Can Games Really Beat School?

Perhaps the most common reaction to our views on education is a frown and a high-pitched voice asking “you really think that?” Yes, I do. I really believe that the current systems of education are useless at best and very damaging at worst. I really believe that every possible topic or skill can be explored through a game, or at least a puzzle/quiz/other activity, instead of sitting in a chair and reading a textbook.

In this article, I want to explain why that’s such a strong belief of mine, and what this means in practice. We will focus almost exclusively on (board) games, as that’s the most important category of this online store and the one that started it all.

Games = Learning

The name educational games is a bit of a misnomer.

Every game is educational. Yes, even the violent shooter games that boys play. It teaches you strategy, cooperation, thinking ahead, quickly calculating numbers, hand-eye coordination, and more. Games also commonly teach kids English, when it is not their native language, without them realizing it.

Every game is nothing but an obstacle and you must grow your skill to overcome it. It’s not that “some games are educational” or “maybe we can gamify learning”, no, it’s even stronger than that. Games are learning. We evolved to derive fun from overcoming challenges and learning skills, because those who do that are more likely to survive.

In other words, learning is fun. If you’re not having fun, you’re not learning (efficiently)!

At the same time, learning is hard. Winning a game is hard! Coming up with good strategies to solve puzzles is hard!

The biggest realization I want people to have is that these two can coexist. Learning can be both fun and hard at the same time. Educational games can be both fun and a true challenge at the same time. Because they are the same thing.

In practice, unfortunately, the term “educational game” just means a bad game. One that tries to sell itself on the lie that it would do wonders for some specific skill. (Training a highly specific “school skill” with a game has been proven to do nothing but make you good at that particular game.) This has left a sour taste in the mouth of many teachers and parents when they approach “educational games”. As such, my approach will always be to make a good game first and foremost, and I only call them “educational” to make sure people find them.

I am also not advocating for these games to be “bonus” or “supplement” to regular school practices. No, they are the curriculum. Teaching the rules of each game is the only concrete (“school-like”) teaching that happens. Playing the actual game is the learning process. Reading textbooks, sitting in class, tutoring, that should be the supplement.

How these games are made

The real trick is to align what the game happens to teach with what you want players to learn. If you want to learn algebra, then of course, playing a shooter game will not help! At the same time, if you want to learn hand-eye coordination, then playing Scrabble likely won’t help!

And so I created this series of games. I call them “educational games” to help people find them and to set a clear goal, but they’re really just “good games that focus on some topic usually taught in school”. After years of designing board games (over 200 of them, freely available on this website), I thought I’d learned how to do that.

I leave judgment of my succes to you! Play the games with your kids or pupils, and see if they have fun and learn.

The process for each game is as follows.

• I identify a topic (and potentially age group) that I think should be covered. This usually means thinking in “systems”. We’re not interested in superficial or shallow knowledge, such as “this exact shape of letters is the word CAT”. No, we want the kid to understand the overall system of language more deeply.
• I hone in on a simple ruleset that explores this topic, with as least fluff or distractions as possible.
• I simplify it even further to make sure we …
  • Don’t need any text (if we can help it). Just simple icons often suffice.
  • Don’t need a lot of paper/ink. I am poor, you are poor, everyone is poor ;)
  • Do make the game cooperative, though that’s no hard requirement.
  • Do make the game as tactile, fast, accessible and “accident-resistant” as possible. I am hyperactive myself and have designed games to play standing up before.
• I design a bright, cartoony, simple graphic style for it. This is my specialty anyway, but I simply forbid myself from trying any more experimental styles in this project.
• I program the code that can create these games right on my website, so you can download free and high-resolution PDFs!

Feedback

But there’s a crucial final step, of course. Feedback!

I’ve been thinking about how to improve the educational system for my whole life. I am serious! I already disliked school heavily when I was only 5 or 6 years old.

I have many friends who work a job there and I come from a large family (5 people younger than me), so I have some sense for how to make these games and what kids need. I basically prototyped and playtested all my games with my younger siblings. This reveals a lot about how they think and how to simplify it.

But I don’t have kids myself, am not working as a teacher, and I obviously make mistakes and can misjudge something.

Let me know when you think something is too hard, too easy, inappropriate, has a mistake, anything! The beauty of this digital home of board games is that updating them is incredibly easy.

Why board games?

If you know me, or checked out my website, you know I can make video games just fine. In fact, I don’t make any money from my free board games. My income consists purely of video game work and writing work. (Such as the Wildebyte Arcades: short novels for children about someone who gets stuck inside video games.)

Then why restrict myself to board games?

• Board games are adaptable. You can leave out rules that are too hard for a kid, for example. Video games are not: the computer must follow its code.
• Learning is social too. We are more motivated and learn faster in social situations, as being social activates all regions of our brain and helps associate and build connections faster. Also proven. (It’s a bit similar to how we learn language more easily if we speak the words or hear it spoken.)
• The (physical) bond between parent and kid is one to always strengthen.
• And I obviously want to get kids away from the screen if I can help it.

I already mentioned that I am quite a hyperactive and physical person. To me, you play games because of the social experience. Board games are basically an excuse to spend time with other people and learn from them. Board games allow me to move my arms and head. To get up from the table and walk around for a bit as I wait for my turn.

As such, I prefer creating board games whenever possible.

What are other ways to learn more effectively?

Of course, there are things you simply can’t do in a print-n-play board game format! I am aware of that and will give other recommendations for it.

For a digital classroom that is free and gamifies learning in many ways, I’d always recommend Khan Academy. As always, it’s not perfect, it has some gaps and is still too anchored in the traditional methods of education. But it’s an absolutely amazing resource, for free, no ads or tricks, to learn.

The biggest and best designer specialized in educational board games is Genius Games. They are very specialized, though, focused on science and certainly for a higher age range. And not free.

