Imagine a game that’s as engaging as Minecraft and Fortnite, but its purpose is to educate children…
Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? Well, French startup PowerZ, founded by Emmanuel Freund, and the founder of the popular cloud gaming service Shadow is in the process of developing this game and has raised $8.3 million from investors.
PowerZ’s Educational Game
PowerZ is both an ed-tech startup and a video game studio that has the ambition to change how the world sees education. The company wants to build “a sort of Ready Player One education” in which a child could learn things within a fantasy open-world setting that features cute dragons and magic spells that will make children want to come back regularly.
Most education apps are focused on one knowledge area in particular and are somewhat basic. Education hasn’t changed that much in the past 100 years. When you walk into a classroom, it still looks like a classroom. – Emmanuel Freund.
The company launched its first version of the game in February with very little content, but it wanted to start integrating as quickly as possible. It has had 15,000 children try out its first chapter spending 4 hours in the game on average. Freund has said that the company’s vision is “completely validated” by those numbers.
PowerZ has now raised over $11.8 million (£8,522,609) since it first started, with $8.3 million (£5,994,717) being raised since the last lot of investments for its ambitious goal. Bpifrance Digital Venture, RAISE Ventures and Bayard are the latest investors to join Educapital, Hachette Livres, Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet and Michaël Benabou, who invested in the idea once more.
What PowerZ’s Educational Game Contains
Now the company has enough investors, it will continue to add new content. Once the game is up and running, kids will be able to practice mental calculation, geometry, vocabulary, foreign languages, sign language, astronomy, photography, architecture, sculpture, cooking, wildlife, yoga, and so much more.
As this continues, PowerZ wants to continue to partner with other studios. Zero Games, Opal Games and ArkRep are the first third-party studios to contribute to the game, and more will definitely want to follow.
PowerZ also wants to expand to new platforms and it is doing so, with its launch on iPad last week and iPhone will be soon to follow. It is hoping to launch on Nintendo Switch and other game consoles by 2022. Freund believes educational games will become mainstream very quickly and is hoping to set an example.
The game is completely free for now, but they are hoping to monetise it through in-app game purchases. It is also only available in French for the time being, but the English version is expected to drop at the end of Summer 2021.
Would you want to explore this educational world? Let us know in the comments below!
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