Children love to play computer games created by software developers. Recently, some games have been made available with editing tools, allowing children to enhance their games by creating new characters or stories.

This paper presents some research on the educational benefits of children creating their own games. A workshop was organized with a group of young teenagers. They used the Neverwinter Nights game, first to learn how to play, and then to enhance it. The teenagers were interviewed at the end of the workshop to evaluate their experience, and to suggest improvements.

The study showed that children could better express their creativity in a game creation environment than in regular written language. The children were motivated and proud of their creations. Some editing tools were considered too complex or incomplete to use.

This research shows the educational value of certain computer games, and the way the games could be used in the curriculum. Such inherently attractive games could help children in traditional learning environments to create stories, characters, and dialogues. They could also help children to use multimedia (light, sound, and text). This paper is also interesting in that it shows parents that the games children like to play for hours aid in their education.