I know, I know…you’ve played most of the MMORPG offerings out on the market, and you’re looking for something to kill time until you gain access to Age of Conan or Warhammer Online. “Hib,” you say, “my fondest wish is to log on and work on implementing environmentally hydroelectric power solutions in a multiuser setting.”

Boy, is this your lucky day.

Teachers, do you dream of a learning resource that will grab your students’ attention and engage them as thoroughly as the video games they play at home and on their mobile phones? Are you looking for a classroom resource that will motivate your students to apply science and math concepts to real world problems? Would you like to spark your students interest in pursuing a career in Science or Engineering?

Enter the world of PowerUp, a free, online, multiplayer game that allows students to experience the excitement and the diversity of modern engineering!

Playing the game, students work together in teams to investigate the rich, 3D game environment and learn about the environmental disasters that threaten the game world and its inhabitants.

Welcome to , a new MMORPG-esque game designed to stay just below the “fun” threshhold so they won’t be responsible for any more divorces.

Seriously, it’s a beautiful game, as it should be since you need DirectX 10 to run it (along with a 2ghz processor, etc), but again, we seem to have an educational game designed for education first, fun about sixteenth. I would love to see well-done educational MMORPGs, but I really haven’t yet. Again…it’s all “educational” and no “game”.

Of course, I’m being a bit harsh here. There are gameplay elements in educational games, but they seem to take a backseat to the learning. I’m not saying that learning shouldn’t be the focus, but the trick is to rig things so that players are learning when they don’t even realize they’re being taught.

Ask a 13 year old to compute his buffs, debuffs and resists versus a raid boss, and he’ll spit it right out. Now, ask him to calculate a household budget, and he’ll struggle at best, and give a half-hearted effort and assume a “don’t care” attitude at worst. In the first situation, he’s learning to do mathematical calculations in his head, quickly and accurately, and determine how the numbers relate to each other…in other words, the same thing as a budget. Except he won’t even realize he’s doing it…it’s part of the fun.

Capture that lightning in a bottle, and you’ll have a successful (and effective) educational game.

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Tags: educational games, games, gaming, mmo, mmorpg, Powerup