One would think, when covering a game such as Ysoft Entertainment's Kana Learning, that there is little to say. At face value, that's definitely true. It isn't so much a game, but a tool intended to help one master reading various forms of Japanese writing. As such a tool, it succeeds to some extent; as far as I can tell, it includes all of the symbols in the Japanese alphabets, and if one were studying the subject, one might potentially be able to use the tool to his advantage.

The issue I have lies in the intention: specifically, the intended audience. This game was released during a game-making contest in which the theme had been presented as "education." Many games entered, and all of them were ordinary games with a quickly slapped-on reference to education to fit in to the rules, with the exception of this one.

It is ironic that Ysoft Entertainment became the only person to respond to the theme correctly, and yet he lost terribly in the final vote, but we all knew that would happen, right? In a game-making contest, the best game wins, and this quite simply is not in the correct category. Kana Learning's purpose for existing is entirely unclear: there is no possible way that Ysoft expected to win the contest with this. He knew before going in that a game would take the prize. He knew that, and yet, here I am reviewing a teaching tool for a language I don't understand beyond what I've seen in random cartoons and games.

That's kind of the main problem with this. The odds that a student of the Japanese language would pick Ysoft's game up are slim to none. Plenty of materials exist for teaching this subject, so why go to the trouble of making what amounts to slower flash cards? I played around with Kana Learning for about fifteen minutes, more entertained by poring my head over that question than anything appearing on the screen.

In fairness, I don't think Kana Learning necessarily lacks any value. There's the one in a million chance that the right person could pick this up and find it truly helpful, and I commend Ysoft for creating the product if that case ever occurs. He does attempt to insert some instructions on learning the language in to the game, poorly presented as they are, so I know that he meant well. I also do not blame the creator himself for my confusion, as it's really a problem I see with most games in the "educational" genre. This is, once again, the INTENT—but not of the designer.

Rather, the intent of the player makes these sorts of games largely useless. People do not think they want to play games in order to read, add, or learn history. Interestingly enough, the appeal of many games actually does come out of reading (Final Fantasy IX can make you cry) or doing basic math (How much more damage will kill that slime?), but if this is obvious to the player from the beginning, he won't be interested. It's the educational system, worldwide, that lends to this psychological response. We have to spend such a large portion of our early lives being crammed with basic information, whether this is a good or bad thing, that the last thing we think we desire is for our time off to bombard us with more. Hence, nobody is going to pick up a game like Kana Learning in order to enjoy it for its educational value, and the same applies to every educational game ever created.

Let's have a look at three commercial examples, and bear in mind that I have not played a new educational game since my youth. I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that the genre remains about as vapid and disengaging as ever.

Here we have Math Blaster for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The objective of the game is to solve basic mathematical puzzles in order to progress through a level. There are tons of different versions of Math Blaster in existence, and all of them are built upon this concept.

What's wrong with this concept, inherently? The player has to know the math in advance in order to finish the game. The game does not do anything to teach him. For this reason, it is not really an educational game—it's a puzzle for people who already know the solutions.

In some ways, Kana Learning falls in to this trap. When I start up one section of the game and am asked to identify the symbols, I have no chance at victory unless I already know them. Playing the game repeatedly could help teach me a few, but I feel alienated from the very beginning as the game stands. This game does not want me to play it.

It's possible to complete Math Blaster without knowing the solutions in advance. The same can be said for Kana Learning. However, the game is not designed for this to happen. It isn't educational; it's a test for somebody who doesn't need one. In short, I would probably enjoy sitting in a classroom and learning the Japanese symbols more than playing this at my unexposed level, and I would learn a lot more in the process. The title of the game contains the word "Learning," and yet I have to step away from it to do so.

Another good example of ineffective educational value appearing in a computer game is Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? I hope you've played this one, as it's actually a pretty interesting game despite not really teaching the player anything, but I digress.

The failure of Carmen Sandiego is a bit different. See, you have to track down the mysterious thief by following clues intended to teach the player about history. It is obvious that one is meant to play this game with an encyclopedia or history book by his side. I apologize if there is another way to complete the quest; I never figured it out at a young age.

