The Federation of American Scientists has released a fascinating document following their Summit on Education Gaming. The report, called “Harnessing the power of video games for learning”, makes some observations that are noteworthy, even if any teenager (or anyone who was a teenager in the past 25 years) could have told you them in less academic terms.

From the summary at the document’s beginning:

The success of complex video games demonstrates games can teach higher-order thinking skills such as strategic thinking, interpretative analysis, problem solving, plan formulation and execution, and adaptation to rapid change. These are the skills U.S. employers increasingly seek in workers and new workforce
entrants. These are the skills more Americans must have to compete with lower cost knowledge workers in other nations.

The major points of the study are:

• Games can teach skills which employers value
• The educational game market is different from the entertainment game market,
• And the educational game market has too fragmented a customer base and too low a level of profitability to be a reliable source of the type of product the conference participants believe we need
• The business community should get more involved to help clarify what sorts of skills are most important for software to try to help develop
• The government should coordinate and fund R&D efforts in this area because “there is a public good and large social returns to the nation associated with improving education and workforce training outcomes…”

It’s a long document (about 50 pages) and I am only giving a brief synopsis here, so if you’re interested in more detail (and it is interesting enough to read), I suggest you read or at least skim more of the full report.

In any case, I like everything they say until they get to the suggestion that the US government should fund advances in software development of this type.

It is clear that the private sector does things better and faster than government in almost every area…I’d say in every area that isn’t a legitimate function of government such as defense, and in many areas that are a legitimate function of government such as roads.

It is clear that the government education system is a disaster, with no correlation between the amount of money spent on public schools and the quality of the product (i.e. educated students) produced.

It is not at all clear that the educational game market is not profitable. If that were the case, I would not find so many hundreds of children’s software titles available to buy when I walk into Best Buy or CompUSA.

If there is software available that improves the proficiency or efficiency of workers, employers will buy or license it. As someone once said, production precedes consumption. And as I added, yes it does, but it does not precede the anticipation of consumption.

If there is even a plausible market out there for results-oriented game/training software, someone will make it without government help. I believe focusing on this potential market will be an interesting topic for an existing software development company or a new one created to tap this market. But whoever goes after this brass ring will almost certainly do it quicker and better without the dead hand of a government bureaucracy tapping them on the shoulder.