Many have heard about the enormous potential of video games in education. Cinema or books, even fiction, are present in all educational programs of our time without exception. Without them, it is difficult to imagine any education in general. Then why shouldn’t video games find their place there? Educational video games are a relatively young art genre and are already a popular method to help students to develop team-building skills and student engagement.
In education, video games have emerged as a powerful tool with vast potential, offering immersive and interactive experiences that engage learners and foster critical thinking. In multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft, boosting services have gained prominence, providing players with a fast track to achieve higher levels, conquer challenging content and buy WoW Gold. These services, while primarily catering to the gaming community, showcase how player-driven initiatives and innovative approaches, much like educational video games, are shaping the evolving landscape of gaming experiences, catering to the diverse needs and interests of players and learners alike.
Minecraft Education Edition
If we talk about games and education simultaneously, then we cannot fail to mention Minecraft Education Edition. In fact, in retrospect, the creation of such a thing seems to be something terribly obvious. Minecraft is a game where you can build literally anything. Starting with any building in real size and ending with a model of a working computer! To put it mildly, such a thing has educational potential in itself! And if you add a few more interesting updates to it or compatibility with any software … you get the Education Edition.
What are the students and teachers doing there, you ask? Almost everything. Maybe you want excursions to any city or to any place and time on earth; please, here, you can recreate literally anything you want on a scale of 1 to 1.
Maybe you are more interested in the exact sciences? Minecraft, at its core, is a building and survival game. Getting a child to use knowledge in mathematics or physics is very easy here. Also, the official site of Minecraft Education Edition is full of various lesson plans for any needs and items that you can download as much as you like for free.
Assassin’s Creed: Interactive Tour
The Assassin’s Creed series has always taken us to remarkable historical settings. And since Assassin’s Creed 2, it has always generously taught us brief historical information about significant events, buildings, people, and other important things. This case was called “Database,” and it was a rather small, especially unremarkable, and not very obligatory but interesting appendage to the plot. So far, in Assassin’s Creed Origins, the developers have not removed the database. Instead, they did something better. They literally took their open world and turned it into an interactive museum.
In this mode, fights, quests, and the plot were cut out, and instead, they left a huge world completely open for exploration and contemplation and also screwed on many real tours. In each of these, in the format of an excursion, they will tell you in detail and show you how the Ancient Egyptians were living when the Romans arrived – starting with the construction of the pyramids and ending with the ordinary daily life of each of the layers of society. Moreover, they will do it rather concisely, without unnecessary information, but with some kind of visualization. And there really is something to see here.
The open world of Assassin’s Creed Origins is very detailed and large. Students can interactively look into all corners to examine the rooms in the pyramid. They can observe the daily routine and schedule of its inhabitants and climb literally anywhere – perception and immersion in the era feel incomparably better than in the classroom with a textbook or presentation.
The Oregon Trail
But talking about games and education at the same time is impossible without mentioning Oregon Trail – the very first video game that was used for educational purposes. Initially, it was generally purely textual (yes, it is so old), but over time it received several remakes, sequels, and even branches.
In this game, you are a migrant who wants to start a new life in the western part of the North American continent with his family, but to get there, you have to make a journey of about half a year along the very Oregon Trail. The continent is still quite wild; your road will not be easy. Along the way, you will have to face bandits or wild animals, get food by hunting or gathering, carefully bargain in rare cities along the way, heal your family if someone gets sick, do careful planning, and generally control resources in every possible way.
At the same time, the Oregon Trail is as historically accurate as possible. And it’s not just about real towns you meet along the way or landscape features in the background. The game was made by 3 history teachers. For example, the chance of meeting someone on a particular section of the path is the same for a player as it was for a real migrant at that time (according to historical statistics, of course).
Needless to say, the students liked this approach to the historical subject much more than boring books, and they passed the history of that period with results much better than usual.
The Oregon Trail at the end of the 20th century showed that history as a science, even at the level of studying some banal everyday life, can be incredibly interesting, and also showed that games can be used in education. Unfortunately, the Oregon Trail experience is being adopted very slowly.
Learning Through Strategy
Not all educational games come in the form of history lessons or virtual classrooms—some teach valuable skills in unexpected ways. Strategy-based games help students develop critical thinking, patience, and decision-making under pressure. For example, when you play free poker card games online, you’re practicing math skills, probability, and strategic thinking without even realizing it. Just like The Oregon Trail teaches resource management and planning, poker-style games encourage logical reasoning and risk assessment, making them a fun and engaging way to strengthen the mind.
