One of the biggest challenges is selling the teaching capacity of a game which wasn't inherently designed as a teaching tool. While I have great faith in Mike and company's design skills, games which are primarily designed as teaching tools tend to be very obvious in their intent, and kids often shut them out when the educational aspect is primary.
This lack of fun in most educational games means that the only market for them is to the educational market, as they can't succeed on the basis of the game alone. And educational budgeting, at least in the US is both criminally low, and often abysmally administrated, so there's been little-no incentive for game designers to try and provide anything to the market other than the latest re-skinned version of Candyland or Sorry.
If you do some research on Dr. Marcia Baldanza, she's done some great work in getting quality current games implemented into educational environments. Unfortunately, It's hard to overcome the often institutional mindset that games=play, and play can't provide education.
foodgeekfish4 karma
One of the biggest challenges is selling the teaching capacity of a game which wasn't inherently designed as a teaching tool. While I have great faith in Mike and company's design skills, games which are primarily designed as teaching tools tend to be very obvious in their intent, and kids often shut them out when the educational aspect is primary.
This lack of fun in most educational games means that the only market for them is to the educational market, as they can't succeed on the basis of the game alone. And educational budgeting, at least in the US is both criminally low, and often abysmally administrated, so there's been little-no incentive for game designers to try and provide anything to the market other than the latest re-skinned version of Candyland or Sorry.
If you do some research on Dr. Marcia Baldanza, she's done some great work in getting quality current games implemented into educational environments. Unfortunately, It's hard to overcome the often institutional mindset that games=play, and play can't provide education.
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