorship/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_C ... ted_States

OH and the National Library of Congress has a copy of just about everything published in the main stream as... "case studies"

[Tempus]

Not only that, but people may resist education simply because they have their own psychological barriers, telling them that education must be difficult and stressful. People are far less likely to resist if they see it as an enjoyable experience, where they can just enjoy, and by the time they are finished, they have also learnt something.

Ah, yeah that's a good point. I think there's also a distinction between learning and education. Education is a formal process geared toward teaching and encouraging learning, but learning can, obviously, happen without it. Perhaps edutainment media would be better received if it just didn't advertise the educational aspect at all in certain places outside of pitching to audiences specifically seeking that, like schools / educational sites.

Personally I use a large number of methods in my own game, and while there are direct lessons, these are optional, and the vast majority of the education and review is done incidentally.

I was already planning on playing your VN, but that makes me happy to hear. I imagine it would be hard to do. I'm definitely someone who's interested in playing something with educational content, though I'd probably gravitate more toward games featuring philosophy / psychology / critical thinking. I imagine the reason I'm interested in learning a little Japanese without going so far as to take lessons or rigorously self-educate is because of the VNs / anime I consume -- it'd be interesting to understand some more than the tiny handful of words I do, but probably not quite worth the effort without a peripheral benefit such as entertainment. Regarding more direct methods of teaching, I'd suggest there's already plenty of that available in basically every field so that's going be hard to compete with on top of the already demanding job of making a game. This paragraph has no topic.

Beyond that having a game teach currently accepted sciences or even thoroughly detailed Theories as best understood by the author and their sources would do VERY well in progressing man kind.

That could be interesting, though there is the problem with the "based on a true story / fact" media in that the audience (and sometimes the author) don't always know (or care) what's true and what's been twisted or plain made up for entertainment purposes. The audience members who don't follow up with research may leave with a false impression of a subject, whether it be history, religion, science, etc. I don't know much about the guy or his books, but I seem to recall this happening with Dan Brown. I think it's better for people to be ignorant and know they're ignorant than to be poorly educated and think they know something on a given subject.

[LeonGuisti]

A different, digressional point of view:

Learning a language from today's software is still tedious and boring. I've tried learning German using two programs: Rosetta Stone and Fluenz. Both of them are painfully repetitive. The fault in this though is how these programs tackle language learning. Rosetta Stone in particular has a few different languages and it uses the same images and methods that it teaches French, Farsi, and English to teach German. I'm sure the Rosetta people do this to save money. They just reuse lessons and pictures so as to not have to pay royalties on more stock photos. What you plan on doing has a lot of potential because it's specifically focusing on Japanese and you're creating your own images and situations and not worrying about limiting yourself to a pallet of stock photos.

Anyway, back on topic...
While I was learning German, I played through a lot of my favorite games but switched their languages to German. I would download games I already had on Steam but just in a new language. I also purposely bought games aimed at kids and played them in German just because the grammar was easier. I figured it might be cool if a game did this natively. Where the first play through of a game might be in English with a few foreign words thrown in (like Continue, Attack, Buy) and then as the game progresses, it switches completely and you never really notice because you're learning the language the entire time.

Though that's more geared for an elongated RPG than a VN...

[dramspringfeald]

That could be interesting, though there is the problem with the "based on a true story / fact" media in that the audience (and sometimes the author) don't always know (or care) what's true and what's been twisted or plain made up for entertainment purposes. The audience members who don't follow up with research may leave with a false impression of a subject, whether it be history, religion, science, etc. I don't know much about the guy or his books, but I seem to recall this happening with Dan Brown. I think it's better for people to be ignorant and know they're ignorant than to be poorly educated and think they know something on a given subject.

Well that is where WE the creators would have to go the extra mile. Much like Hundred page scientific essays in the very back would be our sources. Some Wiki links the contact info from some of the universities or professors involved. Just make sure on our end it is as close to accurate as you can get and as dumbed down as it can get. It wouldn't have to be 100% accurate but it would have to have some logical stretches backing your ideas up.

Like if you are going to do a "historic epic" try to keep the characters as close as possible to the source info but inject unlike the history books they were MUCH like we are today where as instead of internet and Ebooks they had papers and world news. We had the same trappings, the same desires and ever 100 or so years more or less the SAME thing's happening. Hell with the same Music. Mozart - Leck mich im Arsch 1782

Making sure it does NOT sound like an encyclopedia but still be accurate would be the issue.

---
Learning a language would be difficult but instead of teaching cat means cat, Slowly changing the language over from English to German would be the way to go. Having a WW2 Enemy Mind game would be the way to go. As you and the Soldier are working to find your way off an Island HE starts using very broken English and you have to try and learn a bit of his. If done right you would not know you were learning German you would be learning to speak to your new (digital) friend.

[TrickWithAKnife]

A lot of language software use nouns and not a lot of grammar. This is partly because nouns in particular are easy to teach and easy to learn. The students can feel like they have a big vocabulary, but when they are actually in a situation where they can use that language, they realise they can't actually communicate.

A problem that I often see with textbooks is they often translate from the first language to the second language, it's a good way to get some basics fast, but also a good way to create bad study habits. When learning a language, you should learn it the way native speakers do. Translating is slow and ineffective. This kind of thing is much easier to change in the early stages than later, so it annoys be endlessly that many books opt for the easy way, rather than the most effective way.