Lunchtime Discussion: Education

I know, I know, education isn’t something we want to talk about. It can be boring and dull, and I know a lot of TSA’s readers have just finished their exams. However this is something interesting that was brought up at one of the panels I attended at last week’s Develop Conference.

In a brilliant panel featuring Ben Hebb, the Art Director at Zoe Mode, John Nash, the Studio Design Director at Blitz, and Neil Thompson, the Studio Art Director at Bizarre Creations, discussion broke out about social and mobile gaming, games as education and even a few bits about the future direction of the gaming industry as a whole. I’ll be dipping back into my notes for this panel over the course of this week, so today it’s the turn of games as a form of education.

The label that comes up when you talk about this topic is one that I can remember from school, edutainment. I have memories of playing games on an ancient BBC that tied into the vaguely educational shows that teachers taped and played back to the class once or twice a week. There was also some terrible PC game I was allowed to play if I did well at my after school handwriting class; neither the class or the game did anything to help me. In fact I think one part of the game had you sorting recycling, which is just kinda weird.

Edutainment basically killed off games as education, something the whole Develop panel agreed on. The concept of teaching with games certainly has potential, but the old edutainment games have pretty much ruined any chances of the gaming industry making a wealth of these games of their own volition.

However John Nash was very keen to say that the games can be made, it just needs to be in conjunction with government or academic institutions. If these groups can provide the backing for the games then the games can and should be made. In fact he revealed that Blitz has talked to several of these group about the possibility of a joint venture and I’ll be very keenly watching to see if anything huge comes out.

Now there was an interesting twist to this discussion, and one that makes a lot of sense in the wake of edutainment. Both Hebb and Thompson seemed fairly convinced that games that educate directly just don’t work, and the best way to educate is with games like Assassins Creed and Red Dead Redemption. If you can build a very realistic world set in an interesting period of history the consensus seemed to be that people will go and educate themselves.

Coming at it from that angle is something I’d never considered, building a world that engages people so much that they want to educate themselves about it is an interesting way of coming at the issue. I suppose you can only really teach history this way, although perhaps physics may be possible if you include some esoteric effects in the game. An interesting concept that came up was perhaps to include in game notes, so that you don’t even have to leave the game to find out about whatever it is that interests you.

So what do you think? Can games be educational or are they just there for fun? Is building education into games historical games the way to go, or can a purely educational game work? Should educational games be relegated to history?