yasser-malaika
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Designing edutainment, the Valve way: make a good game first
"People don't sit around at Valve and say 'We're educating.' They are educating the player. But it's just good game design," Valve Software's director of education programs Leslie Redd told me in an interview yesterday afternoon. She and her coworker, Valve's Yasser Malaika, were on stage earlier in the day during New York City's annual Games for Change Festival presenting Valve's latest and boldest education initiative: Steam for Schools.The program offers educators a modified version of Steam that puts control in the hands of teachers – and offers students a chance to snag a free, unmodified version of Portal 2 and its puzzle maker. Teachers are able to add "lessons" as they see fit, created in Portal 2's puzzle maker – several of which are already available.It's a first for Valve, and really for any game developer operating today. Thankfully for those of us who love Valve for its video games, not much (if anything) is changing in Valve's approach to game design. "Having a fun game is so connected to learning and mastery and agency and social dynamics. You can't really design a good game without really considering all those things and putting in the effort to understand how your customers respond to those things. And it feels like that process has a lot of value, more than the product," Malaika said.
