
Tell HN: kids needs math practice. I wish quality iOS/Android games included it - andrewstuart
I think maths is something anyone can become better at with repetitive practice.<p>Kids in particular need an easy way to do drill after drill, and as they become better, to be carried on a gradual scaling up of difficulty of problem.<p>And there are vast numbers of &quot;math apps&quot; that supposedly do something like this. The math apps I&#x27;ve seen however just aren&#x27;t entertaining - they are work.<p>But kids LOVE playing games - not &quot;math apps&quot;. Given the choice, many kids would play games all the time if allowed.<p>I wonder why can&#x27;t math drills be integrated into really great games? NOT in a crappy, forced-in-at-the-last-minute type thing, where it doesn&#x27;t fit, isn&#x27;t smooth, interrupts gameplay and feels out of place.<p>Instead, why can&#x27;t math drills&#x2F;practice be included an a cool, integrated way that feels natural and inspires the player and carries them logically up a difficulty curve?<p>For example, so many games incorporate some sort of combat, or D&amp;D style&#x2F;roguelike play.  Why can&#x27;t there be a gameplay mode where outcome of a battle is the outcome of being able to quickly do a calculation?<p>Imagine roaming through dungeon after dungeon, constantly doing quick sums to do things like open locked doors and chests, to cast a magic spell, to search for treasure etc etc.<p>Or card games like HearthStone - there are many games like this - can&#x27;t cool&#x2F;interesting math drills be built in to the combat?<p>And is there a way to equate leveling up with level of math capability gained?<p>I&#x27;m imaging a situation where kids love of gaming is combined with math repetition&#x2F;practice so the more they play the game, the better they get at math.<p>And again to emphasise, I&#x27;m talking here about connecting quality, top end games and gameplay with math education, NOT overlaying math practice onto some C or D class &quot;game&quot; which is really just a way to make kids do sums.<p>Why does it seem that no-one has succeeded in building the coolest, most natural feeling and fun math practice into a game?  MUST math practice and drills be boring?<p>I&#x27;d love to set kids loose on iPad games where they loved the high quality gameplay and at the same time got better at maths.
======
Kjeldahl
Major studios (Nintendo, Disney ...) have spent hundred of millions, if not
billions, trying to perfect the magic formula of fun games with educational
value, with very little to show for it.

So why is it so hard? Many reasons I suspect. Money is one factor. The market
for "edutainment" compared to "blowing stuff up" is significantly smaller. A
kid wants to blow things up (metaphorically speaking), and like it or not, the
kid gets what he wants.

The number of parents buying games to make their kids smarter is just
insignificant in comparison. And when the market is a lot smaller, justifying
significant production investments of a high quality game just does not make
sense.

At the reverse end, there seems to be an endless number of "companies" making
(really low-budget) edutainment making a lot of unsubstantiated claims (lying)
about both the quality of their games, the fun factor and learning value.

Thankfully, there are a few notable exceptions but they are usually pretty
specialized (Scrabble does wonders for spelling, DragonBox Algebra, things
like Kerbal Space Program, Quiz stuff like Kahoot etc).

With some luck, government/municipal teaching material spending over time will
transition from mostly books to books+training tools, which should help
investments into new and better products like you mention.

------
celticninja
No money in it I expect.

