Educational Games

Caster update
Just updated my log on my progress this past week. Check it out here: http://www.elecorn.com/caster3d/log.html.

I'm a little ahead which means that I may have time at the end of this milestone to add a few nice things that I put on the back log because of lack of time.

Educational Games
I've been thinking a bit about educational type video games lately (edutainment as some call it). I believe that you can pick anything that you would like to teach (reading, typing, history, problem solving, memorizing, moral issues, etc) and make a fun game with it. However, I also believe that trying to teach too many different things at once can hurt the game.

The design for an educational game should start with what you want to teach. The game should then be built around it. Some people argue this and say it is better to make a good game and "sneak" little bits of learning into it. I say that most games teach things just by their nature and there is no need to "sneak" learning into a well crafted game to this end. Just sticking little bits of learning into a completed game is not a focused effort for teaching that subject and will not be as effective as it otherwise could be. This is not to say that the game needs to focus entirely on the subject to be taught, just that teaching that subject needs to stay as a core motive to the game design.

On a slightly different all games teach something. Some of this teaching makes the game more worthwhile than just in its entertainment value. Some of this teaching is demoralizing. Also, all games and media take time. How do you want to spend your time?