How do I present topics in an entertaining way?

[Secretum_Flamma]

I’m creating a game that intends to teach players about the history, significance, and legacy of famous images/art, accompanied with a list of relevant books for anyone interested in further reading.

E.g., Earthrise:

I’d explain the Apollo missions, Apollo 8, who took the photo, why it’s considered influential, and how its inspired us to explore the stars even today. I’d choose books that focus on the Apollo 8 missions.

My main concern is presentation. I could just put some text next to it, but that seems boring. I’d like some sort of design that captures your attention, and really makes you passionate about the topic. Any ideas would be great!

[letris (Roonski)]

I’ll try my best to explain;

Why not add some sort of “interactive” way of learning about these art works.
For example with earth rise; why not have an interactive way to teach them with 3D models showcasing the rocket they used to get to space with a quick summary about its history, maybe a 3D replicate model of the camera that took that picture.
maybe in the artwork itself have a way of clicking on certain spots that have significance to the piece which will zoom into that part with a quick description of what it symbolizes. Like with earth rise, maybe the player can click on planet earth, and you can explain to the player in a brief description it’s significance, how far earth is from the location of where the picture was taken etc.

[aardvarkbox]

I love the concept. A few ideas:

1. Trivia quizzes. No, don’t do that. It’s been done.
2. If you could recreate scenes in 3d and let the player manipulate to change the final image, that would be fun. But building full real 3d scenes is a lot of work.
3. Think about how to use 3d since it’s a strength of Roblox. Maybe put all the works on a timeline and let you walk up and down it?
4. Social really works well on Roblox. Maybe find ways to let players vote on their favorites or add notes (a little dangerous to moderate) or replace some parts of their avatar with a piece that they like?
5. I wonder if there’s a way to incorporate role-play. If you do build 3d scenes, maybe the players are tasked with recreating the scene. That could even use simple props instead of full 3d worlds. Then add a camera and ask the players to line up the props to create the image. And then players could create silly versions of the real thing, all while hearing/reading real facts about the real one. Treat it like a silly photobooth but with famous images.

[Sir_Highness]

I wish I knew the answer to this. I have an airplane game and I’d like to add some knowledge but haven’t figured out how to do it in a way that’s easy for me(as a dev) to create and doesn’t send the players running for their lives (some kids act like reading is death!) So a wall of text or pages of text to be flipped through probably isn’t the solution, so, I pretty much have nothing, a couple diagrams on the wall.

Players have done amazingly well learning to fly by trial and error though, so maybe I already have the solution, haha.

[aardvarkbox]

@Sir_Highness, if you have dense text that isn’t directly required for gameplay, a starting point is to just go ahead with the wall of text and accept that it’ll only help a small percentage of users. But those small percentage will appreciate it. Most Skyrim players never read the books, but the ones who do really appreciate it.

Integrating information into the world like you’re doing with posters is also a good idea. If you have any characters or quests or tutorials, maybe sneak one fact into each and it’ll slowly work its way to the players.

[aardvarkbox]

This is an interesting game that uses existing art but in an engaging way.
https://www.roblox.com/games/7262582142/Paint-Simulator

[devwingfr (devwing)]

Probably the best experience you could make would have 3D scenes, music, voice acting, and all other eye and ear-candy. That will, however, take a lot of time. You could make an ‘interactive video’ by using GUIs though, if you want to save time.
In theory, you could use TweenService to move the images around, and script the gui from the ground up. The easiest way would to make a video using a video editor, export that video and upload it (if you could!). Then, use it in your experience and you’re done.

Anyways, you’ve got a great idea in mind, but it WILL take a LOT of time and effort.
If you’ve got time on your hands, go ahead!

[iGottic]

Competition drives a game up the ranks, no matter if it is educational or not.

When a teacher gives a class a worksheet, they complain.

When it’s Kahoot, everybody has a good time.

[budgetFox]

Kahoot’s a great example! Teachers and students love it.

[Ie_fishe (paywalls)]

You could try to make like stages that look similar to the image where the image is set in as It’s always interesting to look outside the boundaries of something

[FranSauce]

I need to tell you this and I need you to remember this.

Use as little text as possible, show as much as you can with the game.

Text was made to transmit information towards people who are looking for the specific information, I, for example, use it to document and type what I find important in piles of text that I only understand.

The very prolonged texts I make are made to transmit information, but these texts should not, and never, be transmitted to people who aren’t aware of what it means.

These texts i make take about 600 pages of writing, but they’re not narrating a story, they specify what a scene, an argument or how a mechanic works, if I were to just copy and paste the text on the game, it would be both lazy and boring.

It’s a rule: show, don’t tell.

So what I’m telling you is that you try to present everything with visuals and avoid text as much as you can. A sign that says where you are going, that’s fine, but not something like

(don’t read the text)

It has been always a good way of teaching players, and a good way of making games too. A game like uncharted and half life 2, they wouldn’t tell you where to go, what to do, instead, the use of eye-calling colors like yellow and the shaping of the map to make useful mehhanics easy to do were what made the games so good.

Think of teaching like a tutorial. The best tutorials are the ones you don’t even remember. Walls of text are unattractive, they are only made to describe information but it doesn’t have to be the information itself.

If I were to tell you what a tree is, I wouldn’t tell you that a tree has a thin log of wood that holds it together, with a bunch of bushes on top of it that make a semi-circle form with green colors, full of leaves and small sticks made of the same wood as the one that holds it.

If I were to tell you what a tree is, I would show you this.

This is a tree.

[Nonaz_jr]

You might make a museum-like place with images/billboards, depicting things like images of the engineers working on rockets, excerpts from the books you would recommend, and you may be able to embed video’s.

3d models of rotating balls with a sun in the middle could help to explain why the sun and moon rise, how the earth can rise in this picture, the moon cycle and the seasons, etc.

Going up high in a rocket may help to convey the magnitude of doing something like leaving the earth. You could program it or take a trip to other games.

There are also different areas of interest, like science and engineering, history and timelines, stories of people and events. A museum might have different such areas in which they are free to browse.

It could (in-game or out of game) involve ‘fact scavenger hunts’ where they must search for the answers by reading through the billboards, maybe in competing teams. (“Who made the picture”, “In what year did -some event- happen”, “What color was -something famous depicted in one of the pictures-”, etc)

It is a lot of work for one artwork, but it does allow you to dive deep. Maybe others could be interested in working on educational places like this with you.