Most Educational Game you've ever played?

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15357

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Thread about how games gave you knowledge, and stuff.


Mine would be Paradox Interactive's Hearts of Iron II. Seriously, I aced World Geography, World Modern History, and Economical Geography thanks to that game.

Also, other historical games, like Total War series.
 
Civilization series most likely.
 
Oh yes, Civ series.

I loved the little in-game encyclopedias.
 
Crystal rain forest back in primary school.
 
Badger Trails!

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Man, I used to play so many edutainment titles when I was a kid.

Math Blaster, Oregon Trail, Reader Rabbit, Carmen San Diego, Dr. Brain, Mavis Beacon... and tons of others.

Now the most education I get out of games is history lessons.
Been playing Medieval 2: Total War a lot lately and I've learned that the pope is a ****ing baby.
 
Oh man Oregon Trail was awesome.

I spent a lot of time looking for a a Canadian spin-off off Oregon Trail called "Yukon Trail" or something like that but was never able to find it.
 
Oh yeah! Oregon Trail! :D :D


Oh god that game was awesome.
 
I used to play alot of those point and click educational puzzle games like reader rabbit etc as a kid.
 
What's educational about Civilization? I don't think I've learned anything from it except how to go insane when Genghis Kahn decides after a whole game of being cool with me and having nice trading going on, he wants to rush in with a 10,000 man army and rape my towns as I scramble to try and slow him a bit. One game I had ****in Gandhi and George Washington take down Kahn from both sides... completely destroyed him and then I won the space race.

Anyways, how is it educational just to reference real historical things and people? I mean it would prolly be more confusing thinking that the Romans built the Taj Mahal, The Hanging Gardens, and The Statue of Liberty.

I think mine would prolly be Bookworm 2.

I guess you could say all of those WW2 games motivated me to learn a hell of a lot about WW2.
 
OH! I totally forgot NUMBER MUNCHER. That was way back... waaaaaaaaay back.
 
The total war series. Not only did I learn about the middle ages and antiquity but they intrigued me enough to read books about those periods.
 
Gargantou said:
I read that as "Meth Blaster" and thought to myself "What the fudge?"

Then I realized my mistake.:LOL:
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You needn't fret, that could be equally as educational for the kids....where else are they going to learn to properly shoot up? :p
 
StarBob said:
What's educational about Civilization? I don't think I've learned anything from it except how to go insane when Genghis Kahn decides after a whole game of being cool with me and having nice trading going on, he wants to rush in with a 10,000 man army and rape my towns as I scramble to try and slow him a bit. One game I had ****in Gandhi and George Washington take down Kahn from both sides... completely destroyed him and then I won the space race.

Anyways, how is it educational just to reference real historical things and people? I mean it would prolly be more confusing thinking that the Romans built the Taj Mahal, The Hanging Gardens, and The Statue of Liberty.

I think mine would prolly be Bookworm 2.

I guess you could say all of those WW2 games motivated me to learn a hell of a lot about WW2.
Click to expand...

Listening to Leonard Nimoy narrate the encyclopedia counts as education in my book! :p
 
I played a load of Zoombinis when I was younger. I think it helped me understand logic and numbers exceptionally well. I just hope that when I have kids, there'll be a game like that for them.
 
StarBob said:
What's educational about Civilization? I don't think I've learned anything from it except how to go insane when Genghis Kahn decides after a whole game of being cool with me and having nice trading going on, he wants to rush in with a 10,000 man army and rape my towns as I scramble to try and slow him a bit. One game I had ****in Gandhi and George Washington take down Kahn from both sides... completely destroyed him and then I won the space race.

Anyways, how is it educational just to reference real historical things and people? I mean it would prolly be more confusing thinking that the Romans built the Taj Mahal, The Hanging Gardens, and The Statue of Liberty.
Click to expand...

Did you never read the factual blurbs the Civlopaedia entries had?
 
The Total War series significantly increased my knowledge of history while I conquered Europe, and in Empire: Total War's case, the Americas. Rome: Total War also inclined me to read about (who would've thought?) the Romans and their strategies, which surprisingly doesn't come up in schools that I know of nowadays.
 
Can you actually conquer the Americas in Empire or is it just things like the Revolutionary War or Civil War?

There's a small bit in Medieval 2 & Kingdoms where you can conquer the Americas but you mostly play as the natives and not the other conquering nations.
 
Shem said:
The Total War series significantly increased my knowledge of history while I conquered Europe, and in Empire: Total War's case, the Americas. Rome: Total War also inclined me to read about (who would've thought?) the Romans and their strategies, which surprisingly doesn't come up in schools that I know of nowadays.
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I can't recall ever really studying ancient culture histories in school, especially not high school. In college it was possible, but I don't think I did. It's sad really since the Roman culture contributed so much to modern day cultures. I guess if you're down to teaching either the last few hundred years of history or thousands of years of history... it's more feasible to teach the former.
 
Lucid said:
Can you actually conquer the Americas in Empire or is it just things like the Revolutionary War or Civil War?

