Gaming can be a great way to combine strategy and management skills with a rich backdrop of political and moral questions, giving kids a glimpse at the complex real-world environments they’ll be encountering in their working lives. These games explore everything from history to coding, and these games are so engaging that high schoolers will hardly notice they’re learning!
1) Airport Tycoon
This fun strategy game grabs kids’ interest
and holds it so they won’t even realise that they’re learning. The aim of the
game is to run your airport as efficiently as possible, tackling all those
real-life problems such as budget management, managing opportunity cost and
marketing. These practical skills will teach kids the skills of business
strategy. It’s aimed at high school-age kids and other older students and
whilst its complex structure may be too complicated for young children to get
to grips with, this structure is one of its strengths when educating older
kids.
2) 3rd World Farmer
“3rd
World Farmer is a strategy game with a moral heart,” says Nathan Anwar,
educator at Writinity and Researchpapersuk. “At the same time as educating kids about
business strategies, teaching strategic thinking and planning, it offers a look
at the stark reality of many subsistence farmers working in poverty around the
world.”
Moral and economic choice are pitted against
each other in this powerful, thought-provoking game. Poverty, economics and
even environmental imperatives are in conflict, and kids have to think hard to
make decisions about how they proceed.
3) Frontier
Frontier is a fantastic game for teaching kids
business strategy and economic planning skills. Buying, selling and trading are
essential to getting by in this game set on the frontier of the Wild West – a
rough and tumble backdrop that forces players to make ethical decisions about
their business or turning to a life of crime. This game provides a history
lesson to its players too, as gamers explore life on the frontier and the
melting pot of characters drawn to a better life on the borders of the early
United States. With some turn-based fighting thrown in when characters get into
trouble, this game is fun and educational in one.
4) FireBoy And WaterGirl
3: In The Forest Temple
This problem-solving game will encourage
coordination skills and thinking outside the box, and ingenious level design
and fun graphics mean that kids will be engaged and entertained whilst they’re
being educated. “The FireBoy And WaterGirl series are fantastic for teaching
kids the power of teamwork. You need to figure out a way to have your
characters work together to navigate the tricky levels of the Forest Temple,”
says Adrian Lipton, writer at Draftbeyond and Gumessays.
5) TextAdventures
This web-based platform allows kids to play
and create text adventures, encouraging creative thinking and logical coding
skills in one. The create-your-own function is so engaging kids can get lost
for hours coming up with fantastical text-adventure games, learning and
applying coding skills as they go. The benefits of coding skills to
kids has been well documented, and the logic and systematic thought that
goes into creating a fun and thorough text adventure sets kids up for taking their
coding skills to the next level.
6) Oiligarchy
Oligarchy is a business strategy game set in the murky
world of politics and natural resources. Oil is the name of the game in Oligarchy and high school-aged players
adopt the role of oil tycoon in order to navigate the slippery world where
business and politics overlap. It’s a fantastic learning experience for kids
who are interested in geopolitics and the environment, building skills of
working under pressure as multiple resources have to be managed at once in real
time. The game doesn’t shy away from questions of environmental damage either
and kids will be forced to face the environmental outcome of their economic
decisions.
Game On
Coding, strategy and organisational skills are
all prominently featured in this list of games, giving kids real-world skills
and the tools to get ahead in any industry. What’s more, these games build
educational features into rich moral landscapes, teaching valuable lessons
about history, politics and the environment as kids play. Game on!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ashlee Jones is a recruiting manager at Essay Writing Service. She has been a high-school teacher for a decade, and loves bringing non-traditional educational tools into the classroom.
