Mr. Wright also mentioned that a player honestly begins playing a game the second they hold the box in their hand- the wheels of your mind start turning, and you begin to imagine what it would be like to experience the world that the box promises. Sometimes the play experience and the box don’t quite align, but hey, them’s the breaks.

I completely agree with Mr. Wright/my recollection of Mr. Wright, but I think this points out a critical hazard for serious games. Serious games are ostensibly built from the ground up to address a serious goal or a fixed set of learning objectives. I’ve always tackled this challenge from the perspective of “how can I make a set of game rules and interactions that best embody these learning objectives”? It’s led to some weird games, and I’ve had a blast, to be sure.

But I’ve come to realize that this methodology has a critical weakness: these games don’t sound fun. And unless you’re someone who intrinsically either enjoys the subject matter at hand or the act of game design in general, these games (MY games) can be too abstract and alienating to ever pull you in. I don’t want to drag other designers into my problems, so let me stick with things I’ve helped build.

Here’s an example of one of our more successful titles:  Coaster Creator. Just LOOK at that name: you’re going to be creating roller coasters! This is a double whammy of victory for a game about potential and kinetic energy:

• Whammy one: Coasters! Kids like roller coasters, and building them sounds super cool to just about anyone!
• Whammy two: Coasters! Teachers have been using lesson plans, field trips and worksheets that use roller coasters to describe energy transfer for decades. This makes intrinsic sense to them.

Compare that with something like Eco Defenders- honestly one of my favorite games we’ve ever developed. But favorite or not, there are a sequence of disconnects that can unplug potential players right from the start:

• Disconnect one: What does one do in a game called Eco Defenders? Do you defend…eco? Perhaps you recycle things, or something? (Hint: No, no you don’t.)
• Disconnect two: Oh! You’re playing the game now, and you’re building a creature. That’s pretty cool…but really, why? What’s happening?
• Finally connecting: Whoa. You’re playing now, and your creature is designed to eliminate a native species in a miniature ecosystem! Oh, okay.

The game is built from the ground up around the learning objectives around native/invasive species, ecological balance and analysis of data. It does many, many things I’m very proud of. But it lacks the literal, two-second “oh cool I get it” factor of Coaster Creator.

So what to do? Should we abandon any game concept that alienates a two-second explanation? As a design frontier, learning games is a thrilling landscape of strange places to explore, and new treasures to find. How can we help players understand that the new places we’ve found on the gameplay map are worth traveling to in the first place?