E.g., like Assassins Creed Origins’ museum mode where you could learn about Egypt. Less so things like Hearts of Iron or Crusader Kings.
There’s plenty of educational games aimed at elementary school students, but I’m curious if there are any aimed at older audiences, like the game equivalent of a nonfiction book.
While it doesn’t relate to rote educational knowledge, this makes me think about doing an expose on important life skills some competitive and singleplayer games can teach you.
Realistically, for a lot of people it won’t “teach” them the right mental state, just punish a bad one; which will then lead to a bad review that slams the game for “not letting me play my way”.
Ex: Arc Raiders, learning how society benefits from trusting behavior and the fragility of structures that punish bad actors.
Kerbal Space Program is pretty great for getting to understand a rather simplified version of orbital mechanics and aerodynamics (no n-body physics unless you install Principia and no realistic aerodynamics unless you install FAR). Just don’t buy KSP 2.
Edit: You should only use Principia with the Real Solar System mod (which is included in RP-1) because n-body physics breaks the game with KSP’s vanilla star system.
How about Hyperbolica and 4D Golf? Both are by the same developer and show you exotic geometry by putting you in there.
Hyperbolica is set in a world in hyperbolic space, where there’s more “space” in your space. Parallel lines curve away from each other and six squares can share a corner instead of four. You learn about the properties of hyperbolic space by trying various mundane tasks like hiking and serving dishes at a restaurant.
4D Golf is mini golf in four spatial dimensions. You build up an intuition for navigating the courses. There’s even a level editor!
Can confirm, 4D golf is awesome. It’s a nightmare to play and you will feel dumb when you can’t comprehend which way is forward but it’s a really cool experience to see what a 4th dimension would look like in practice.
If you like AC’s museum mode, you might be into Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1 and 2. The first game is a bit janky at times, and some of the characters are fictional, but there will be a pop-up video-esque prompt to let you know what the real history is, what they changed, and why.
Also, I haven’t gotten around to playing it yet myself, but I’ve seen people learn a lot about space missions second-hand via Kerbal Space Program.
Potentially Civilization games, there’s a lot of good quotes and interesting things in them. I recently impressed someone for knowing all the wonders of the ancient world (thanks, Civ V)
I’ve also seen a few great games about learning other languages. There’s one for Japanese that’s been on my wishlist forever.
I know everyone has different learning styles, but you actually want the learning to be rote, like a book, despite using an inherently interactive media like a game? I would consider that a flaw, and perhaps even the wrong tool for the job.
If you want a textbook there are lots of textbooks available, lots of videos on youtube that explain topics in depth and in various levels from surface level to tedious detail, what do you even need the game part for? It’s way more work to make something like a game, and what is the game part doing besides getting in the way?
The point of a game is to be fun and allow you to experiment more creatively with different ideas to see how they work in practice so you can learn a thing by doing the thing. It’s a form of hands-on learning, and that’s great.
Something like Kerbal Space Program or Factorio or Cities: Skylines will force you to learn about things like orbital mechanics, telemetry, logic, data organization, observability, and traffic optimization just to proceed meaningfully in the game without ever explicitly telling you that you’re learning. A flight simulator or a farm simulator or a racing simulator or an offroad simulator allows you to experiment with and be challenged with (sometimes in very accurate detail) real issues that the real people in those fields have to deal with and with additional learning materials (again, books, videos) you will be able to learn the same way they do. That’s about as close as games get to being the kind of learning material you seem to be looking for. Maybe you need to be explicitly told what you’re learning, I get it, but if you’re not then allowed to play around with those concepts in real-time, why are you bothering with the game? Games are really not an ideal medium for that kind of education.
If you want book-learning, use a book? Use game-learning for the kind of things gaming is good at.
In seriousness, this came about from visiting a museum and wishing that there was an easy way to revisit it through some sort of 3d simulatio.n And then thinking back on how I enjoyed Carmen Sandiego growing up.
Obviously neither is ideal for learning (focused books are a more effective tool than walking through a museum with a bunch of disparate exhibits), but I wouldn’t discredit the educational impact of the experience. Humans are very visual and tactile creatures.
That being said, I don’t spend my downtime attempting to do things as efficiently as possible. I’m not on a deadline, so there’s no reason for me to pick up a textbook and write essays for the most efficient learning possible. It’s OK to enjoy the experience.
Not games, but you’ve probably heard of the dozens or hundreds of interactive online museums. They got huge during covid proper. They have varying degrees of interactivity, but some are pretty good.
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If you want to learn about software development version control, I’ve heard good things about ohmygit.
Medal of Honor if you have a VR headset…
There are quite a few of them for learning languages. For example, Learn Japanese RPG: Hiragana Forbidden Speech is a game focused on learning to read hiragana.
While it doesn’t relate to rote educational knowledge, this makes me think about doing an expose on important life skills some competitive and singleplayer games can teach you.
