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’ interestand holds it so they won’t even realise that they’re learning. The aim of thegame is to run your airport as efficiently as possible, tackling all thosereal-life problems such as budget management, managing opportunity cost andmarketing. These practical skills will teach kids the skills of businessstrategy. It’s aimed at high school-age kids and other older students andwhilst its complex structure may be too complicated for young children to getto grips with, this structure is one of its strengths when educating olderkids.
2) 3rd World Farmer
“3rdWorld Farmer is a strategy game with a moral heart,” says Nathan Anwar,educator at Writinity and Researchpapersuk. “At the same time as educating kids aboutbusiness strategies, teaching strategic thinking and planning, it offers a lookat the stark reality of many subsistence farmers working in poverty around theworld.”
Moral and economic choice are pitted againsteach other in this powerful, thought-provoking game. Poverty, economics andeven environmental imperatives are in conflict, and kids have to think hard tomake decisions about how they proceed.
3) Frontier
Frontier is a fantastic game for teaching kidsbusiness strategy and economic planning skills. Buying, selling and trading areessential to getting by in this game set on the frontier of the Wild West – arough and tumble backdrop that forces players to make ethical decisions abouttheir business or turning to a life of crime. This game provides a historylesson to its players too, as gamers explore life on the frontier and themelting pot of characters drawn to a better life on the borders of the earlyUnited States. With some turn-based fighting thrown in when characters get intotrouble, this game is fun and educational in one.
4) FireBoy And WaterGirl3: In The Forest Temple
This problem-solving game will encouragecoordination skills and thinking outside the box, and ingenious level designand fun graphics mean that kids will be engaged and entertained whilst they’rebeing educated. “The FireBoy And WaterGirl series are fantastic for teachingkids the power of teamwork. You need to figure out a way to have yourcharacters 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 playand create text adventures, encouraging creative thinking and logical codingskills in one. The create-your-own function is so engaging kids can get lostfor hours coming up with fantastical text-adventure games, learning andapplying coding skills as they go. The benefits of coding skills tokids has been well documented, and the logic and systematic thought thatgoes into creating a fun and thorough text adventure sets kids up for taking theircoding skills to the next level.
6) Oiligarchy
Oligarchy is a business strategy game set in the murkyworld of politics and natural resources. Oil is the name of the game in Oligarchy and high school-aged playersadopt the role of oil tycoon in order to navigate the slippery world wherebusiness and politics overlap. It’s a fantastic learning experience for kidswho are interested in geopolitics and the environment, building skills ofworking under pressure as multiple resources have to be managed at once in realtime. The game doesn’t shy away from questions of environmental damage eitherand kids will be forced to face the environmental outcome of their economicdecisions.
Game On
Coding, strategy and organisational skills areall prominently featured in this list of games, giving kids real-world skillsand the tools to get ahead in any industry. What’s more, these games buildeducational features into rich moral landscapes, teaching valuable lessonsabout 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.
