hedwards: TBH, games as a method of learning is pretty limited. It's not really the fault of the game developers, it's just that learning is complicated and it's social. Back in the day there were computer games like number crunchers and the various titles from Broderbund and TLC, but they were always pretty limited in terms of what they could deliver, and it was mostly a way of getting kids into computers and using them productively.
People have been trying for decades and it's unlikely to ever work out. Computers are just not suited to educational use of this sort. The pull of fun versus the actual learning objective is hard to resolve and learning tends to be a messy process.
clarry: Allow me to disagree. Well, maybe it depends on the subject. I can't imagine learning much maths (beyond basic arithmetic) from a computer game. But even that depends. Some stuff that seems nightmarishly difficult to learn from a textbook can suddenly seem obvious given enough visualization & interaction and real-time exprimentation.
But e.g.
The Expression Amrilato is really quite educational. (It's also my favorite title on GOG, much due to its educational value and nice art). It does fall short on at least two counts, one of which is literally the length. It's short enough to read in a weekend and that obviously can't be anywhere near enough content to really get more than the very basics of a language down. That it's a game is not what limits you here, it's just that it's short. The other thing is that they evidently tried to make a story that one can mostly grok even if you hardly learn the language at all. That means some of the more plot-heavy segments come with nothing new to learn, and not much to reinforce what you've learned. I think that's a fair design choice for something that's not supposed to be purely an educational tool. You can enjoy the story even if you have no desire to learn the language it teaches you. Again, as a medium, there's nothing that would hold them back from making it more demanding (and again extra length would make that easier to achieve).
The only thing I see is no serious attempts at making educational games. Most of all I've seen are "education first," games second, think a crappy excuse for a mediocre game made by non-gamers who have no idea what makes a game interesting.
If people have been seriously trying for decades, why haven't I seen any serious attempt?
I'd assume that it's because you're either too young to remember or the titles were never shipped to Finland. There are tons of serious attempts at games for educational purposes and they never work out particularly well beyond a limited scope. Either they're fun, but extremely limited in scope or they're more educational and not very fun. The most consistent and serious attempts were by Broderbund and The Learning Company. I'm assuming that Broderbund is European due to that non-English letter they use for the first O.
Another bit of it, is that the titles tend not to be very popular and that assumes they even get far enough along the lines to be released to the public. I remember Zon the game years ago to teach Chinese and there was another game that was supposed to teach programming, but ultimately it buckled do to the complexities being beyond what the developer could handle.
The point I'm getting at is that there have been companies trying this since the early days of personal computers in schools and at home. I remember there being some educational titles for the Apple ][ back in the day. By the mid-90s though the consensus seemed to have been reached that educational games are not particularly viable.
There's a ton of money for software that would teach students without having to have an actual teacher there and the trying to integrate the gaming aspect with the educational aspect is rather challenging.
To this day, the educational titles available tend to be pretty limited in scope and short.
kai2: Well, Steam does has the PC Cafe Program (not specific to education) and I don't think it's too much to ask that GOG think about the same.
uchristensen: I am not sure that it would be worth it for GOG to operate a similar program. As a business decision, it is probably not a space worth competing in, and it would probably be very open to abuse.
However, game developers/publishers could potentially use GOG as a platform to provide their games and having a separate license agreement for multiple copies, but that would be a developer/publisher decision. Again, contact the game developers and make a deal with them.
As for Steam's PC Cafe Program, the way it works is a usage that does benefit from the ability to revoke/limit licenses through DRM. Recently, there was some exposure of a weakness of how those licenses were available in Steam API, which lead to those not entitled to discover games that had a hidden "free license" and obtaining them that way bypassing the purchase step.
IMHO, the big question here is whether or not GOG has enough games that would have educational value to be worth the effort. The games that GOG has historically gone after are games that are just fun. Some of them, like many of the RPGs do have some educational value to them, but it's coincidental and you need to be fairly good at the language to get much benefit.
This kind of venture is really best done by a company that focuses on educational content. It's rather complicated to figure out what standards a particular program is going to address and to figure out how to guide students to games that actually help boost performance rather than being fun.
And God help you if the program isn't accessible to all the students that schools are required to serve.
In most cases, the activities that students would most benefit from tend to be hard. And students that would be using games to learn are also the ones most likely to use them to avoid just doing the work.
That being said, I'd love for there to be great educational games out there, it's just that it's an incredibly difficult task.
