Several games out there claim to be educational. Some are more or less so, depending on how one defines the term “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/

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

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/

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/

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/