Guest article by Chris Wright from Dadding on the Road. This article is part of our Gameschooling with Video Games series.
When it comes to math and logic, almost every game with an economy or some form of resource management will have players calculating how much time they will need to get a resource, or how to manage multiple resource streams to impact their goals.
This post may contain affiliate links, meaning if you click on it and make a purchase I’ll receive a small commission at no cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. For more information, please check our Privacy Policy and Disclaimers and Disclosures.
Eve Online: Sometimes cited as the world’s best economics simulator. In Eve, every resource is priced based on supply and demand. If a player mines and sells 2000 tons of iron ore, the price is going to plummet in the region. Inversely, if a player notices a resource is selling hot in one area, they can trade the commodity for a tidy profit. I’ve even heard stories of hardcore players building elaborate Excel spreadsheets with tables and graphs to track prices and maximize their profits. All of this between flying their spaceships around and fighting pirates.
Stardew Valley is a deceptively deep game. On the surface, it looks like a simple farming and ranching sim firmly placed in the “cozy games” category. However, the game allows players to augment their raw products to increase value. Simply turning a fruit into wine boosts its value significantly, at the cost of time. That value can be furthered by aging the wine in casks but for a significant delay on the return. Players need to gauge the benefits of aging and modifying over the need to produce enough money to buy seed for the next season.
Minecraft: I know! Our favorite multi-educational game! However, Minecraft can involve a lot of maths for players trying to speed run and optimize. To craft a wooden axe, one would need a crafting table, two sticks, and a plank of wood. To make that you need wood, but how much? How many trees do I need to punch down to get enough wood to chop like a civilized individual? That’s just basic crafting. When you get into finding iron and other minerals to craft more advanced items, there are more variables to track.
Airport CEO and other management games like Sim City or Jurassic World revolve around the player managing revenue streams. Players need to weigh the cost of saving up for the new airline wing against addressing falling customer satisfaction. Invest enough money to grow, but not so much that you can’t be flexible to emergencies as they pop up. Not only is it great math practice, but it’s a practical exercise for budding entrepreneurs.
Khan Kids is a free app that is great for early (K-2nd) math. It wasn’t out when my kids were that little, but I’ve heard from other parents that it’s fun and their kids love it.
The company that makes Reading Eggs has several math apps. The most popular seems to be MathSeeds (I’ve heard lots of parents gush about how much their kids love it and how much they learn), but they have several others, too.
ABCya has a variety of educational games for kids from preK through 6th grade covering a variety of subjects, including math. My kids have not used them, but I’ve heard good things from other parents.
At the end of the day, just like most board, card, and dice games use math to some degree or another, so do video games. We live in a numerate world and there’s no escaping math. So whichever video games your kids prefer, you can be fairly confident that they require your kids to practice at least some math here and there.