Gameology: Commentary and Resources for the Game Studies Community

While video games are more often seen as leisure entertainment than educational tools, many games directly illustrate that games can both teach and be fun at the same time. Games like the award winning Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? have been teaching children (and adults) history and geography, problem solving and critical thinking skills, since the 1980s.

There are several fun and interesting edutainment science video games online, but none have struck it big for science like The Oregon Trail and Carmen Sandiego? did for history and geography. Today we’re addressing games that directly teach science. We’ve decided to focus on computer games, because computers are more often available at schools than PlayStation2s, but we have a handout with a list of games and what they teach for various systems. This handout will also be available on the conference website. In focusing on computer games, some games can be used for multiple areas, while others are directed at one area or another.

The slides in this presentation cover multiple games that teach either specific scientific data or scientific concepts. Many games aren’t directly created to teach still teach scientic concepts. Games like Super Mario Sunshine, Pikmin, Metroid Fusion, Beyond Good and Evil, Resident Evil, and others all teach basic scientific concepts, along with most games that use evolutionary monsters (where the monsters slowly become stronger versions of the earlier monsters – SMB, Maximo, MMORPGs), creatures indigenous to their regions (Legend of Zelda, MMORPGs, almost all games), and more. Overall, the best games for education are the games that both teach abstract skills like critical thinking, accurate real world data, and games that are fun to play so that kids will play them. We’ve presented some of the best games we’ve found and we encourage you to email us with any games that you find so we can keep our online list updated and useful as we encourage kids in science.

Please view the slideshow over the subsequent pages.