"Why do all educational games suck?" and Other Nonsense

How can I do this instead of homework?
Image credit of Flcikr User jimsheaffer

"Why do all educational games suck?"

It's a question I have both heard and asked multiple times. So I have to admit that when I began studying educational games, game design, and game mechanics, I was secretly wondering if it was a doomed endeavor. Naively, I thought to myself that if several decades of programmers and game designers had been trying this for so long, I would have nothing new to bring to the table. I didn't know how I expected to create something that would be any different from the educational games for which I had turned up my nose most of my memorable life.

To be clear, I do have a tendency towards hyperbole and exaggeration. All educational games do not suck. Please forgive the sensationalism in my title, it was intended to make a point.  I don't want to discuss this question literally, but instead get at what people are really asking and the emotion behind it - Why do so many people continue to have so many bad experiences with educational games?

While it is true that I have in front of me at any given time, several examples of good educational games. Even in my youth, I played hours and hours of Treasure Mountain, Reader Rabbit, and one particular Little Critter (tm) reading game (forgot the name), and I have very fond memories of those experiences.  As an adult, I have loved several educational video games as well. However, after reviewing hundreds of educational games with the simultaneously more and less forgiving eyes of a designer, I have to admit that I'm still asking. Why are so many educational games terrible?

To put what I mean in perspective, I don't count as a hardcore gamer by any stretch of the imagination, but I once sunk 40 hours into World of Warcraft in a single weekend. Video games are emotionally addicting (there, I said it). They place the player in an ongoing loop (called flow) of challenge and success that feeds his or her desire to progress, achieve goals, and receive rewards. In theory, this is what it seems like educational games should also be striving for - to catch learners in a loop of challenge and reward that helps them to progress, pushes them to their limits, and rewards them for 'well-played' outcomes.

So - reverting back to my original, hyperbolic and sweeping generalization - why do all educational games suck when compared to other video games?

The first, and most obvious, answer for me is money - but that's not the reason. Not only is this not where I would like to go with this discussion, it also is no excuse. As the non-hardcore gamer that I am, I have really come to embrace indie video game titles - passion projects built on low budgets, and sometimes by only a couple of ambitious developers. That must be it then, right? The money, along with differences in skills between software developers of both genres result in the differences in quality. Right? Wrong. I have met some very talented developers and game designers, and on multiple occasions they have expressed the desire to be involved in projects that are more socially responsible, but there are no projects to be found.  Money, developer skill, and other reasons such as the tendency for educational games to be geared towards children (and therefore less appealing to adults) are great reasons why any one educational game might be worse than any one non-educational game, but these fail to answer our central question. What I really wanted to know is why educational video games, in general, seemed so much worse than recreational video games, in general.

I think it might just be a matter of semantics.

Let's imagine that I present you with an apple slice, and tell you that it is a piece of candy. Even if you had no experience with apples and took me at my word, chances are you know what candy is, and would think that my apple slice was not near as tasty as most of the candy that you had eaten previously. However, if I told you it was fruit, you would think it was pretty darn tasty (assuming you don't hate apples).

For some reason, the vast majority of "educational games" aren't games at all, but that's what we keep calling them.

Let's imagine an educational app that is designed to teach PreK children colors, and does so by having a cute talking monkey present them with a few items, and ask that they click (or touch) and drag items of a certain color and give them back. That sounds like an educational game, right? Well if we strip away the monkey, what do we have? What is this interaction at it's core? It is a question, and a correct answer; in other words it is a computerized worksheet or a test.

Hundreds of touchscreen apps, websites, and desktop softwares have been sold as educational games, when in reality they are merely worksheets and drill-and-kill problems with fancier art, music, and reward systems than you would find on your average math homework. While I must admit that I wish my math homework had involved more talking monkeys, the fact remains that if you take a multiple choice test and have a talking monkey ask the questions, it is still a test - not a game.

Games involve interactions defined by rules, goals, rewards, and  - most importantly - allowing the player to use any means (within the rules) to accomplish his or her goal. If you are playing Zelda (tm) and you need to get past a guard, the game doesn't care whether you stand and fight, throw a boomerang at him, or run and hope he can't catch you.

Games create an environment and define the parameters of success,
but the rest is up to you.  Image by Lanea Zimmerman

In a test, you are presented with a hypothetical situation and must provide the best answer; but in a game, your goal is clearly defined, and you have to come up with and execute a strategy to achieve it. That's what makes games so difficult to build in the first place, and why I think educational games come off more like tests, and less like games.

Maybe if educational games were more like games we would like them more. Or, conversely we could just start calling them tests, then we would think they were really fun tests, but as it is the semantics doom the majority of educational games (let me stress once again that this is not the case of all educational games). If they were called something other than games, we would hold them to a different standard, but since they are trying to be games, but lack the fundamental mechanics that make games what they are, educational games come across as really lame games.

That's what I think. What do you think? Leave a comment with your thoughts!

Update: "Other Nonsense" 

As this post is the result of the beginning stages of my "research" phase (which mostly boils down to reading a lot of academia and playing a lot of games) in my Game Design Journey, I wanted to include one last thought I had while sifting through list after list of "Top 10 Educational Apps" and "Best Games for Learning [anything]," etc. 

While in the above post I remarked at how I thought it strange that drill-and-kill educational apps claim to be games, I also wanted to remark that I think it equally - if not more - strange that people continually try to assign educational value to non-educational games. For example, I've read several internet threads similar to this one, claiming that HALO (or substitute any mainstream game that is clearly designed for recreation) is educational because it teaches kids about physics, teamwork, and problem-solving. I just want to go on record and say that this I think this practice is ridiculous. My metric for whether or not a game can be considered educational is whether or not the player learns something that the game designers intended, more than they would have if they had not played the game. I think you can learn just as much about problem-solving getting your foot caught in a fence as you can playing HALO - so it doesn't count. 

I think this really is our desire, in general, to further justify the amount of time we spend with video games, and the fact that we feel a need to do so makes me sad (I'm not saying I haven't done it). 

I like to imagine a day when the educational video games are all games, and the recreational video games aren't being sold as educational if they aren't.