toward the medium of games as an educational tool. I'm in the field, and many people who are taken seriously talk about games used properly as a tool by educators and caregivers. This is a relatively new medium that needs to be researched and experimented with so we can establish how it is most effective for different subjects and in different situations.
Here are some of the challenges in this field as I see it:
- Most educational games are made in silos. Games made by publishers are mostly reused engines or game designs with an educational goal slapped on (many edu games for young kids on Nintendo DS are like this). Games made by researchers and educators are generally some sort of mix of whatever subject they're interested in and whatever game that is big at the time. The truly effective and fun educational games are often made when good game designers, researchers and educators collaborate from the beginning of a project.
- Due to the fact that people are working in silos, researchers working the edu game field are often working to figure out game design issues that the non-edu game field covered long ago.
- My work is in the preschool - grade school edu game field and I work with top publishers and content owners. Most of the people I work with, especially decision makers and content people, do not and have not ever played games. I think this will even out over time as younger people who are more likely to play games come into the field, but it will take decades.
- Games are just a tool. We need the pedagogy established to help teachers understand how to use the medium. Until we have this available to all educators, game use will be all over the place.
- We need an established body of good examples in different subject areas and for different ages for future game makers to refer to when making edu games. This will take decades to create in my opinion.
To reiterate my main point, games are just a tool like books, video, hands on activities, etc. They are only as good as the educator or caregiver who is working with the student makes them.