I am a passionate believer in the educational potential of games. You can find my views on games written in detail on this blog. To summarize briefly here:
Games are learning tools, whether or not they are educational in focus. The only question is what are games educating players about? The answer is for the most part a series of rules and concept about an arbitrary, fantastical world imagined by the game designers. Why can't a game be based in real world phenomena, rather than fictional ones? Instead of arbitrary relationships between magic types, why not base relationships on quark properties, material properties, or ecological relationships? Imagine Pokemon with categories like "parasitic castrator," "large herbivore," "fruitivore," "detritivore," etc., and relationships built off of these real categories.
To me, the trick to what I call a truly educational games is one in which the learning concepts are inherently embedded into the rules of the games. So as players learn the rules and strategy of a games, they naturally develop an understanding for and an intuition about real-world phenomena. There is absolutely no reason I have found why such a game couldn't exist and be as successful as any other commercially successful game.
Games I have designed
The Game of Science (2011) - A strategy card game about resource management. Build up a science lab that can conduct more research and make more discoveries than your opponents!Invasive Algal species (2012) - A card game about the dynamics of invasive species. This game was never officially released, but contact me if you want a copy.
The Fluid Ether (2013) - An educational fluid mechanics simulation game, with a drag and drop level editor. This won the best educational game award at GLS 2013.
The Gravity Ether (2013) - An educational simulation game about gravity, with a drag and drop level editor. This game was a finalist for best educational game at GLS 2014.
I was the learning and play designer for both of theses game, developed by Iridescent with Robot Super Brain. Unfortunately, there was only initial but not continual funding for the project, and we could not update the game as operating systems evolved. In 2015, the games failed to function properly on most platforms for which they were available, and were taken off the market.
Peb the Pebble - An upcoming educational physics text adventure game!
Games I love
Go: I have been playing this game on and off since 2004. I'm currently in the 7 kyu ranking, it's a lifelong aspiration to reach the 1 dan level.Trick-taking card games: euchre, spades and hearts most prominently. I've wrapped my head around more spades strategy than is probably healthy.
Settler's of Catan: Simply a classic. I now love hexagonal board grids.
Osmos: My goto time-waster on the iPhone. Even after countless hours of play, the gameplay is still strangely captivating and soothing.
Rhythm games: I'm a big fan of anything in the DDR series, up in the 8-9 foot difficulty settings. I'm also a fan of Elite Beat Agents, and it's newest iteration, Osu Stream! Jukebeat is also a regular favorite.
The Metroid Prime series is my favorite game series, though anything in the Metroid vein is great.
The Zelda Series: a special shout-out to the Adventure of Link, which I don't think gets enough credit.
The Megaman series, in particular 2 and 3.
Devil May Cry 3: Looking stylish was never so much fun.
Civilization III.
The Final Fantasy series, in particular 7 and 1.
Warcraft 1-3
