This was an interesting read! Video games tend to be known as entertainment products, but here we see the creation and evaluation of one as an educational goal. I feel like this pushes on the boundaries of the medium in an interesting way.
By far the people who were most educated are the student developers themselves:
> Ultimately, the team learned more about samurai life and early modern Japan than any group of students I had worked with across a single semester. They read a dizzying array of books and articles while working and reworking the overall design, dialogue and artwork.
Making a game is hard work. It can also provide the motivation to do even more work, eg of the reading kind.
Educating others is hard work too. Most edutainment stuff was lazy, poorly designed shovelware. Usually a flash card program with some extra graphics and sounds. Some, on the other hand were excellent.
I remember being fascinated with a lot of the games back in the 90s. Gazillionaire, Oregon Trail, Amazon Trail, Africa Trail, Simcity, Carmen Sandiego, and all the Learning Company games were amazingly educational and entertaining. They just weren't profitable.
I recently read the manga about Hitler's life from Shigeru Mizuki and noticed I learnt more about the man and how he came to be than in history classes in school (and I say this as a German where WW2 was basically half of all history classes - I wasn't the best student, though). So there certainly, at least for lower levels, is a lot of improvements possible regarding the learning environment, be it through video games, comics etc.
