Science Game Center

The Science Game Center is an online magazine for games that teach science.  Card games, Android phone games, PC/Mac download games, browser games and iPad games… search our games by platform, by subject and by age. You’ll love our site for its friendliness, clarity and usefulness.  You can add your own contribution by reviewing games you have played or used to teach.

If you are a teacher, a scientist or a game developer, let us know and we’ll sort your reviews into the right list.  Scientists can explain which concepts they think are well explained, game developers can comment on how the game design draws people in, and teachers can discuss why they game works for them in  class or for homework.  Video game development involves many types of thinking, using a game to teach is a complex endeavor.  The Science Game Center is a place where we can discuss what we find that work.

We need different kinds of reviewers.  For example, in Immune Defense, a scientist should look at the proteins moving randomly and say “Excellent!  The random nature of molecular movement has been reasonably well presented,” while a non expert player might think, “These particles are not animated realistically,  everybody knows molecules move from a high concentration to a low concentration, many of these particles move backwards.”  More discussion can help game users to appreciate that our games can teach many concepts.  Additionally, teachers are always experimenting with new ways to teach science, and we hope they can share their experiences with science games here.

We also need to hear from the game players.  Students, parents, grown ups like me who enjoy learning new things and playing games.  I think the younger kids like the “harder” games and honestly, I’m here, promoting this Science Game Center just to give you kids a chance to stand up and say, “Hey, this particle physics is fun.  I like playing it and I don’t care if I don’t know what particles are yet.”  So much of our education strategy is to introduce concepts in concrete ways and so much of science is invisible and abstract.  Game help us introduce abstract concepts to younger kids.

Yes, this is in fact why I invented the Science Game Center.  Science is fun, but only if you get to do the interesting parts!  Too often, we treat the interesting parts as too abstract and “hard” for the average person.  However games are abstract by design and challenges are the core of good game design.  In a game format, we can present the interesting pieces of science intuitively.  Games are often “hard” and “fun” at the same time.  By playing we should gain a functional knowledge of the abstract concepts and then we can start learning the formal facts from teachers or science news outlets  and Wikipedia.

This is it!  Stand up and say it loud:  I like my science to be complicated and interesting!  Give me the abstract!   Play some games on the Science Game Center and contribute your review.

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