When people think about gaming their first thoughts always tend to be football and fighting. A lot of people do not realise that gaming can be educational. It can be an excellent learning tool for our children. Even though this is the case it is still extremely important to limit the screen time our children have, even on educational games.

If you conduct your research you will find that there are a lot more educational games out there. One of the best examples is Minecraft. Allowing children to be creative and also learn new skills about life.

Some other option for educational games include; brain training, big brain training, cooking mama and the sims. They all help you to either train your brain or learn life skills. The sims is not one to always be classed as educational, however, it does teach you that you need money to buy items. You need to work to grow your home and have food.

Console games and apps are becoming ever more  popular as a way of learning children of all ages.  Used in moderation games can help develop hand-eye coordination, memory skills,  problem solving skills and imaginative play.    Preschooler games are concentrated on areas such as colours, shapes, numbers and letters.  Using basic concepts with bright colours, themes and songs. 

Once a child is of school age the educational gaming will include things such as characters, simple sums, finding shapes, numbers or letters to make simple words.  The use of Visual, sounds and actions appeal to young children especially if they are rewarded with a visual effect once a request has been completed successfully.  

If you are wanting to use a device or console for your child, firstly research age appropriate games, then decide how you wish to use the device for example if you will be using the device at home only, then a console such as a playstation may be the best option as these can be used on a tv and the whole family can join in.  If you wish to use a device on journeys or just for the child to use alone then a hand held device like a Nintendo maybe of benefit.  For younger children apps on a iPad are a great option as the screen is the interactive part rather than having to learn what buttons do.

There are a lot of different learning games for the Nintendo switch. These can be purchased by you for your child to encourage them to learn whilst playing. Some of these games include:

Mathland, this is an excellent game for helping kids to learn maths. It encourages them to practice their skills whilst still playing games.

Scribblenauts is another educational game. You have to write words to create different objects to help you solve different problems. There are loads of different problems which will keep your child occupied for ages. This helps them to learn their spelling and improved their writing.

Nintendo Lab is one of the best educational games which the Nintendo Switch has to offer. They offer a lot of hand one objects to help children to learn. From fishing rods to a piano. This helps to encourage your children to learn many different skills.

Gaming isn’t all about fighting, it can be educational too.

Free to play was always an incredibly ugly moniker. When the term first arose it meant something with expensive IAP (in-app purchases) or insane time sinks to try and get you to cut out the middle man, spend money (usually a decent amount) to quicken the progress and make your way to the more engaging content. Recently, though, free to play games’ quality has been increasing massively – with many boasting graphics, content and support to rival even the biggest AAA games.

Warframe is a great example of that. Here we have a slightly janky third-person shooter with a strong collectathon vibe. It started small, with more than a few rough edges, but now has turned into one of the most popular, and most accomplished, free to play games in the world. It’s had numerous content updates, numerous changes to the systems and is, now, extremely complete.

Indie games have been a revelation over the years. They have filled a gap in the market given that “AAA” games are taking much longer to make and produce. These are propping up release schedules and filling in a lot of time that most gamers spend complaining about having nothing to play. Pricing has been a real issue for indie games though; with that “average” price point slowly increasing over the years. Even now, though, it feels like indie game still haven’t settled.
Bundles are the latest issue, though, for indie games to deal with. They offer a way to gather a group of games together and offer them for one price at a bigger discount. The issue, though, is that people often wait for these bundles before buying. If you have a bundle with 8 games in being offered for £5 then it’s curious to see how the developers get paid.