Realistically, for a lot of people it won’t “teach” them the right mental state, just punish a bad one; which will then lead to a bad review that slams the game for “not letting me play my way”.
Ex: Arc Raiders, learning how society benefits from trusting behavior and the fragility of structures that punish bad actors.
Kerbal Space Program is pretty great for getting to understand a rather simplified version of orbital mechanics and aerodynamics (no n-body physics unless you install Principia and no realistic aerodynamics unless you install FAR). Just don’t buy KSP 2.
For mods, you should use CKAN to get them. The comments in this Reddit thread have some good recommendations. You can also play with the RP-1 modpack + Principia if you want an ultra realistic experience:
https://github.com/KSP-RO/RP-1/wiki/RO-&-RP-1-Express-Installation-for-1.12.5
Edit: You should only use Principia with the Real Solar System mod (which is included in RP-1) because n-body physics breaks the game with KSP’s vanilla star system.
How about Hyperbolica and 4D Golf? Both are by the same developer and show you exotic geometry by putting you in there.
Hyperbolica is set in a world in hyperbolic space, where there’s more “space” in your space. Parallel lines curve away from each other and six squares can share a corner instead of four. You learn about the properties of hyperbolic space by trying various mundane tasks like hiking and serving dishes at a restaurant.
4D Golf is mini golf in four spatial dimensions. You build up an intuition for navigating the courses. There’s even a level editor!
Can confirm, 4D golf is awesome. It’s a nightmare to play and you will feel dumb when you can’t comprehend which way is forward but it’s a really cool experience to see what a 4th dimension would look like in practice.
If you like AC’s museum mode, you might be into Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1 and 2. The first game is a bit janky at times, and some of the characters are fictional, but there will be a pop-up video-esque prompt to let you know what the real history is, what they changed, and why.
Also, I haven’t gotten around to playing it yet myself, but I’ve seen people learn a lot about space missions second-hand via Kerbal Space Program.
Potentially Civilization games, there’s a lot of good quotes and interesting things in them. I recently impressed someone for knowing all the wonders of the ancient world (thanks, Civ V)
I’ve also seen a few great games about learning other languages. There’s one for Japanese that’s been on my wishlist forever.
Civ taught me that Gandhi was one of the world’s most bloodthirsty warmongers
Nothing like those you asking for, but interesting nonetheless: Zachlikes, Factorio and Minecraft (incorporating redstone).
I know everyone has different learning styles, but you actually want the learning to be rote, like a book, despite using an inherently interactive media like a game? I would consider that a flaw, and perhaps even the wrong tool for the job.
If you want a textbook there are lots of textbooks available, lots of videos on youtube that explain topics in depth and in various levels from surface level to tedious detail, what do you even need the game part for? It’s way more work to make something like a game, and what is the game part doing besides getting in the way?
The point of a game is to be fun and allow you to experiment more creatively with different ideas to see how they work in practice so you can learn a thing by doing the thing. It’s a form of hands-on learning, and that’s great.
Something like Kerbal Space Program or Factorio or Cities: Skylines will force you to learn about things like orbital mechanics, telemetry, logic, data organization, observability, and traffic optimization just to proceed meaningfully in the game without ever explicitly telling you that you’re learning. A flight simulator or a farm simulator or a racing simulator or an offroad simulator allows you to experiment with and be challenged with (sometimes in very accurate detail) real issues that the real people in those fields have to deal with and with additional learning materials (again, books, videos) you will be able to learn the same way they do. That’s about as close as games get to being the kind of learning material you seem to be looking for. Maybe you need to be explicitly told what you’re learning, I get it, but if you’re not then allowed to play around with those concepts in real-time, why are you bothering with the game? Games are really not an ideal medium for that kind of education.
If you want book-learning, use a book? Use game-learning for the kind of things gaming is good at.
well, games are more fun than books 👍
Oh gee, I hadn’t heard of books before.
In seriousness, this came about from visiting a museum and wishing that there was an easy way to revisit it through some sort of 3d simulatio.n And then thinking back on how I enjoyed Carmen Sandiego growing up.
Obviously neither is ideal for learning (focused books are a more effective tool than walking through a museum with a bunch of disparate exhibits), but I wouldn’t discredit the educational impact of the experience. Humans are very visual and tactile creatures.
That being said, I don’t spend my downtime attempting to do things as efficiently as possible. I’m not on a deadline, so there’s no reason for me to pick up a textbook and write essays for the most efficient learning possible. It’s OK to enjoy the experience.
Not games, but you’ve probably heard of the dozens or hundreds of interactive online museums. They got huge during covid proper. They have varying degrees of interactivity, but some are pretty good.
Here is a random site I found with a list.
Proceeds to say there’s only one way to learn.
That’s not what I was saying at all, I was saying that different styles are better suited by certain types of media.