Although the following quotes are from an older article: Game Plan, from Technology and Learning (Vol 26, No. 3), some of the problems faced in implementing games in education remain relevant… (sadly, this means nothing much has changed since 2005). The full article can be found here: Techlearning (October 15, 2005)
Educators are on the brink of new and exciting possibilities. Pairing highly qualified educators with the knowledge and skills to guide students through empowering, epistemic learning experiences is a worthwhile goal and one whose time has come.
Even as early as 2005, a number of schools has step up to the plate as pioneers in the field of serious games. The first list includes:
Harvard, MIT, Georgia Tech, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Carnegie Mellon, international institutions such as Oxford and the University of Copenhagen, and numerous private companies and research labs are lending undeniable legitimacy to the serious game genre through the increasing funding of research and classroom pilot studies.
The obstacles we educators faced in using digital game for learning in classrooms remain the same. Sweeping systemic changes may come (one of these days), but it is slow in coming. Teachers are still struggling with limited class time, policy-makers, parents and other stakeholders are still questioning the merits of video games in learning… and of course, some game publishers only muddy the water even more by releasing controversial titles (yes, they have to make a sale; and no, they are not helping).
The current barriers of scheduling constraints, lack of clear assessment strategies for higher-order thinking skills, “digital immigrant” teachers who are unfamiliar with games, and the general inability for educational games to compete with slick consumer offerings all suggest that the incorporation of this new genre goes hand in hand with more sweeping school reform efforts.
And the 1 million dollar questions for all policymakers is, of course, “How do we know digital game-based learning is effective?” Is there even a way to measure the effectiveness of DGBL? How do one even approach the problem of video games assessment?
A lack of management features, such as progress reports and evaluation components, made accountability difficult. And perhaps most significant, it took a trained, motivated teacher to identify the game’s direct tie-in to curriculum objectives – an exercise often necessary to convince administrators and parents of instructional time well spent. In recent years, teachers are finding that additional pressures brought on by the testing requirements of NCLB means even less time to experiment with innovative learning games.
For now I will leave you to ponder this matter for a little longer. (After all, it is the 1 million dollar question!) 
