The twelfth virtue is achieved by quitting the game and achieving something in the real world.

Like I said: any well-defined system can be turned into a game. I wonder how many more people would enjoy cooking if it were "gamified".

"Educational" games or games "with a message" never end up being fun.

Manga High seems fun.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23781017-software-lets-children-learn-as-they-play-on-laptops-in-class.do

The scene is a school in Southall, where a computer game that teaches maths is being used in a trial scheme. It is claimed that the programme could eventually replace teachers for some classes.

Called Manga High, the software is designed to look like a normal game, and features colourful graphics, sound effects and music. Pupils must solve a series of mathematical puzzles.

Featherstone High has spent two weeks testing the software in 90-minute lessons, with more than 120 taking part.

Neil Bradford, head of maths, said results appeared impressive so far.

He said: "We have used other maths software but the response to Manga High was amazing - we had one pupil who played the game at home for nine and a half hours over the course of a week.

"When the pupils are using it you can hear a pin drop in the classroom as they are all concentrating so hard.

"In the classes we've trialled the software, the teachers haven't had to do anything, children just become completely engrossed in the game.

"The teachers were very impressed, as while the games are fun, they really do help teach the curriculum."

http://www.openedsolutions.com/toby-rowland-manga-high.html

It’s a Friday in the UK, and near the end of the day. Toby Rowland, CEO of Manga High, is pleased at the number of high-level mathematics games played by students from all over the world. He estimates they will hit 12,000 games played by the end of the clock. And this is on a national holiday, and the teachers are not even teaching.

What’s happening here? Math games at Manga High, an online model for mathematics teaching has captured the attention of teachers and students in countries like England, India, and the United States. It’s the beginning of a new market in a highly fragmented academic software industry — fremium, highly challenging, games-centric mathematics teaching. [...]

Students that get looped into the free site find themselves looking for harder and harder challenges, which is a paradox to what most teachers experience, says Rowland. When they lead students to difficult questions in textbooks, they lack the motivation. “Teachers find harder questions in books as being unattractive, but what we see online is students actively wanting to answer extreme questions,” says Rowland.

Rowland says that up to a hundred schools a day sign up to access a functionality that trains the students for higher order thinking blended with a feet-on-the-ground teaching model where students work with teachers in groups to problem solve. But the student is tapped into the internet for a good length of sustained learning time, which works well with how Internet-raised youth access and play with information.

“In an hour, a student might do 250 math exercises,” says Rowland. “That density of work you can’t achieve in any other way.”

Eh, Braid was a pretty decent puzzle platformer, though maybe story bits were a bit pretentious and could have been left out; I agree with what you say about artsy indie games or educational games.

There is certainly some potential for making rationality games, and an actual stab at implementation is better than a bunch of ideas thrown around in an open thread.

All learning success that's been attributed to games so far is in my opinion bogus.

Dunno about that - a lot of geeks seem to have learned English or Japanese through games. And of course, you learn skills that are useful in playing other games, though those are not really always transferable to "real world" activities. But then, the same could be said about a lot of "official"education - among all the kids who have classes on calculus or biology or literature or Latin, how many learn things that are useful to them in their lives?

This doesn't sound like any fun at all. "Educational" games or games "with a message" never end up being fun.

I think there is a significant distinction that needs to be made between a) "Every educational game created thus far (that I myself have sampled or read of in any way) has not been fun." and b) "There is no possible way to create a game, in all of game-space, that is both fun and educational."

As well, these are two separate statements. The first says that this specific game doesn't look fun. The second says something akin to b).

That being said, I agree that there's nothing concrete here. You can safely assume some typical 2d puzzle-plat mechanics, as well as construction mechanics. But aside from that, there's not any idea of how those will relate to the Virtues.

I'll await at least an alpha version, or something on the development process.