Who says games can't be educational?

I find it hard to believe that thus far educational games have not been successful. I've come up with a reason as to why that might be. Perhaps these educational games didn't offer enough agency for the player. Logically speaking, if the game is trying to teach the user something, the user is a learner rather than a player. With this in mind the game (as the teacher) would likely limit the agency of the learner in favour of taking the learner along a predetermined path with fewer non trivial choices. This in turn enables him/her to learn what they are supposed to. Offering too much agency in an educational game may decrease the capacity of the game to impart knowledge since the user can go off on any tangent and thus not effectively learn what they are supposed to. Additionally, keeping a game novel would be a challenge since once a user has learned all they need to from the game, it becomes useless. However this can be likened to normal games where a player has reached the end once they have completed the last level.

Even so, from my childhood i can still remember a few educational games where i did learn a lot while still having heaps of fun. Games such as The Magic School Bus particularly stirs my memory of a game that taught me a great deal about the solar system and the different environmental conditions on all the different planets. Another game that rings a bell is one whose name i cannot recall, (and Google cannot recall either) was one where the lead character Alistair was required to solve mysteries by identifying the names of plants around his environment and adding them to his inventory. Thats as far as i remember because thats as far as i got in the game, having played it at the local library and before you know it my half hour time limit is up and its time for the next 9 year old to get his turn.

At the present moment another game that comes to mind is a potentially educational one, though it isn't explicitly advertised as such. The World of Goo, as a lot of you guys have probably played from the game access links, appeals to me as a game that could teach youngsters the logics of simple engineering. And it does so while giving ample agency and weight to the players decisions, it also seems to be a game that most probably wont get boring even after you have finished all the levels, because there is still the World of Goo corporation where you can compete with other players. So who says games can't be educational?