The Value of Education in Games

Teaching Math Through Games

The Most Amazing Math Game Ever Made

Early Educational Games• Oregon Trail

• Rocky’s Boots

• Math Blaster

• Reader Rabbit

• Where in the World is Carmen SanDiego?

Education

+

MMO

(Massive Multiplayer Online)

Critical skill of the future

Language independent

Gateway to success

R.I.P. Redwood 2005-2009

What we learned:

Successful Math EduGame Ingredients

• Skills should be practiced with multiple representations

• Those representations should be intrinsic to the game wrapper

• The game wrapper is critical to the repetition requirement

• The game wrapper is critical to the success of the educational material

Multiple Representations

• Math is better understood with multiple representations to showcase a skill

• You can take a formula like X = Y and break it down into game components and represent that in different ways

Representations are Intrinsic

• The skill you are practicing must be integrated into the game’s world to be believable

• Players care about intrinsic skill objects

• Once you get players to care about something in a game you can further that connection and go deep

Game Wrapper is Critical to Repetition

• Repetition of a skill is how a learned skill is permanently held

• To enable massive repetition there must be good rewards

• Game objects that are available everywhere in a game enable on-demand repetition for on-demand rewards

Game Wrapper is Critical to Success of Education

• Players need to care about your world to make a connection you can use to get them to engage in your educational representations

• Players get lost in your world and the puzzles become second nature to navigating the world and getting rewards players want

• Players care about story, characters and fun activities. This is the wrapper around your educational skills.

What’s Next?

B R A I N Q U A K E

Thank you!

John Romero john@romero.com