Good game found on the BBC Schools website

[Roisin]

I really like the look of the Jirafa World game that was posted on the Engage site and I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product. It's great when so much thought is put into the visual elements without losing out on the pedagogical effectiveness of games.

One of my favourite serious games that was developed for teenagers is Destination Death (http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesi ... h/western/), a language game developed by LessRain for Bitesize, the BBC schools website. The graphics work great with the storyline and the game works well as a revision tool or in line with a lesson plan. The game features an interesting take on aural learning by making the character communicate over "Walkie-Talkies" and the levels are separated into episodes which utilise the methods used in teaching languages; developing both reading and aural skills. You can save the game after each episode suggesting that it would be useful in taking a focused approach of learning the basic vocabulary in each section prior to playing the game and using the game as revision for that particular block of words.

I am always checking back at the BBC schools website to see what other games they have on offer!

[Paul Pivec]

I very much like the Jirafa World game. It has great graphics, looks to have good game play and pedagogical basis for a successful educational game. Hopefully the rest of the game will be as good as the promotional video.

This is a good example of what can be achieved if developers and academics work together. Far too often this does not happen, and we end up with a good idea but a bad game that nobody wants to play. Academics rarely can design and certainly not develop a good game. And developers usually have no idea as to what makes a good learning game targeted at the correct level for the audience.

Sometimes I am surprised....but not very often

[Roisin]

Very true Paul, and this is especially seen in online games. If a game is provided for free (and to be fair, we all love free games) more often than not the idea is there but it is lost behind poor graphics and game play. With so many children now owning an XBOX 360 or PS3, it becomes harder to convince both teachers and the students themselves that a graphically lower quality game will benefit them in a learning environment.

[Paul Pivec]

It is interesting that we all have this perception that educational games are poor (I wanted to use the term "suck" but decided that wouldn't be fair) because they have low quality (or just plain bad) graphics - which they more than often do.

However, I surveyed over 500 participants and one question asked was what would encourage them to play educational games (as basically none of them did). Their answer was not better graphics, but better gameplay and multiplayer games for learning. Hence the gameplay is the big one, and it is interesting that few, if any, educational games are multiplayer. The one you started this thread with, apparently is.

[Roisin]

The idea of multiplayer educational games is great, to provide a competitive, immersive learning environment. Many of the educational games out there which are single player are often used in classroom environments with groups of 2 or 3 students collaborating and strategising as a single user. While this is certainly a good way of teaching some things (Global Conflicts: Palestine comes to mind here), a true multiplayer game would be interesting in teaching things like language, maths, etc. Now I'm really looking forward to seeing Jirafa World!

[Nick_Kearney]

Hi,
I agree about the graphics/gameplay issue. There is an argument, not always made explicit, along the lines of : better graphics means more "realistic" therefore more "immersive". It reminds of the days back in MOOs etc. No graphics at all, (well, the graphics were in your head) but that did not mean they were not "immersive"... I have felt more involved in MOOs than in many highly developed game environments where the activity didnt appeal to me.
The graphics issue seems to be a distraction to me, good graphics may contribute but they are not vital, and an activity can be absorbing (immersive if you will) without them, if it engages the player/user/learner. This is not so much about games as about learning itself perhaps.
Which takes me to a little bugbear I have with the term "serious games". It is a term that tries to sell the idea of using games for other purposes than just play, but unfortunately it seems to me to be short cut that doesnt help. If we want decision-makers to buy into the idea of using games for learning, then they need at some point to accept the idea that the learning will be fun, and not necessarily "serious". Using the term simply avoids, or postpones that debate, and it is a debate that we need to engage in. Obviously it goes beyond the field of games themselves, to expectations about what learning involves, motivation, the contents of the curriculum, the purpose of education etc. It seems to me that these are issues that the ENGAGE community needs to address explicitly. The name of the project has a part to play there.
MIS!
Nick

[Paul Pivec]

Sadly, you are probably only a small part of the target audience, even if I agree with you. And although I am a strong advocate that good gameplay will trump graphics any day (look at Tetris), there are also those teenagers that even though they say graphics dont matter, they complain if they are bad (yes, I know, teenagers complain about everything! ).

