Realized or not, computer has changed people in their daily life. It has changed the way people accomplish their jobs. Besides for doing works, for many people computer is also a great entertainment tool that can be used to play videos, enjoy music or interact with others. In this information and electronic age many computer programs have even two different functions, as a tool for learning or improving different skills as well as entertaining the user. Such programs are often named as educational games or edutainment.
Many educational games are intended for children. By playing such games, children can learn different subject ranging from math to English. The use of games in teaching children keep them from getting bored easily. Unfortunately not all topics, especially the ones which are very complicated, can be taught successfully by using this approach. But usually limitations can be dissolved in one way or another in the future.
There are other types of educational games which are mainly intended for the adult. The variety of such games is so wide. There are games which are great for learning computer networking. For example, there is a game provided by Cisco that can help one master the binary system. The topic that was not easy for some people in the past can now be learned with fun.
Trains are for meditation, for playing out long thought-processes, over and over; we trust them, perhaps because they have no choice but to go where they are going. Nowadays, however, they smack of a dying gentility. To travel by car makes journeys less mysterious, too much a matter of the will. One might as easily sit on a sofa and imagine a passing landscape. I doubt whether any truly absorbing conversation ever took place in a car; they are good only for word games and long, tedious narratives. We have come to regard cars too much as appendages of our bodies and will probably pay for it in the end by losing the use of our legs. We owe to them the cluttering of the landscape, the breakup of villages and towns.
—Alastair Reid (b. 1926)
For investors there are Stock Market Games whereby they can learn to invest in shares in the stock market. The Stock Market Simulation Game is very serviceable for beginners, since there is not any risk or chance of losing money when they do something wrong when playing the game. Some good Stock Market Simulation Games use real market data.
Educational games are often used to socialize important things. The one sponsored by UN-ISDR (United Nations - International Strategy for Disaster Reduction) belongs to this kind of games. By using this simulation game about tsunami people can acquire interesting knowledge of that disaster, for instance what kind of plants are suitable to prevent you from high waves. With the preventive actions stipulated as part of the game you can then find out how many people can survive the tsunami.
There are many other interesting games that can be categorized as educational games, from the ones that are useful for learning programming to the ones that contain topics that are helpful for mastering a periodic table. To most of us, learning and entertainment are two different, separate things, but with the improvement of computer technology the two activities can be combined in the form of the educational game. Turning a boring tutorial into something fun will empower our brain to absorb more easily any serious subject.
As long as lightly all their livelong sessions,
Like a yardful of schoolboys out at recess
Before their plays and games were organized,
They yelling mix tag, hide-and-seek, hopscotch,
And leapfrog in each other’s way all’s well.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
Heris Yunora - Playing games that combines education and entertainment is a great way to spend our time, especially the ones that are closely related with office works, such as this educational game.