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The Oregon Trail

Required Reading

I teach a high school class called Video Games as Literature at my local high school in Southern Oregon. What games should be in the classroom (at any grade level or subject), and why? – John via Facebook

Finally, a class where you don’t care when someone reminds the teacher they didn’t assign any homework! Ignoring our exorbitant jealousy, that’s a really awesome topic to ponder. If we’re looking at games that utilize narrative in ways unique to the medium, titles like BioShock, Portal, Returnal, and Spec Ops: The Line are likely frontrunners, but we could expand the academia of gaming beyond the “Video Games as Literature” lens.

The games we used to play for educational purposes when we were in grade school were titles like Number Munchers and The Oregon Trail. While we loved those back then, several triple-A games in modern times touch on important topics or have explicitly educational components. You can explore ancient Greece in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey’s Discovery Mode, conquer your anxiety in Celeste, understand conservation in Planet Zoo, manage a metropolis in Cities: Skylines, and even put a rocket into space with Kerbal Space Program. And, of course, if you’re talking specifically about gaming as an industry or career, there are plenty of approachable tools to learn level design, such as Super Mario Maker 2, LittleBigPlanet, and Game Builder Garage. Gaming may be an incredibly fun hobby, but it doesn’t mean you can’t also learn some things along the way.