There's a small bit in Medieval 2 & Kingdoms where you can conquer the Americas but you mostly play as the natives and not the other conquering nations.
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Yeah, you can conquer a part of North America and even small portions of Middle and South America. Alternatively, you can also do this in the Road to Independence campaign as the United States. In the Grand Campaign, England, France, and Spain have their footholds around the Americas, along with the scattered, minor tribe nations.

StarBob said:
I can't recall ever really studying ancient culture histories in school, especially not high school. In college it was possible, but I don't think I did. It's sad really since the Roman culture contributed so much to modern day cultures. I guess if you're down to teaching either the last few hundred years of history or thousands of years of history... it's more feasible to teach the former.
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Yes, the Romans made a huge impact on history and culture, and I really wish schools would teach some of the important ideas they brought about. At the height of their power, they had literally conquered almost all of Europe and parts of Asia Minor. They had such a powerful military that no one could defeat them. Schools should teach that, it's interesting.
 
Well, I'm not so sure about 'directly educational', but I have had a few games that inspired me to learn more about the backgrounds they represented. For instance, back at late 1995 to early 1998 I played alot of the descent series ( I was new to PC Gaming at the end so I didn't really play any other titles than the Descent series). Traveling to different planets got me more interested in Astronomy so I went and got a whole bunch of books on Astronomy at the school library. Then later down the road it warped into a deeper interest in Astrophysics and theoretical science. My favorite book from the library was "Black Holes and other secrets of the universe". Then later when I got into Raven's Heretic & Hexen series it inspired me to look more into Medieval Lore. Then when I got into World War 2 back at 2003 with Medal of Honor Allied Assault and Call of Duty I researched books on World War 2.

Since I'm playing alot of Science Fiction games lately I've been doing some online research on Theoretical Physics and science. It turns out that alot of Astrophysics I learned about years ago turned out to be "outdated" or even flat out wrong.
 
Number Muncher and Word Muncher here.

Our schools were still using old ass Apple II's in 2000. As simple as those games are though, they're really addicting.
 
The Civilopedia from the Civ series is great for little historical facts and trivia, as has been mentioned. As for the Total War series, one thing I've always remembered is the cool little 'Way of the Daimyo' historical primer which came with the original Shogun: TW. It may have been a little overdone in terms of Japanophilia and its reverence for the samurai, but it really got me interested in the whole sengoku jidai thing and led to me developing an interest in Japan's wider history.

Also, perhaps not exactly educational, but definitely informative: the Football Manager series. I only got into it with FM2009, but it's often my first port of call for referencing any football players or team line ups I'm not familiar with. The database may contain some eccentricities in its research, but it's enormous, compiled with the feedback of over 1000 scouts worldwide, and used by Everton FC as a scouting resource.
 
Short of being educational, Deus Ex inspired me to read Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday... eventually (I gather Chesterton actually makes it onto reading lists in the US, or at least, up until very recently, it was harder than it really should be to get a hold of a copy of the book). I also planned to read some of the other books name checked by the game but I've just grown to dislike sitting down and reading, so oh well.
 
As a kid: Reader Rabbit, Math Blaster, Dr. Brain, Number Munchers, Oregon Trail, Carmen Sandiego, and tons of old Apple II games (green text on black screen) that I don't remember very well.

In terms of "grownup" games that I've learned a lot from, it's mostly history. Close Combat series (A Bridge Too Far especially taught me EVERYTHING about Operation Market-Garden as a kid, and I can still ring off all the important towns in a heartbeat - Son, Nijmegen, Oosterbeek, Eindhoven etc), Total War series, the original Age of Empires (the manual had several pages of history on each faction), Civilization series, etc.
 
Ennui said:
Math Blaster
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This is the only one that applies to me. I don't learn shit from videogames, I don't have the attention for it. Well... I learn about design and stuff from quality games, but that's more of an intuitive judgment thing than objective knowledge.
 
putt putt, and fatty bear.
 
I used to have Mario's Time Machine at one point, amongst a lot of others that are too obscure to recall.
 
Dekstar said:
I played a load of Zoombinis when I was younger. I think it helped me understand logic and numbers exceptionally well. I just hope that when I have kids, there'll be a game like that for them.
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Hell yes! Another Zoombinis fan! I LOVED this game (still do and very much like to play it again!). Can't really add any more to what Dekstar has already said, though.
Also, Orly Draws A Story was fantastic for me when i was younger, seeing as art and literacy were two of my favourite subjects. I'm sure that game helped to develop my skills in art and writing and made what I am today!
 
Age of Empires/Age of Mythology.

Can you imagine a fat little 10 year old going to the library to borrow books to read up on Greek/Egyptian/Norse Mythology? Well that was me 6 years ago.
 
While it didn't technically teach me a lot, I'd have to say Incredible Machine. That's one of the more memorable PC games of my childhood.
 
Don't know about the most educational, but the most interesting game from the "edutainment" genre, would probably have to be John Saul's Blackstone Chronicles.
 
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