The criticism of content games is very important and strikes to some of the major themes of the debate on whether any sort of game belongs in the classroom. Most criticism falls into two camps:
Not Good Games: This camp is generally composed of strong advocates for good game design. Their primary claim is that edutainment titles, by focusing too much on fitting in all the predetermined content, are often reductive with their game elements. In the end, these games simply aren't fun or engaging.
Not Good Pedagogy: Those who are against using current content games camp to teach can be further broken down. First, there is a subgroup that believes modern teachers try too hard to entertain students when the focus should be on teaching difficult subjects. We can liken this group to a very conservative view of education. Meanwhile, the other side of this camp is much more in tune with the Not Good Games group, arguing that the actual form of current content games are not good pedagogy because they are, in fact, too conservative in their conception.
Mitchel Resnick in his article, “Edutainment? No Thanks. I Prefer Playful Learning,” sums up these criticisms effectively:
The problem is with the way that creators of today’s edutainment products tend to think about learning and education. Too often, they view education as a bitter medicine that needs the sugar-coating of entertainment to become palatable. … I also have a problem with word “edutainment” itself. When people think about “education” and “entertainment,” they tend to think of them as services that someone else provides for you.
Instead, Resnick suggests a focus on playful learning, which he says is more self-directed, and ultimately more effective. His examples focus on kindergarten children, but the problem of students being “given” information is inherent in the concern over a style of “knowledge banking” education as theorized by Paulo Fiere. Our modern composition cornerstone of “agency” fights directly against this idea that students can simply be given information.
Ultimately, the criticisms of content games address some very pertinent concerns that any future attempts to create such games would be well severed to keep consider (with the possible exception of the conservative “stodgy” professor argument). Good edutainment needs to find a balance between effective gameplay and good teaching. Unfortunately, that balance isn’t necessarily easy to find.
We, as composition instructors, will have to collaborate and think creatively about how we could create a good content game for our course. I do believe it is possible for one main reason: when I was teaching developmental writing last year, I introduced the students to Pearson's MyWriting Lab, which uses interactive tutorials similar to what I described in my own work. The interaction built into these tutorials wasn't robust. Instead, it mainly consisted of dragging and dropping elements or choosing among a few choices. But the fact that the game gave immediate feedback and varied the form of interaction had some students actively engaged with it. (I distinctly remember one saying, "This is cool" the first time we tried it.) The tutorials with their limited range did seem to become more of a chore for the students as the semester continued (there was a lower completion rate and fewer additional exercises attempted).
As a starting point, we might look at Rhetorical Peaks, but the important question has to be about where we can go from there.
Works Cited
Resnick, Mitchel. “Edutainment? No Thanks. I Prefer Playful Learning.” Lifelong Kindergarten. MIT. (2004).