Welcome to Games Can Teach. My name is Joe Rheaume, and I'm a designer and programmer of educational games. The purpose of this blog is give you some practical examples of how games can be used as educational tools.

I thought I’d begin with an example any casual game designer probably knows by now.

No one reads the instructions. You need a tutorial!

There are so many free casual games out there, that you'd better make sure any player trying out your game for the first time is having fun as soon as possible. Why should they spend the time to read about how to play if they're not totally sure the game is worth it? Even if they do try to read the instructions, chances are that not much is going to sink in. They see a big wall of text, and they have no context, because they haven't tried the game yet. Instant Cognitive Overload.