Contextual studies: Bad edutainment games

for my essay I have decided to write about education in games especially after read Ian Bogost book

'Persuasive Games' which has influenced my view on games. 

the term edutainment was first used in 1983 to describe a package of software games for Oric 1 and

Spectrum Microcomputers in the UK but over time the term has been used to describe educational

entertainment like video games, these video games use game based learning approach to get children

interested in the subject through activities.

I looked at a few examples of these kind of games like:

The logical Jorney of the Zoombinis by Brøderbund software. The plot of the game is take as many

'Zoombinis' as you can save to a safe place for them to live, through our the quest the player comes

across obstacles which are mostly trial and error with different aesthetics and hardly no change in

game play mechanics to make the game immerse

The Magic School Bus series is another example of edutainment games developed and published

by Microsoft and Scholastic Press through the 90's. once again the aesthetics are more important to the

developers than the game play,as it is very simple and not very well directed for the player to

understand what they have to do.

Reader Rabbit by The Learning Company is my last example for this type of game in this form. The

Reader Rabbit series is very popular with parents as there is a game made for every specific age group.

but this can be seen as limiting a child's ability to learn by only learning them a certain amount of

skills repetitively through out the game.

Overall these games could only be putting the parents mind at ease as they aren't teaching their child

but a computer, these games don't allow children to excel at subjects they are good at but puts the child

through repetitive tasks with no reward for doing so.

sources:

Bogost, I. (2007). Persuasive games. 1st ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

EdAlive Educational Software, (2014). Edutainment Software. [online] Available at:

http://www.edalive.com/edutainment-software [Accessed 17 Apr. 2014].

LaFond, G. (2011). Why Education Needs to Get Its Game On. [online] Mashable. Available at:

http://mashable.com/2011/10/13/education-gaming/ [Accessed 18 Apr. 2014].

Logical Journey of the Zoombinis. (1996). Brøderbund Software.

LoPiccolo, P. (2004). Computer Graphics World - That's Edutainment!. [online] Cgw.com. Available

at: http://www.cgw.com/Publications/CGW/2004/Volume-27-Issue-1-Jan-2004-/Thats

Edutainment-.aspx [Accessed 17 Apr. 2014].

Piaget, J. (1999). Jean Piaget's Cognitive Development Theory. [image] Available

at: http://muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/piaget2.gif [Accessed 8 May. 2014].

Shuler.C.(2012) What Happened to the Edutainment Industry? A case study, the edutainment era:

Debunking myths and sharing lessons learned.

S3.amazonaws.com, (2014). [online] Available at:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/infographics/Educational-Video-Games-800.jpg [Accessed 17 Apr. 2014].

Reader Rabbit Kindergarten. (1997). The Learning Company.

The Magic School Bus Explores the Ocean. (1995). Music Pen, Microsoft, Scholastic Press.