Valve, the video game company that created the popular Portal series, recently launched a campaign promoting Portal as an educational tool in classrooms. The game features portals that allow players to travel through each stage and solve a series of puzzles. As part of the promotion, Portal was available for free on PC and Mac for a short period of time.
However, in order to play Portal, users must be part of Valve’s Steam platform. Although Steam itself is free, users must pay to play most of the games on Steam. By downloading Steam to play Portal, Valve may be able to gain more users to purchase their other games.
In addition, by promoting Portal as an educational game, Valve gives parents and educators a positive view towards their game, not to mention that classrooms purchase in larger quantities than individuals.
Portal, released in 2007, was immensely popular, gaining a sequel, Portal 2, which was released earlier this year. Although Valve may lose some sales in Portal, the excitement generated from this short promotion will travel. I believe that as interest for the Portal series grows, so will sales of Portal 2.
2 replies on “Learn with Portals”
Have you tried playing portal yourself. I’ve only played a demo in stores myself and this idea of it being educational is actually pretty interesting. Would you say the educational aspect would be learning how to problem solve?
I have, actually. I own both Portal and Portal 2 myself. I believe a lot of video games nowadays are being used – or promoted – as educational. I recall reading an article a couple of years ago about how games like Tetris. Bejewelled, and even the gaming site, Neopets, were found to be beneficial. Something about problem solving and quick thinking? Everything in moderation, though, of course.
In the case of Portal, Valve mentions that Portal helps teach
I personally feel that the game does require problem-solving, spatial reasoning, and logic, but to say that it teaches math, (or rather, conventional mathematics) might be pushing it a bit. I believe the physics in the game is generally referring to the conservation of momentum, which isn’t technically represented absolutely correctly from what I can tell.
Though if this actually has any substantial educational value, or if this is just a clever marketing strategy, I’m not sure.