Education through gaming.

[Usha Starchild]

Yeah you heard me right.

In some of the game concepts I have worked on in the past I have always wanted to work in education as part of the game. On a project like this and wikipedia available now this would be easy and fun to do. It would also be great for publicity of a final product and kids/adults could use it as an excuse for playing.

While questing you could be taught real things about the real world in a fun sort of way. Trade skills could be loosely based off their real life counterpart. If you were a engineer for example in the game you would be presented with some real engineering information and problems while leveling your skills and NPCS would teach you new things. It could be made fun.

If you played a bard for example, we could have a music system in the game and trainers would slowly teach you the rules of making music. The game would have an ingame music system where you could produce your own music for others to hear. Perhaps a built in monthly symphony where players could show off their maserpieces in game.

In Alchemy, you could be presented with real like periodic table problems/quizes and herbalism could be based off real life plants. You see a birch treee in game and you can get birch bark. Trainers could teach you about different trees and you would have mini quizes to gain apprenticeship etc.

These above ideas are just some really crappy examples I came up off the top of my head while writing non stop. The sky is the limt with this, economics, astronomy, most trades, simple electronics, architechual design, languages etc could all be presented very easily.

Please feel free to add ideas in this thread. We could have a lot of fun with this.

[Usha Starchild]

I've spent the last several years in China because I do foreign trade now. I now speak chinese pretty well. I think I could easily teach people Chinese in a fun way through an MMORPG. I played Chinese WoW for awhile and actually learnt a bunch of characters though playing the game, and the game was not designed to help me learn.

[Tuco]

Would be interesting if you took one of your examples that you thought would best translate into fun gameplay and implemented it. I know as an engineer that engineering would be a lame mini-game if it resembled engineering =D

Teaching chinese could indeed be a possibility, but as you know, one of the hardest parts about Chinese is the fact that

Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.
Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.
Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.
Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.
Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.
Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.
Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.
Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.
Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī, shí shí shí shī shī.
Shì shì shì shì.

Is a paragraph. You'd have to really forgo teaching people how to speak it and instead teach them how to write/read it =D

[gremlinz273]

You should make a shadowrun game where you actually have to hack in to banks and stuff. ha ha ha.
Sorry, carry on.

[Usha Starchild]

Tuco, learning to read would be plausable in game, as for speaking you really need to be around the language to learn to do so. I know literally 100's of people here in China who can read and write VERY well but cant speak, just because they dont have anyone to practice with.

As for the above Chinese paragraph, its a chinese tongue twister presented in pinyin.

More stuff
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For example if we were to make a Shadowrun style game you could use your electronics knowledge to build flashlights as a trade skill. You would have to buy bulbs, wire, batteries and a switch. If you got into more advanced design and wanted to build a stroble light for a club in the game you would need to learn a bit about resistors and capacitors. If players use the wrong parts the bulbs will fry or stuff blows up.

Higher level drops for say radar systems would require more knowledge for the player to learn. Players could contribute together and learn together to be the first faction with radar. Radar would be a huge advantage over the opposing faction so people would race for knowledge.

Maybe going higher, we want to build a warship, we would have to require several techs our faction has learnt to complete the blue prints.

It would just take a creative way to present the information and challenges in game to make sure it stays somewhat fun. In the end when a faction finally builds its first warship they would feel super proud. It might even make the paper... haha

[Rune]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that educational software that is expressedly designed to be such has always and will always suck, and will not provide an effective vector for learning.

Do not teach to teach, teach to learn. You learned chinese characters in WoW because you had to, because it was something you were already doing, and information you needed. That's a much higher retention than some fucking rosetta stone style software.

But I think you were getting to that, anyway. A traditional MMORPG if it was built around factual basis, where you used real shit to make the other stuff, where you engaged in say real military formations during BGs would be awesome as a learning vehicle. It would take just a fraction more work and a few text files to elaborate that you are reenacting the battle of x during y , not just alterac valley.

Or in EVE say you were actually putting the molecules together to make the polymers for your space ship, and learning organic chemistry almost by second nature.

that would be cool.

[Celebrindal]

I think long term future gaming will incorporate subliminal and outright learning. Think about it. There are millions upon millions of people playing games every day. And the ages are getting younger and younger. I remember in one of my old EQ guilds, one of the guild member's sons and daughters, who were like 8, were going on raids with us.

I wouldn't evolve the game around education though, but education around the game.