The second best learning tool for anything is stories. Again, I am dead serious here. The reason we evolved to share and enjoy stories, the reason films and shows are a billion dollar industry, is because they help us learn and grow.

If games teach you math, language and logical thinking, then stories teach you how to live a better life and be a better human.

A good story engages a child from start to finish. While showing what happens in certain situations, showing the growth of the main character, triggering their imagination and letting them question whether they agree with something. It sneakily engages problem solving as they try to predict who the killer is. And showing that killers are found and penalized, so don’t do that.

If someone tells you “don’t take street X to work”, you’d shrug it off. You’d barely hear it. 99% of humans would do so. Street X is the fastest way to your office! It’s just a street! Of course you’ll travel your usual route.

If someone tells you a gripping (true) story about a girl who was attacked on street X by a man hiding in the bushes … would you really not take a slight detour on your way to work?

Different languages

For this project I custom-made several new systems. (On top of everything I already developed for all the other games on Pandaqi.com)

The biggest is a system that allows translations of games.

If possible, I provide multiple languages for the games. You can pick the one you want and generate the PDF on the website.

I am, of course, only fluent in two languages: Dutch and English. If you want the material in another language, please contact me with your translations for all the elements. I will put it into the system as quickly as possible. Once done, everyone can download the material in the new language from the website.

I don’t believe you!

I get it. Many people believe that games don’t teach anything (good), that learning should be tough and require discipline (otherwise you’re not learning!), that the educational system (for all its flaws) is great and a necessary evil.

The educational system is demonstrably worthless or even negative to the development and health of kids. In practice, however, I’ve found that people are in two camps. They either completely agree that school is highly inefficient but don’t dare change anything, or they will never change their mind whatever the science says.

I, therefore, do not intend to convince anyone or speak any more about this.

Let the games speak for themselves. Try it. Let your pupils try it, or play a lot of them with your kids, and tell me if you don’t see them improve in strategy, skill, understanding, and more.

And let my personal experience speak for itself. I taught myself how to read and write and how to do basic math. I skipped a grade or two because I could already read before we were supposed to learn how to read.

How? Magic? Am I that smart? No, I am neither magical nor terribly smart.

If I were smart, I wouldn’t have become an artist ;) I’d have used my degree in Applied Mathematics to actually earn an income, you know.

I simply played games in the most general sense of the word. I would try to solve Sudokus when I barely realized that the symbols I was scribbling were numbers. I would try to read Harry Potter, piecing together what the words meant by comparing it with that scene I saw in the movie. I would pick up all sorts of hobbies and try lots of things. I was the youngest member ever of my local boardgaming community. I had to twiddle my thumbs for two years in elementary school because I’d run out of mathematics to study and they weren’t allowed to give me high school material.

Similarly, my website is the only one of its kind. There is no course to teach how to create a “free gaming website that generates professional material PDFs for boardgames, with interactive rulebooks, translations, inkfriendly versions, and more”. No example of anything close to it, because it hasn’t been done before. I learned it myself. Just like I learned programming, graphic design, English, writing, game design, multiple musical instruments, etcetera by just playing around.

I finished high school while taking almost all possible subjects they offered, and I barely missed graduating cum laude. As mentioned, I have a degree from a renowned university in the Netherlands that states I’m a scientist and engineer.

But not for a single second did I do what the educational system actually wanted me to do. Because I knew it would not lead to actual learning or growth. I applied scientifically proven habits and ideas about learning to actually achieve all that and create my huge portfolio.

In any case, I hope this convinces you that I can make games about any topic. Though my games will primarily focus on language and math, as those are the pillars of anything.

Children, by their nature, have the exact right mind-set and habits to learn like a madman. Just do stuff and try stuff and play around and don’t be afraid to fail or fall. Every day, morning to evening, and you will grow immensely. Both physically and mentally.

All that we need to do … is not ruin that. And sometimes throw them a new challenge to try. Such as a new educational game.

How to use these games

Then, finally, let me leave you with a few simple tips on how to best enter The School of Gamery and Funcraft.

• Games are learning. Learning only happens through having fun as you overcome challenges. If your kid has no fun playing a game, if they’re not actually “into it”, then don’t push that particular game. Try another. Let them pick. (This is a general wisdom: a game is most fun if everyone is trying their darnest to play it well. Look up “The Well-Played Game”. This also means my educational games always make it fun for the parent as well.)
• Learning is not a straight line. Someone might be terrible for 5 games straight, until the next week your kid suddenly has had an insight and updates their strategy to be much better. Learning is falling and getting up again, it’s jumps and starts. (This is, again, scientifically proven. But you could prove it to yourself by simply tracking your progress on any skill.)
• Deep knowledge, not shallow knowledge. That’s why my games heavily randomize setup and gameplay, to prevent people from just learning a pattern, and actually learn the system. The big “test” is of course to see if a kid is able to borrow a strategy learned from a previous game to a new game with a completely new challenge.
• Games are absolutely not set in stone. I often provide “variants” and “expansions”, or remarks about “you can leave this out in your first game”. Be comfortable changing rules, leaving them out, adapting a game to fit your playing group. (As stated, this is one of the reasons I chose board games only for this project.)
• Yes, find the time to play together. I’m almost inclined to give the controversial advice of telling your kid to spend less time on school. Because that’s what I did. I realized I would also get my degree with minimal effort, which freed up time to actually live life. I believe any parent should be able to find a few moments a week to play short board games with their kids.

Hopefully, my work can help many people around the world! Help them grow their knowledge, actually learn very useful skills (that schools aren’t great at teaching), and have a lot of (social) fun while doing it!

And of course, once someone has a minimal understanding of the English language and math, my entire website filled with free boardgames opens up to them :)