When they hear the term educational games, many people immediately imagine games full of memorization, quizzes, or materials lesson. It's not surprising that educational games are often considered less interesting than games in general. In fact, games have great potential as a new, more enjoyable learning medium. In this article, we will discuss some of the mistakes that often occur in educational game design and how to make educational games that are still fun without sacrificing the learning objectives. In this article, I will focus more on board game design, but most of the principles discussed here can also be applied to digital games. Sans',sans-serif;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Mistakes that often occur when creating educational games
The main goal of making educational games is usually to help players understand or experience a concept in a more enjoyable way. However, due to limited game design references, or lack of feedback from early stage testers, the educational games created often fall into the trivia category. You may ask what's wrong with trivia? The main problem with trivia is that players must already know the answers to the questions before they start playing, so the learning process is not done in the game, but before the game. In this situation, the game only becomes a testing process after learning is complete. So it's only natural that games that are trivia or question and answer are not very interesting for students to play.
In addition, sometimes an educational game is crammed full of material so that there are a lot of things to do. learned by the player before the game can begin. This often happens when the material to be conveyed is complex material. If the game is played by someone who doesn't understand the topic at all, the process of learning how to play can be very intimidating. If the time it takes you to explain how to play your game has exceeded thirty minutes, then you need to rethink the scope of material in your game. style="line-height:1.38;text-align: justify;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">It is not uncommon for educational games, the material or knowledge to be conveyed, to be inconsistent with the mechanics or theme of how to play the game. Some examples of 'unconnected' education include; teach how to clean the environment using a game similar to monopoly, or teach about endangered animals using quartet cards. Usually designers will embed flavor text on cards or boards in the hope that players will read and understand the message they want to convey. This method can help convey knowledge, but usually will not be impressive and can sometimes be completely ignored by players when playing.
How to Make Fun Educational Games?
I often say in the classes I give, if you are making an educational game, the main focus should not be the material involved. conveyed first, but rather how to make the game fun to play. If educational games are not fun to play, then the material contained in them will be much more difficult to convey to players. If the goal is to convey as much material as possible, other media may be more effective in doing this, for example through articles, books or videos.
The difference between games and other multimedia mediums is interaction. Good games provide room for players to experiment, make mistakes and learn from those mistakes through defeat. When we teach players how to play, focus on how to play first without requiring players to memorize too many things. It is not uncommon for players not to understand the material they want to convey in one play. But if the game feels fun to them, playing it a second or third time won't be a problem for them until they finally understand it well. If the material you want to convey is quite complex, don't hesitate to break the game into several stages or even several game titles to make it easier to consume.
One example that I often use is in a game I once made, Stockastic: Stock trading games. In this game, we don't need to teach when is the right time to buy or sell a share, but we explain to players what the information on the company board means in the game. Players will make mistakes, buying when the company's performance is not good, or selling when the company is performing well and continues to produce dividends. As a result of these mistakes, players may lose, and it is that defeat that will remain as a lesson when they realize what they should have done.
No matter how well an educational game is designed, it will not be perfect without a thorough debriefing process. well at the end of the game. Debrief is a conversation process between the facilitator and the players, not a lecture or seminar. This is often misunderstood by facilitators. In the debrief process, the facilitator gives players the opportunity to share what they got from the game session. This stage is important to measure how successful the new game session was. At this stage, if the game is designed well, the facilitator will have many questions to ask the players for example "Why are you using strategy X?" or “What do you think made you lose/win?”. Questions like that will show a deeper level of player understanding than the question "What did you get from the playing session earlier?" justify;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">What are the signs that our educational games are fun? An important indicator of the success of an educational game is when the player who tries it gets a good “aha” moment in it. middle or end of the game. In addition, if there is a discussion between players regarding strategies, decisions or events in the game session after the session ends, then your game is already quite interesting. When a player says “Oh, I already know how to win this game, let's play again!” that's the best appreciation for an educational game. When players enjoy a game, they won't mind repeating the experience many times. This repetition is often an important factor in the learning process through educational games. There is no formula that can guarantee that an educational game will be immediately successful. Each topic, target player, and learning objective has different challenges. However, if there is one thing you must remember, a good educational game not only teaches something, but also makes players want to play again. If you have any interesting experiences, challenges, or questions about educational game design, I'd love to hear about them. I will always be interested in discussing game design, whether for educational games or just entertainment.