[Usha Starchild]

Originally Posted by Rune

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that educational software that is expressedly designed to be such has always and will always suck, and will not provide an effective vector for learning.

Do not teach to teach, teach to learn. You learned chinese characters in WoW because you had to, because it was something you were already doing, and information you needed. That's a much higher retention than some fucking rosetta stone style software.

But I think you were getting to that, anyway. A traditional MMORPG if it was built around factual basis, where you used real shit to make the other stuff, where you engaged in say real military formations during BGs would be awesome as a learning vehicle. It would take just a fraction more work and a few text files to elaborate that you are reenacting the battle of x during y , not just alterac valley.

Or in EVE say you were actually putting the molecules together to make the polymers for your space ship, and learning organic chemistry almost by second nature.

that would be cool.

A++ Your post was pretty much what I have in my mind. I'm glad others can see what Im getting at.

Celebrindal I think long term future gaming will incorporate subliminal and outright learning. Think about it. There are millions upon millions of people playing games every day. And the ages are getting younger and younger. I remember in one of my old EQ guilds, one of the guild member's sons and daughters, who were like 8, were going on raids with us.

I wouldn't evolve the game around education though, but education around the game.

Thats exactly why I thought of this, people spend so much time in Mmorpg's if we could be learning anything at the same time it would be very worthwhile. In current MMorpgs about all that you can learn is a little about economics and supply and demand. I wish we could expand on this.

Make our future children smart though gaming.

[Faille]

Seems like the simplest implementaion would be for history, particularly with the time travel version the portal system. If people were venturing to different historical periods and the lore was authentic, then people would pick up on it sub consciously.

I learned quite a bit of history playing Civ.

[Celebrindal]

If you do history though, you would have to make sure it is very very accurate. You can not twist little facts to make it more appealing because they will take it and restate it as truth. I know I did about Richard Wagner and King Ludgwig of Bavaria from the Gabriel Knight series.

[Dinthug]

If you're going to make an educational video game, if you teach anything past the high school level, the game is probably going to have to be focused on one subject, unless the aim is just to be introductory in nature. Probably just a quick example, but teaching someone battlefield tactics probably won't do much for about 99.9999% of the people who play it and unless you are teaching something that could be used in every day life, a lot of topics are going to be the same. If you follow that road, in the end the game would probably have about as much educational value as WoW.

This is the way I look at it. If an educational video game is going to work, you're probably going to have to trick your user base into learning for it to be successful. I think the easiest subjects to put in a game are Math and English. Like others have said, I learned a lot of vocabulary just playing EQ as a kid. Whether it was intended or not, I learned a lot of vocabulary just trying to figure out what items or mob names meant. If you take that thinking and apply it to different subjects, then make learning competitive in some way, it could be an educational video game without blatantly trying to teach something specific.

Winning mind games and rewarding the person in some way in game could kinda fall under educational. Games like sudoku, chess, poker, etc. definitely make your mind sharper. People get burnt out of leveling, go play a mini game that does (a little) more for you than sitting there and watch your character kill something on auto attack while your eyes bleed.

If the game very entertaining, you could probably get away with teaching anything as long as the best characters are the smartest ones. Not really sure how you might quantify intelligence in a video game, but if you actually had to be smart to be the wizard, I know people would go through any torture to get to that top spot since I watched people play EQ.

[Skurd]

Interesting idea, I believe the easiest way to introduce this is maybe by using existing languages as in-game languages.
It would familiarize to other languages and would teach basics at the very least.
You could, say, have one teacher in each city being able to give you "lessons" about X or Y language and you'd be ale to raise your skill that way, then you could even have registrations for a "examination" to get a higher language skill, "competing" against other players (trivia style).

And of course by using existing elements where possible, that would help teaching basics of physics and biology I guess.

[Faille]

How about things like first aid based on real world first aid?

[9n1or9]

Originally Posted by Dinthug

Winning mind games and rewarding the person in some way in game could kinda fall under educational. Games like sudoku, chess, poker, etc. definitely make your mind sharper. People get burnt out of leveling, go play a mini game that does (a little) more for you than sitting there and watch your character kill something on auto attack while your eyes bleed.

Mini games could be invloved in a character's development and progression of skills. Make them fun yet relevant to the overall game.

Originally Posted by Faille

How about things like first aid based on real world first aid?

Exactly.

[Hachima]

It sounds like a fun idea. It reminds me of the Zon project, Learn Chinese through an MMO - Joystiq