Educational games are usually developed by copying existing recreational games and adding instructional components, or by using the intuitive preferences of the designer. However, existing games attract people through ideological value exemplifications. Moreover, whatever else they teach, games teach ideologies of either preservation, equality, or freedom. Helmar Frank's Political Value Triangle and an analogous Aesthetic Value triangle can be used to construct heuristics to help the educational designer choose games that cultivate the ideological ideals of the school or community concerned. This paper delineates ways of investigating these ideological "metaobjectives" of instruction insofar as they are embodied in specific learning activity packages and discusses several examples. Fifteen references are listed, and six figures illustrate the use of value triangles in game design. (Author/LMM)