From a discussion about bad games [link]… And sadly, this is typically true. However, edutainment's a really interesting genre or goal to have when developing a game. But, they could be really interesting, so an open question for discussion:

If you were to make an edutainment game, how would you do it?

• What would you want to teach?
• What gameplay mechanics could make it successful?
• Would you want to make a good game that's surprisingly educational or an educational game that's surprisingly good?

Also,

Popeye's English and Donky Kong Jr. Math are some interesting examples where already established game engines were repurposed for education. I'm curious as to what games would have come out if this trend had proven to be succsessful…

I think a game about coding could be both educational and fun.

Typing of the Dead for CSS would be fantastic

I'm sure a "hacker" game that teaches principles of cryptography could be cool... maybe.

But let's be honest, once Oregon Trail was released, everyone should've just went home.

Sly Dog Studios has a free edutainment game on his site.

Having 2 kids under 5, I have often thought about doing this.

Kind of a fun coincidence that you are asking about this since I was just thinking about this the other day. I was actually just casually contemplating possible projects and the idea popped into my head.

As a child we used to have two games called "Math Dodger!" and "Spell Dodger!" on Macintoshes at school. Probably not as much fun or as popular as the Oregon Trail but still pretty good within the context of hey-we-get-to-play-a-video-game-at-school. Actually ended up with a copy of each at home too (I actually have the disks but they're 800K so you need a real vintage Mac to read them) and I know I played it some outside of school so it must have been decent at some level, right?

http://macintoshgarden.org/games/...

I guess the game was fun because it really kind of separated the learning part from the game part. It was kind of a simple climb-the-ladders platformer on a single screen where you were this little blue droplet guy and had to run around avoiding enemies and collecting these coin or token things. Each time you reached one you had to answer a math problem or spell a word (depending on the game version) and things obviously got harder based on age settings and simple progression. If you failed the question I think you lost a life same as getting hit by an enemy. There was also a bonus stage where the tokens rained from the ceiling but I don't think this part had anything educational.

If you removed the education component from the main game then it would be a rather simple (maybe mediocre) little game but it had lots of level variations and I think adding in the quick problem solving actually gave it another dimension. The losing a life for getting the question wrong really helped to kind of gamify the education part and maybe drew you in some more. I must have enjoyed it somewhat since here I am writing several paragraphs about it.

I actually wrote about 90% of a engine clone running on MS-DOS back when I was in college. My mother was working as a teacher at the time and wanted some educational games that would run on the ancient PCs they had in the back of their classroom. Never actually completed anything though.

Anyway, I was recently thinking about this when thinking about homebrew and thought that it could probably be adapted to the NES. Certainly the game mechanics and the board layouts are probably very reasonable within the capabilities of the NES. Trying to enter solutions for simple Math problems (all the way from simple counting up to Algebra I, as I recall) would probably work okay with an on-screen keypad type interface but certainly not as good as the keyboard on my old Macintosh. Spelling could work too but on-screen keyboard would be even more clunky than the keypad.

I kind of dismissed the thought after thinking about how the problem solving screen wouldn't adapt as well without the keyboard. After talking through it though doesn't seem as bad. Maybe I should take up this project?   I think the games had just a big cache of pre-built screens but I was wondering if maybe I could generate the different screens procedurally. I'm guessing there wouldn't be a whole lot of interest in this though...

Cheers!

I hear that the Oregon Trail or something like it, would be great.

I liked a lot of educational games growing up.

The Putt Putt series were fun kid friendly point and click adventures and some of the Learning Companies games were really good. Operation Netptune and the one where you explore ruins comes to mind (Challenege of the Ancient Empires). I think the goal to make a good educational game, is to design a decent game first and work in educational aspects. Usually it's the other way around.

Not sure what I'd make, probably something like a how it's made or how stuff works kinda game that would give kids a foundation on all kinds of topics.

Something about electricity where you could make different types of circuits.

Something "electronics" based where you use transistors and things like that with different loads, and structured wiring like in buildings.

Anybody remember math circus or was that a Canadian thing? Loved that shit as a kid

When I was a kid, there was more than one edu game where you played a detective, tracking some criminal across Europe / a country, and had to answer various trivia about the places to proceed. They were pretty fun, Geosmart was one.

