The Top 5 Platforms for Creating Educational Video Games

Several games out there claim to be educational. Some are more or less so, depending on how one defines “educational.” The list of potential platforms for creating educational videogames is long. Many a fine game has been coded in a variant of BASIC or C, for instance. This list tends to focus on platforms for games created by university researchers and governmental organizations. In that regard, I make a value judgment by inferring that, in general, a game created by a governmental entity, a museum, or university personnel tends to be more “educational” than others.

Anyway, that’s my bias in creating this list. I’d love to hear additional ideas or justifications for inclusion regarding a platform I’ve left out.

1. Neverwinter Toolkit

Commentary: Many solid educational videogames have been developed to run on one of the iterations of Neverwinter Nights using the Aurora Neverwinter Toolkit. Many of these have been designed by teachers for their classrooms, and not released to the general public.
The game itself is completely modifiable, making it fairly easy to manipulate for desired educational outcomes. Teachers can insert dialogue, send students on quests to hunt for artifacts or other virtual ephemera, and set up pedagogical situations within the game. Although it’s a full 3-D virtual interactive environment (VIE), complete with anthropomorphically correct avatars, its runtime requirements are relatively light.

Example: Revolution continues to be the defining mod for Neverwinter Nights, showing what’s possible on the platform. Although it’s getting old (ca. 2004), Revolution continues to draw interest from academics and others.

Main Site: http://nwn.bioware.com/builders/

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2. Civilization III

Commentary: Professors and teachers have long been enamored with the idea of using games in the Civilization series for teaching history and social studies. Even better is the idea of modifying the game so that students can garner specific objectives. Nebulous concepts such as characteristics leading a people group toward dominance over their neighbors, as well as more concrete concepts such as locating settlements near water to help ensure success, are transmitted to players in the game. Modifying Civilization III is encouraged by its parent, Firaxis Games, with players urged to upload their maps and mods to the main site.

Example: The History Canada Game from Canada’s National Historical Society and The Historica Foundation shows how a country’s history can be explored through gaming.

Main Site: http://www.civ3.com/mods.cfm

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3. Flash

Commentary: When it comes to creating an educational game for a museum or government agency’s online site, Flash is the program of choice. As popular as it is, there are beaucoup sites with Flash games, some purporting to be educational. Unfortunately, many are very low on learning quotients, requiring little more than thoughtless arcade skills. On the other hand, many museums and governmental agencies have added excellent educational games to their sites that teach kids something, and promote the organizations’ goals at the same time.

Example: America’s CryptoKids is a collection of Flash games and activities from the US National Security Agency. The site shows how government and museum sites can create games in Flash to attract younger audiences online.

Main Site: http://www.adobe.com/

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4. Java

Commentary: If you’re going to make a serious game for the Web or other applications, and you don’t want to use Flash, then Java, the cross-platform language from Sun, remains an excellent choice. A major plus is the language is ideal for mobile phones and other devices, as well as for many types of computing platforms.

Example: The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives from Utah State University offers a variety of online Java applets designed to convey mathematical concepts. Originally funded with an NSF grant, the site now offers a CD version by mail.

Main Site: http://java.sun.com/

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5. XNA for the Xbox & Windows

Commentary: A relative newcomer to this group, Microsoft’s XNA is designed to create games for Windows and the Xbox. In a huge usage boost late last year, Microsoft released XNA free to universities and college students. According to their promotional department, over 300 universities worldwide have adopted XNA as a platform for teaching programming skills. Although it has only been freely available for a few months, look for this platform to become heavily used by universities to create educational games in the future.

Example: The XNA Creators’ Club has a role playing starter kit, Role-Playing Game, that allows developers to easily drop in content.

Main Site: http://www.xna.com/

Microsoft Offers DreamSpark Suite Free to Students; Includes XNA

Microsoft has jumped on the “free” bandwagon in the last few years. I remember when Dungeon Siege was opened to modders after the runaway success of Neverwinter Nights. Internet Explorer was eventually made free, as were several other products.

