Most Science Games Suck
January 29th, 2008
games, scienceIn my quest to create fun games that actually teach some science, I’ve been researching existing science games, and I’ve definitely learned something: most science games suck. Even the ones that aren’t Trivia or Bingo or Bingo Trivia are pretty bad.
For instance, check out Acideroids, which wants to teach you the structures of the biological amino acids. The concept just doesn’t fit: take an established game, remove all the fun aspects, and slap some science terms on it. In this case, if you don’t know already know what you’re supposed to learn, good luck either learning it or having any fun. It’s more of a test which the teacher won’t accept for a grade.
As a counterexample, It’s Just a Phase (click “Play Online”, then go to the Space Center and choose the game–too bad each individual game can’t be linked to directly) is actually kinda cool: a character has taken outdoor pictures and wants to figure out what day of the month and time of the day they were taken. It’s a little tedious and not very game-y, but I fiddled with it for 10 minutes and actually learned something. The other 5 games in the collection, however, are just some clickety schtick with better graphics.
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