Education Through Games? (arithmetic)

One of my favourite quotes is something along the lines: "the human body can do infinite amounts of work -- as long as it isn't what it's supposed to do..."

I'm talking specifically about the use of video-games.  Since people tend to enjoy playing them there must have a way to infuse them with educational material.  So the logic goes.  Likewise, the same logic should work for board-games, or any other type of game.

However, overtly claiming the educational nature of a game makes it less entertaining.  Requiring someone to "play" an educational game is about as fun as doing homework.

To successfully make a game that teaches something, the game must be primarily designed to entertain and challenge.  The learning should occur implicitly.

For example, let's consider a turn-based battle sequence in an RPG.  Each action by the player balances how much damage that can be taken versus what can be dealt.  Let's say the player has one unit and the computer opponent has a single unit.

The units on both side have HP (health power) and Damage.  Both are integral values.  Damage from one player deducts health power from another player.  If health power reaches 0, then a player loses (dies).

A step back reveals that the player can compare both numbers.  If Damage exceeds HP then the opponent is guaranteed to fail.  This leads to the typical strategy: concentrate all fire-power on the weakest of the opponent's units.  The weakest unit of the opponent will die off.

What we have described is a system that requires knowledge of the concepts underlying the number system and a means to compare.  Many games display meters to reflect the underlying integral value as a quick-reference metric.  But the end result is the same.  I'll argue that this type of game can be more effectively used as an educational game then games designed to be educational for use in an educational setting.

Even this is an over-simplification of the scenario.  Often, the HP of the opponent's units are unknown.  Through defeating an opponent once, the player can estimate how much HP that opponent has.  This requires the ability to sum up values and maintain a mental dictionary of the capabilities of each opponent.

Further within the game, the human player must deal with more and more complex scenarios.  Poison, applied to a unit, will decrease the unit's HP each and every turn by some amount.  Resistance to different magics (fire and ice could be the magics) also affects how the player positions their units against opponent units.

Tactical RPGs take this concept a step further and adds in the lay of the land to the mix.  Attacking a unit from behind leads to more damage being dealt at the expense of having to move a unit in place to do the attack.

In the end, if I wanted someone to learn something about arithmetic, I would suggest an RPG.  With any luck, the one they'll choose will force them to consider the underlying numerical system.