Is it possible to make an edu-game that doesn't suck?

[Jake]

Sadly, there are so many exceptions to each grammar rule that it's painfully difficult to teach them in any kind of logical manner

I guess this really depends on what level of grammar you're teaching. Stuff like splitting infinitives is a bit of a grey area, but a lot of more low-level rules are pretty constant. You must end your sentences with a punctuation mark from a small selection - no exceptions! ;-)




I think all the educational games we had at school were rubbish, with the sole exception of a story-scripting-with-sprites package on the BBC Micro which was really just a tool-being-used-for-education rather than a piece of 'educational software'. It didn't try and directly teach you anything, it just provided the facilities for our teacher to teach us stuff. We didn't have The Oregon Trail 'cause we never went to Oregon; we'd have got The Industrial Revolution ("Barry the miner has developed emphysema, can no longer support his family; everyone gets sent to the workhouse") or The English Civil War ("Colin has been arrested by Royalists for being a traitor!"; "Colin has been freed by the New Model Army!"; "Colin has been executed by the New Model Army for being a traitor!") or something.

That said, the best educational game I ever played was The Typing of the Dead. Practice is essential, so make practice fun! Men in the kitchen! Armed with bananas!

[Showsni]

I enjoyed playing educational games at school; though, what child doesn't enjoy playing computer games over traditional work? Though, since we never owned a computer in those days that might have had something to do with it. I remember in Year 1 or 2 or something we had an educational game on the BBC, a bit similar to Granny's Garden (or maybe it was an Acorn we had at school... I can;t remember much about the game, except that at one point you had to let a troll cast a spell turning you into a frog so that you'd be small enough to get along a passage to another area). Then in Year 6, computers had obviously advanced a bit and we had more advanced games. One was a nature walk type thing - you could take a bug net, jam jar, etc. out and capture butterflies, fish and so on to then study in depth. The other game was based on Around the World in 80 Days - you had to complete puzzles to move the story on. I think my friend and I were the first (possibly only?) in the class to get all around the world - the final puzzle involved dropping items out of a hot air balloon based on their weight (drop the cello first...).

Anyway, what I want to say is, I certainly have fond memories of these games in school, so I certainly think educational games can be fun. Although we didn't have a proper home computer my dad did get a laptop from work (though BT had stripped all the usual windows games from it). Somehow he got two DOS educational games, though, which I'd be allowed to play sometimes - one was the Maths Rescue game mentioned above with the pointing at aliens to summon the slime carrying butterfly (think I completed that too, though we only had episode one), the other was another educational game with a secret agent and various mini games (history - answering questions to knock open bricks in a pyramid with a hammer and look for diamonds, geography - flying a plane over the world, identifying suspects, etc.).

When it comes to grammar I guess the closest I've played is the Reader Rabbit games (at a friend's house), though they're again aimed at a much younger audience (and more like learning to read than learning the rules of grammar).

Oh, and who could forget the Logical Journey of the Zoombinis? (More toppings!)

[Aetheria]

I used to love educational games when I was a kid - Museum Madness was a fun one, Math Blasters, Zoombinis, Gizmos and Gadgets... I didn't play many reading games, though, because my grammar was already pretty good by the time I was six and allowed to have computer games. *nerd*

It does seem like Ren'py would be a decent platform for a grammar game. Having nice art would actually be important if it's a game for college students, imo. They might be more likely to judge a game by its presentation than would elementary school kids. An engaging story might be a good way to keep players' interest, especially if it branched enough that not every student would see the same ending and tell all their classmates how the story goes. The first Latin textbooks I used - also when I was six or seven - had reading passages that were all part of a bigger story, which gave me motivation to learn my Latin grammar so I could find out what happened next. (But the first book was set in Pompeii, so at the end Vesuvius erupted and everyone died. That was kind of traumatizing for seven-year-old me.)

That said, a cool story will only hold players' attention for a couple of playthroughs, so you might need to make the game longish or with multiple desirable endings, so that they'll get a good dose of grammar practice from playing it. And if you're envisioning students playing through the game more than once, the way VNs tend to encourage, you'll probably want to randomize the grammar questions somewhat so they won't get asked the same questions every time.

Anyway, I applaud your efforts to make learning grammar more fun - I'm always shocked by how wobbly my fellow grad students' writing can be, so I can't imagine how much more difficult it must be for college freshmen.

And, just because...

"When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them."
--Author G.K. Chesterton

A fellow Chesterton fan! *virtual high-five*

[LVUER]

A little bit OOT perhaps...
Are games like Typing of the Dead or Typing Shark also categorized as Edu games?

[Jake]

Are games like Typing of the Dead or Typing Shark also categorized as Edu games?

Um... yes?

The point of the software is to teach you how to type. The operative word being 'teach'! Just because something isn't likely to get used in a school doesn't mean it's not educational.

(Well - regarding TotD, the console/PC ports at least have features designed to teach you typing; whether it's the primary focus of the software is an open question.)

[Sumoslap]

Folks, I've had a busy week and haven't chimed in for a bit, so just wanted to thank everyone for their fantastic posts, especially the remembrances of fun edu-games and the excellent ideas for my own grammar game. It's too much to ask, but I'm going to ask anyway: keep 'em coming!

[HotLimit]

Sadly, there are so many exceptions to each grammar rule that it's painfully difficult to teach them in any kind of logical manner

I guess this really depends on what level of grammar you're teaching. Stuff like splitting infinitives is a bit of a grey area, but a lot of more low-level rules are pretty constant. You must end your sentences with a punctuation mark from a small selection - no exceptions!

Yeah, my mistake, I was talking about grammar and not orthography. I forgot that a lot of people conflate the two.

[Glazed Donuts]

The trick to making edutainment games is being 'sneaky' about the 'educating' part of the game. Make it fun and addicting that the player doesn't even realize they're actually learning.