Why are all Edutainment Games complete bullshit?

[CupheadtheCritic]

I've played a lot of edutainment video games for a review, and every last one of them sucked ass. This begs the question: Why? Are they made just to give parents buyer's remorse in heaven after their children shot them for buying a shitty game? Did LJN cause it all? Were they made to make kids suicidal at the age of 4? I have so many dark questions about them that I think Houghton Mifflin Harcourt must shut down.

I forgot to acknowledge the Japan-Only Thomas game. It was good, but I just CAN'T GET MY HANDS ON THE ROM FILE!

 

[FAST6191]

A question often asked.

The basic thing would be to note that even a basic game has a lot involved with it to make it good. A favourite link at times like this
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iNSQIyNpVGHeak6isbP6AHdHD50gs8MNXF1GCf08efg/pub
That is just covering how cameras work and some of the design philosophies that have to be made to account for them. Or if you prefer does essentially every indie game made with the intention of doing well appear to cater to that? No and it is decades on from those lessons being learned.
Most edutainment is then going to be fixed budget, or indeed only fish in unknown pond; I saw a thing some years ago when I think it was Barnes and Noble (big American book seller retail chain) thought they would try their hand at the android tablet/ereader market, it failing is nothing surprising but there was a company that made a bunch of games for it knowing they were effectively the only game in town and something just about functional in turn got the suckers that bought the baseline unit to part with some cash in the hope of extracting some value/doing the sunk cost thing for way less effort than competing on mainline android and IOS.

Play is also fun but education and play is something not really smooshed together that well, not that education is much better (it is still owing far too much to 1800s Prussian military officer schools, with the added bonus of not being there to encourage thought and enjoyment of a subject).
I am not sure there is an obvious answer either; there are many things I like and know, games among them, but trying to teach those is not something I can do (granted I can't even crack teaching ROM hacking in video form, neither can everybody else it seems, so gamifying is probably harder still).
There is a possibility for something; that kid that learned first aid from America's Army some years ago now, several have learned various flavours of cryptography from all manner of games, languages too, and more abstractly games themselves are complex systems that many have the thousands of hours in to become experts, just in the game rather than something someone might classically pay for (it also being noted the first to monetise gamers on that front is going to be making all the money). This also says nothing of learned because of games; many people learned to make games because of Flash, set up servers because of Minecraft, and both of those for Roblox (in addition to running child labour focused businesses).

 

[mrgone]

i think edutainment is developed by ppl who want to gamify education, so basically non-game-designers, so the games will suck from a gamer-viewpoint.

 

[KleinesSinchen]

i think edutainment is developed by ppl who want to gamify education, so basically non-game-designers, so the games will suck from a gamer-viewpoint.

That is a pretty concise reply. I agree on this

Learning isn't easy and the opposite of fun – depending on the topic.
Commercial edutainment looks like cash grab to me, promising getting rid of boredom. Gamification or whatever. It doesn't seem to work.

I do have to say that I recently enjoyed going through Fritz & Fertig 1 and would recommend it for teaching a child the basics of chess (I don't stand a chance against the Fritz engine though – even the older, and probably butchered version integrated in this learning software). Sometimes it is possible to make acceptable edutainment.

 

[Veho]

For every topic there is a fitting episode of SMBC so here you go (spoilered because HUEG):

Spoiler: HUEG

On top of the fact that making a game fun and enjoyable is pretty damn hard, there's another thing:

Games don't really contain a lot of new information, or require you to learn many new skills in order to play or progress. Not really. They have some lore (most of which is not essential), some rules, some rule-of-thumb maths involved, but the more crap you make essential to the game the fewer people will play it. A game can have a bunch of hidden mechanics in the background but make the front end any more difficult than "use [thing] on [object]; repeat" and you lose 99% your audience. Pokemon is an example of a game with a whole bunch of statistics and probability and calculations in the background SERIOUSLY WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS but 99.9% of the players will never ever know this, they'll be like "Pokeball go shakey shake".

Someone is bound to come up with examples of games that require you to memorize an encyclopedia or some other inane bullshit before you can even begin playing, so I will preemptively counter with the fact some people enjoy gingering; there's all sorts out there but the majority will not go near it.

That is not to say you can't implement some educational elements into a game, you just can't have very many of them.
And it's not impossible to learn things through video games, but, again, it's a very tiny fraction of what that subject entails.

So an average edutainment game that can engage kids enough to actually play through it and retain some knowledge, can fit about one single lesson's worth of info on any given subject.
So multiply that by the number of lessons, and the number of subjects, and that's how many high quality games you need to have if you want to have one school year's worth of edutainment.

And that's why educational games that by default and by design try to teach too much are invariably crap.

 

[Marc_LFD]

Education games were a very bad idea. First of all, because they were not fun (or completely forgot about that aspect), and secondly, people play games for fun not to get taught a lesson in whatever it was trying.

OutRun 2006 has a mode where the player plays math while playing the stage and that's an "edutainment" mode/game that's actually fun.

Games are meant to escape from reality and into a fantasy world where anything is possible... Well, that may become a thing of the past since games these days are all about realism. Sigh.

 

[CupheadtheCritic]

Education games were a very bad idea.

The Japan only Thomas game was the only good one rly.

Post automatically merged: Jan 18, 2023

A question often asked.

I swear, your text goes on and on and on. Do you expect me to read all this shit?

 

[Chary]

I recall playing some PC "edutainment" games as a kid. Cross Country USA, JumpStart, and those like, Learning Company games that made licensed games based on Arthur and other 90s shows. Maybe it's just nostalgia, but I remember liking a lot of those. Of course, I was also like, 4 years old, so who knows, kids don't really have a sense of quality

 

[CupheadtheCritic]

I recall playing some PC "edutainment" games as a kid. Cross Country USA, JumpStart, and those like, Learning Company games that made licensed games based on Arthur and other 90s shows. Maybe it's just nostalgia, but I remember liking a lot of those. Of course, I was also like, 4 years old, so who knows, kids don't really have a sense of quality

Oregon Trail was too easy for me. I beat it with three people remaining.

 

[xaxa]

I swear, your text goes on and on and on. Do you expect me to read all this shit?

This is a forum and you asked a question. Are you here to vent or have a discussion? I'd reconsider reading what FAST6191 wrote if your question wasn't rhetorical. At the very least be grateful.

 

[CupheadtheCritic]

This is a forum and you asked a question.

I made this account to review games.

 

[Marc_LFD]

I remember playing an edutainment game on the web about crossing the road. I know it was more or less a clone of the frogger, but it was fun.