TeacherGaming is pleased to announce a new distribution partnership with Paradox Interactive, a Swedish PC game publisher known for its critically-acclaimed strategy game brands.
TeacherGaming has previously developed educational versions of mainstream blockbusters Minecraft and Kerbal Space Program, but is now working as a distributor partner for nearly 40 other game developers, and recently raised $1.6M in funding to bring mainstream games with pedagogical potential to classrooms around the world.
Through the newly minted partnership, Paradox Interactive will start to offer select titles to schools globally through the TeacherGaming.com storefront and as part of the company’s game-based learning subscription service. The service offers educators a robust portfolio of games for an annual fee, supported by ready-made K-12 lesson plans and learning analytics.
“Transitioning our games into teaching tools that make learning fun and interactive is something near and dear to our hearts at Paradox Interactive,” 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.”
The first title to be distributed to schools through the TeacherGaming Store is the award-winning city builder Cities: Skylines, originally published by Paradox Interactive in 2015. The game launches on May 29th with eight custom-made lesson scenarios, touching upon topics from sustainable city planning to active citizenship and the Human Development Index. Along with lesson plans and student progress tracking, the game will also include in-game tutorials customized for the classroom environment.
Tentative future plans involve developing similar educational remixes of Paradox Interactive’s other long-standing series.
“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 Interactive is combating prejudices about the very nature of video games, and that’s also what we have been out to do for the past seven years. In that sense, and many others, this partnership is a perfect fit.”
For more information on the educational version of Cities: Skylines – Education Edition, visit https://store.teachergaming.com/games/cities-skylines.