What this game reeks of is what I'd call the "studying for the test" anomaly. Anyone who ever made decent grades in school probably knows what I'm talking about here. It's far more efficient to prepare specifically for a test than to actually absorb material and truly learn it, which takes more time than a couple of hours to truly happen. That's a problem with many educational games, including this one. You pick up a book to find the necessary fact, then enter it in as the solution. Why remember it beyond that? I'm not saying it can't happen, but chances are you'll have forgotten in a week, or by the time you've tracked down Carmen Sandiego.

Kana Learning falls culprit to this issue as well, if you plan on beating it just to see if anything happens. Why not just hold up a cheat sheet next to the game and fill everything out? That's the only way to beat the game if you don't know the information, and the most simple way to do so. You won't LEARN anything, however. But remember, in order to finish Kana Learning without cheating, you have to be at a stage where there's no point in learning the alphabet in the first place.

Tests are supposed to illustrate to us what we do not know and still have yet to learn. I'll give Kana Learning a nod for understanding this to some degree; if you don't cheat, it shows exactly that. Unfortunately, I firmly believe that most educational games do not understand this paradox at all.

The last example of an educational game failing hard that I want to showcase is Oregon Trail. Yeah, a lot of us probably remember playing this sucker in computer lab back in elementary school. Those were the days, *sniff*.

What do you remember about the game?

Go on, I'll give you a second.

Time's up. You remember: Fording the river, the people you named after cartoon characters dying horrible deaths, and shooting animals in the woods. You probably never noticed what the game was trying to do, and that is clear evidence of its failure as an educational experience.

See, Oregon Trail is supposed to simulate the experience of traveling down the Oregon Trail in the distant past. The player is supposed to learn of the hardships that occur, the preparations that had to be taken, the tragedies that befell travelers along the way, and the historical locations that dotted the path.

Can you name one of those locations?

No, you're still giggling about shooting those deer. So am I. What's the problem here? Simply put, the experience intended to be taught is outweighed by the experience of the game. Oregon Trail, somehow, was pretty dang fun. The player couldn't care less about native Americans or tuberculosis; he just wanted to cap a rabbit and see how long it would take to die at a grueling pace before the school bell rang.

I would say the majority of games trying to teach fall in to this trap, and it's one of the reasons that educational games never seem to work out. When they're too much fun, the fun distracts from the learning intended to take place.

So is education in games impossible? Absolutely not. It is, however, not something that can be done directly. What games teach us is often not concrete fact or even recorded in a text book. Pattern recognition, the mastery of unusual physics, and associations between objects are the types of things that subtly creep in to our brains during gameplay.

Let's take a look at an OHR game that successfully teaches the player something without even trying. Its identity may surprise you.

In case you are not aware, this is Spoonweaver's Slimes, possibly the most cleverly designed game released for the engine last year. Without saying even once that it's teaching you to see (and create!) specific patterns and work around the slimes' artificial unintelligence, this game teaches the player to do so.

You start the first stage not knowing what to do, and your slimes die. You then learn that you have to place some blocks so that the slimes will walk over them like a bridge, and you succeed in getting them all in to the exit. Nearly every stage requires a similar kind of trial and error thought process, and it is far more effective than Kana Learning's. After finishing Slimes, one can easily breeze through the game, seeing what effects his actions will have beforehand. He has LEARNED them.

I still don't know anything about Japanese writing.

Where Slimes succeeds and Kana Learning fails is plain to see. Slimes, oddly enough, uses a soulless version of the Socratic Method. The player learns by inquiring, "What should I do in this stage? Where should I put my blocks now? Should I try one here?" The game responds by letting the player either succeed or fail. Yes, I am oversimplifying the game by pointing this out, as there is more to it than that, but in terms of its educational value (so to speak), this is how it's accomplished at the basic level.

Kana Learning does no such thing; it follows the "throw them in the water and see if they swim!" strategy. While this method does work for some things (it's one of the ways to teach basic programming), you have to give a frightened toddler some floatation devices or he'll just drown, or worse, refuse to even try.

I don't think every game needs to be educational necessarily, but I hope that this article helps illuminate some of the proper and improper ways to go about designing situations where players can learn. And remember: if something is better done with Flash Cards, it probably isn't worth making a game out of, no matter how good the designer's intentions are.