The original Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? is wonderful too. I'm not a big fan of the later instalement (Where in Time, When in the World Deluxe, etc.) because the stuff they added somewhat bloated the game IMHO - the original is simple and easy to play, and has a perfect balance between leisure fun and educational info.

 

Definitely this.

A basic circuit design "game" could be really neat.

Along somewhat similar lines, there used to be a rudimentary programming game on Kongregate where you issued a series of instructions to a robot to navigate a puzzle That kind of thing could definitely work.

Warren Robinett, after he did Adventure, went on to do something like that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob.... What company did he go on to found after leaving Atari? The Learning Company of course  .

My first software gig ever was an internship as a tester at an edutainment game company. This was in 2001 i think, and since the company is no more, i think it's safe to say by now that the games they made weren't very well made in several regards: Graphics, design, overall enjoyment, didactic methods.. its one merit was it was being tied to a televised kids' show, so some kids might've gotten something out of the "deep lore", and parents would recognize the brands and characters in the multimedia bin in super markets.

B.F. Skinner outlined reward mechanics in his ideal interactive teaching devices meant to rationalize schools as early as in the 60's, but it should be noted that this is in a context where the subjects have accepted that they're in an environment, space or time frame (eg. school, homework) made for learning. Some language teaching apps are offhandedly leaning on that research, but my guess is ti's more like the designer had a "general idea". His idea of learning is also very "modern", compared to post-modern ideals. The general idea is that a teacher can't mass-tutor a large group of students with consistent result across the whole group, but a device in the hands of every pupil at least holds that potential as the device has an individual relationship and method with the student. Machine learning feeds into that, ie. the device can ideally adapt to the users' accumulation of concepts, techniques, and habits. Results can be monitored, so that help can be administered where needed. 

I think a good strategy (though not the only one) for edutainment chosen to be played in spare time is to be modest about the scope & contents it aims to teach the player, and not push it too hard. The object of the game is to have fun, but the theme and/or interactive parts will at the same time teach something.

On a tangent:
A common kindergarten boardgame here is the "snail game". Each player has a meeple. There are like 10 squares - reach the 10th square and you've won. The throw of the dice determines how many steps you get to take that turn. Extremely simple and after a certain age under-stimulating, but the little ones get excited all while learning important basic life skills: patience, taking turns, control temper when losing/restrain yourself from acting out on others, play by rules, be kind to one another, and so on. The game is short enough too match the attention span of the players.

Btw, a circuit puzzler game has actually been in my projects drawer for a long time! It's just a very long qeue of projects to finish before i get there.
Generally speaking, The theme might vary (actual electric circuits or water flowing through channels and so on) and still be able to teach the player something about the fundamental physics behind it.

You do kind of have an example of circuit design edutainment in minecraft. 

I thought there was a coding/hacking game on Steam that I was interested in.  It's been years so I may be incorrect but I know for sure I don't recall what the game was called.

I came to think of another thing... many edutainment games are probably of low quality / fun value, because their production budget was (at least historically) equally low. With expenses such as cartridge/cd-rom/dvd-rom and distribution, licenses and what not, + a lower retail price than other games to attract parents, what you have left for design, assets, development and testing ought to be baseline.

Someone please steal my idea:

I would make a game that taught proper online etiquette and how to spell and look up often misspelled words. "Your" vs. "You're", "Breathe" vs. "Breath"... stuff like that.

HOWEVER, this will only garner attention if it was in the form of something like strip poker. Hell, it worked for Billy Madison.  

I'm thinking I'd make a simple math game starring a popular arcade character that involved climbing ropes and matching numbers to equations.

I would make D.A.R.E. game. Plenty of nostalgia and opportunity for farce. It probably wouldn't be too educational though. Just like the original program!

Hah!  Sold. Awesome idea.
 

Trauma center for broken coin op machines. You get a certain budget to find deals on broken games. If you give up and start just shotgun replacing parts instead of fixing issues, you'll have less time and money for your dream arcade. After you fix your game, you can play it!

Wasn't that the point of NARC?

Pretty tough to improve upon perfection, I guess.