Paradox Interactive announced a partnership with TeacherGaming to launch a special educational version of Cities: Skylines. Cities: Skylines – Education Edition is designed for teachers to use in their classrooms as part of TeacherGaming’s subscription service.
“Transitioning our games into teaching tools that make learning fun and interactive is something near and dear to our hearts at Paradox,” said Shams Jorjani, VP of Business Development at Paradox Interactive. “We chose TeacherGaming to help structure our games for the classroom, because this is a new field for us and they have the right experience and knowledge to do it right.”
Cities: Skylines is the heir apparent to the SimCity builder series. It originally launched on PC in 2015 before coming to consoles last year. It’s been hailed as the definitive city builder sim, and Paradox have released numerous expansion packs since release. The most recent, Parklife, released earlier this year and added national parks and zoos.
Cities: Skylines – Education Edition includes eight custom lesson plans. Each scenario covers different relevant topics, such as government, engineering, and budgeting. The educational version also includes student progress tracking and in-game tutorials.
“Paradox Interactive titles turn niche topics like civics and serious history into unexpectedly entertaining experiences that educators will fall head over heels for,” said Santeri Koivisto, TeacherGaming CEO. “Committing to such an unconventional portfolio means Paradox is combating prejudices about the very nature of video games, and that’s also what we have been out to do for the past six years. In that sense, and many others, this partnership is a perfect fit.”
TeacherGaming offers both individual gaming licences as well as an all-in-one subscription service. Each game, including Kerbal Space Program, Universe Sandbox, and Epistory, offers multiple lesson plans tailored to classroom learning. The company was founded in 2011 in Finland by gaming educators. Their most successful program was MinecraftEdu, which has since been purchased by Microsoft.
Cities: Skylines – Education Edition is available now in the TeacherGaming Store.
