Back in the days Edutainment was the big hype everybody was talking about. Edutainment as a form of entertainment designed to educate as well as to amuse was already something of a false hype starting from it's definition: every game is an educating experience, it does not have to be an Educational Game, or whatever you want to call it. The fact is, playing Zelda, or WipEout Pure is already a matter of learning, and education. This works on different levels, you learn the game's mechanics and in-world physics, the rules of the game, how to interact with non human players or other players.

It's not educational

I can hear your mumblings, learning how to play Zelda, or how to fly a WipEout ship is not Education it's just like learning how to kick a ball, or what are the rules of soccer, or baseball. Doh! So what exactly is an Educational Game? While if we agree (more or less) on the meaning of game, what exactly is education when we talk about video games?

The goal is the label

It looks like this is one of those cases when the goal of the game makes the difference. That is, if there's some sort of spread consensus on the educational goal of a game then that is an educational game. What happens is most of the games that go under this label are just plain crap made with a sort of political correctness in mind. No killings, no monsters (or very fluffy ones), games aimed at children that most of the time end up to be boring translations of old media approaches. Their doom is written with their code, to rest in peace on shops shelves.

What about Flash, did anybody notice?

There was a chance to develop simple, neat, costless games using the Flash technology. A chance to produce easy games, with a very short development time and few resources. The fact is here you have to compensate the lack of special effects, the near-photographic quality of the images with a lot of creativity. Some amateur and independent game developers took this road, few succeeded, but the mainstream video game business brands failed to recognize the gold mine. All but one.

Nintendo, a brilliant clear winner

Possibly the video game brand with a more creative attitude, Nintendo is the only one that succeeded to recognize the potential of Flash games, and to really exploit the Educational Games market. In a wide sense.

Nintendo and Flash Games

The Wii console from Nintendo gives you the chance to play Flash games on your TV, even if the games are actually available on the web. This is made possible thanks to the support of the Opera browser, a smart move that gives a huge advantage to the Nintendo video game console, as well as to users (that have an almost infinite free catalog of Flash games) and the independent developers that have the chance of being discovered by the mainstream video game business, provided they have the creativity and talent, despite the fact they cannot compete with a traditional multi-million developing studio.

This convergence is exactly what happened with the brilliant Line Rider, a Flash game that made its name on the web before being developed for the Wii console.

In just a few months, Line Rider has attracted more than 15 million viewers and has spawned over 11,000 video posts on YouTube. Line Rider for Wii will retain all the fun and thrills of the addictive Web version, but will also include new added features.

Go sporty

The Wii comes bundled with Wii Sports, your first approach to the Wii Remote controller. A non traditional video game aimed at video game players and non video games players, an evolution of the party games born with the Sony EyeToy with a educational twist, you really are playing a sport here. Follow ups and evolutions in terms of sport training are a few steps away.

Educational Games and Edutainment, the last step to catch up with everybody

Last but not least, Nintendo gives you a whole library of Edutainment games, Mental Training games, and Productivity games for both the Wii and the Nintendo DS. In doing this Nintendo reach two goals, consolidates the non players target, and fill the void left by the momentary lack of top titles.

What about the other brands?

What about the other big players in the video game business? What are they doing, what are their efforts in the Educational/Edutainment area?

Sony

The following is the list of games by genre available for Sony video games consoles, there's no trace of Educational Games or Edutainment titles, if you won't consider the Puzzle genre games :

• Action
• Action/Adventure
• Adventure
• Arcade
• Arcade Flight Combat
• Beat'em Up
• Combat
• Compilation
• First Person Shooter
• FPS - RTS
• MMORPG
• Music
• Platform
• Puzzle
• Racing
• Real Time Strategy
• Role-Playing Game
• Shoot'em Up
• Simulation
• Sports
• Strategy
• Travel

Xbox

The same situation applies for the Microsoft console, the Xbox. If you scan through the games list by genre of the Microsoft video games consoles there's no trace of the Educational/Edutainment genre, apart from the Family genre where you can find titles like, ehm, Chess.