Now, PC World reports Microsoft is giving away tools for teaching programming to high schools and colleges. The DreamSpark program is to be unveiled today at Stanford, and will be available to 35 million students worldwide. I was not the least surprised at seeing XNA in the offering:

Software available to students through DreamSpark includes Microsoft’s development environment, Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition, and its Web and graphic design toolset, the Expression Studio. Microsoft also is making available XNA Game Studio 2.0, SQL Server Developer Edition, Windows Server Standard Edition and other software and resources through the program.

Students who learn in the programs will probably more willing to continue coding in those programs after they join the workforce. This is a shot across the bow of Linux and other freely available open source products out there students might otherwise have been willing to turn to in order to get their feet wet programming.

According to Microsoft’s MSDN developer site, students will be able to download the complete suite. This is exciting news, and I know several tech directors in Texas will be looking forward to introducing the products in their tech ed programs.

STEM Possibilities Through Programming the Nintendo DS

Josh Fishburn, a grad student over at U. Denver, graduate RA at the NSF, and adjunct at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, notes on his blog a YouTube video of a French team controlling a robot through a homebrewed software mod for the Nintendo DS.

I agree with Josh that the possibilities of programming in a “closed” system are intriguing. It reminds me of listening to Elliot Soloway over at GoKnow, in a lecture he gave at UNT, regarding the travails GoKnow had when setting out to create a truly educational game for the Nintendo GameBoy. At the time, Nintendo was not at all interested in educational games, perhaps fearing a negative backlash toward the GAMEboy brand if too many titles promoted educational objectives. My how times have changed, with the BrainAge series and other educational titles for the DS out there. Of course, Nintendo’s main handheld product is not referred to as a GAMEboy anymore, either; it’s now simply known as the DS.  

There have always been ways of programming your own game cartridges, though such efforts have largely been the purview of uber-geek programmers willing to poke around in grey market areas. Perhaps, as Josh’s video shows, closed system programming may become more prevalent. Certainly Microsoft has seen the light with their XNA programming initiative for the Xbox.

If Nintendo or another company offered a simple way to program or modify game cartridges, millions of young boys and girls the world over might well take a stronger interest in computer programming. I suspect math and engineering initiatives would get a major boost from such an initiative.

Academic Achievement Through Game Development

I’m on THE Journal’s mailing list, and I noticed a new article today on videogame development for educational purposes. I decided to check it out later and perhaps post about it. Imagine my curiosity when I saw hits coming into this blog from the very same article. It turns out authors Richard Ferdig and Jeff Boyer over at U. Florida listed this blog as a resource in the article.

Dr. Ferdig published a paper of mine in a special edition of the Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia on educational videogames, which he edited. I’m honored that the authors included this blog in their article for THE Journal.

The article, entitled, “Getting Started with Videogame Development,” continues a series the duo started last week. Previously they wrote an article addressing the question of academic achievement through developing videogames. That article, entitled “Can Game Development Impact Academic Achievement?” offers an introduction to theory underlying the notion of using videogame development as a learning tool, and examines some of the research behind the idea.

It’s important to make a distinction between playing a game, which is what most people think of when discussing educational gaming, versus leading students in designing and developing videogames. Developing a videogame is a whole other apple cart, requiring programming skills, logical thinking, and a big dollop of creativity. Fortunately, a variety of tools are available that allow an easy entry point to game development. Like so many other things, while the entry points may be easy, students must still work to produce quality products, and here is where good teaching can flesh out useful pedagogical chunks.

Today’s article continues the series, and the authors point out a variety of tools available that allow teachers to take videogame pedagogy into the classroom. These include such things as Scratch from MIT, Gamemaker from YoYo Games, and RPG Maker XP. They also note that Microsoft has released the XNA Developer Center, offering tools to individuals for creating games that play on the Xbox.

The authors conclude by throwing out a ton of highly useful links for teachers interested in game development as a pedagogical tool. Journals, sites, and software suggestions round out the list of resources. THE Journal has always been one of the highest read and highest quality practitioner periodicals out there, and this article adds to a long history of useful columns.

References
Ferdig, R. E., & Boyer, J. (2007, November 1). Getting started with videogame development. T.H.E. Journal. [Online]. Available: http://www.thejournal.com/articles/21510

Ferdig, R. E., & Boyer, J. (2007, October 25). Can game development impact academic achievement? T.H.E. Journal. [Online]. Available: http://www.thejournal.com/articles/21483