I also played the text based adventures like "Adventure" and "Air War"....."You are standing at the end of the road before a small brick building. Around you is forest, A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully. These games were great. They were compelling and immersive. However, they evolved into graphically immersive games like "Myst".

For many players, graphics are like Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory (Yes, I am showing my age here). Back in 1959, Frederick Herzberg completed studies to find which factors in an employee's work environment caused satisfaction or dissatisfaction. He found that if some desirable factors were present (like high quality graphics), they did not lead to satisfaction. However, if they were missing, they cause dissatisfaction. Many hard core players today expect high quality graphics as a given.

But, are hard core game players the target audience of educational games. I suggest not. Hence one could ask why the "serious games" fraternity model their output on the hard core game market. Look at "Thinking Worlds". It centers around a 1st/3rd person 3D engine, modeled from the commercial game market. In fact, many "serious games" are created to look exactly like commercial recreational games. Why is this? Could someone please enlighten me?

As for comments on the term "serious", I have opened a new thread on the ideas forum.
Cheers,
Paul

[Nick_Kearney]

I don't think you are showing your age. I think Herzberg is still useful. But then maybe I am showing my age!!

I would definitely agree that I am not part of the target audience, if that audience is hardcore game players and I think you are right to question whether they are the target audience in the context of Engage. Thinking of our context here, the teachers are definitely not part of that group, and it is even arguable whether the teenagers taken as a group fit that. I just asked my kids about their classes, and in both (12 years) and (16 years) roughly 30% maximum fit into the category of hardcore game players. Is it the same in all our countries?

Another related aspect is the way this subgroup are perceived by the others in their peer group. They are called "friquis"! It comes from the English "freak" but has mutated a little in translation as loan words tend to, and means more someone who is a little obsessive about technology/videogames/science fiction/fantasy/comics in any combination, it has something of the nerd, something of the fan (as in person dressed as Jar Jar Binks at a Star Wars convention, but it isnt necessarily negative. The friquis themselves use the term. But it might affect perceptions of how the use of games in education might be perceived by some of the students, depending on how you present it.

I find the issue interesting as we think about the leaflet we are designing to publicise the workshop. What kind of images of games for example would be appropriate for the immediate target audience, the teachers. It might be that teachers think more of Pacman and Asteroids than Lara Croft when one mentions video games, or should we be thinking more in terms or Mario and Pokemon, who may be more familiar. Or should we focus on images of people playing games and classrooms, rather than the games themselves.

What do you all think? (This might need a new thread)

[Maria Murray]

Apologies, I am a bit of a late-comer to this thread,

Having read over what people have said so far a few things have struck me. Personally I think that graphics are definitely secondary to gameplay. I think the wii sport graphics (for example) clearly illustrate this. The makers of the wii games intentionally used what we'd view as quite poor (dare I say; tacky!) graphics for things like wii sport & wii music, the point being that the revolutionary game play (using the wii remote) is what will impress & engage the users. Since these initial wii games there has been plenty of wii titles that use much more sophisticated graphics, showing that it is possible for the platform to support more advanced graphics, & that the cruder graphics sometimes employed by the wii game developers are not there because of a lack of design ability or a shortfall in the platform itself, but to put the emphasis solidly on their innovative methods of gameplay & interaction. Although perhaps the new gamer-market opened up by the wii is perhaps not typically made up of the "hard-core gamers" Paul refers to.

In terms of the images for the leaflet, I think it could work to show a combination of examples of popular & well recognised game characters as well as images of people playing games in classrooms. As Nick pointed out though, it is difficult to guess what kind of game characters are appropriate for the teachers!

Just a quick thought as well on the debate of the relevance or accuracy of the "serious games" title. While it is useful for practitioners to use the term in debates such as these to differentiate the different types of games, when it is sent into the broader world of decision-makers, teachers & players, it can become a bit of a liability I think! Recently we piloted a basic serious game developed over a short time scale here in DEIS in a local boys primary school, as soon as the words "games" & "learning" are mentioned in tandem, the boys (aged 11 / 12) all groaned & rolled their eyes, it would have been more effective perhaps for us to present the game without mentioning it's educational value! This to me is indicative of the fact that learning is not perceived as "fun". I think this is a perception that often comes from the top down and as Nick pointed out, this is certainly an issue to be addressed when approaching decision-makers & teachers with our ideas.