Educational Games

Carrots & Sticks?

Games traditionally use carrots to get players excited about finishing the level. Often these carrots are simply the promise of something different at the end. Crucially, the player can't find out what these are until they have finished the required tasks on the current level. This often requires the player to solve puzzles or learn new skills to progress. The carrot need not nescessarily be 'the greatest thing I've ever seen', it is simply something new, something different, something as yet unrevealed. This is often enough to get the player to complete repetitive or otherwise less interesting tasks within the game.

Would this work with training materials? For example, when learning maths, the player is unable to progress to the next stage and learn the next topic until they have mastered the one before it. Eg, solve 30 differential equations.

This will allow players to progress and discover information at their own rate. However, social interaction is also important.

*IDEA* At some points in the course, the more advanced players are unable to progress until their less able classmates have passed a certain (lower) level. They need to teach their fellow class members what they know. This consolidates their own knowledge, encourages them to help others, and provides some social interaction.

The game should excell at adapting itself to a user's ability. If they struggle with a section, there must be a way to give further encouragement, go over the information in more detail, or otherwise give a helping hand to the pupil.

Could start with a single GCSE coursebook and try to teach the whole thing via a videogame?

*IDEA* Marks as a currency. 'Fun' things in the game (eg, customising the player's avatar) require the player to answer questions. Eg, get 5 answers right to get that new hat.

Interaction is important: mechanics questions can be nicely animated with ease.

Tailoring content to the pupil may also help. Classic videogame trick: past action affects future events. Draws player in. Even little things help, passing comments etc.

Push Button Engine

Open source Flash games engine.

http://pushbuttonengine.com/

Worth investigating further...

Soap Opera games

Simple soap opera choose your own adventure, along the lines of Masq.

Would need an acomplished writer.

Graphics could be cartoon style, or photographs. Even video or rotoscoped images, almost anything.

Perfect for the iPhone.

Could work with a variety of settings, period pieces etc. Might appeal to a wide audience.

Fade in/out movement of characters ala The Last Express? Set it in a bar/speak easy?

How to solve the content problem? Small number of areas? Recycle images of the main characters etc....

Worth thinking about...

Game idea: looking for a pulse

Simply a game level in a first person shooter in which you explore the remnants of a battle trying to find people who are still alive.

The player character might be a doctor or a medic with tools for checking pulses, heart rates, breathing and blood loss in place of standard fps guns. These can be used on bodies to ascertain if they are actually dead or not. If not, there may be a way to resussitate them, either by use of some portable device, battlefield surgery or transporting the person to a more suitable location to operate.

Normally videogame characters transition simply from alive to dead via hitpoint reduction, rarely with any concept of specific injuries. The idea here would be to focus on those injuries as opposed to simply killing endless baddies.

This might work well as a short mod.

The art of game design (Book)

http://www.developmag.com/interviews/387/30-Under-30

Top 30 games industry professionals under 30

http://www.developmag.com/interviews/387/30-Under-30

Opinion: How We Can Reshape The Game Industry

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22045

Plasmacore & Slag

Couldn't really start this blog now without talking about Plasmacore and Slag, as they have in part inspired me to start getting back in to game design and production in my spare time.

Slag is a high-level language with a nice syntax and fantastic pick-up-and-play-ness to it written by Abe Pralle

Plasmacore is a set of libraries for Slag geared towards cross platform 2D game development and also written by Abe. Current platforms supported are PC and Wii (if you have a dev kit, natch), but iPhone support is coming soon and with it, potentially Mac support. Personally, I'd love to see something that allows publishing to the web, though not quite sure how that would work... whether you would do it Flash based, or Java or what..

Thanks, Gamasutra

Games4Change

This is a great set of presentations for anyone looking at making awareness raising games. It's aimed at non profit organisations and as such covers a fair chunk of the game making process and a lot of background info for those unfamiliar with the mediun.

Click launch toolkit to view: http://www.gamesforchange.org/toolkit

Thanks, Ars Technica

RPG

Currently throwing around ideas for an old school RPG for the PC, web and iPhone.

Main influence would be NetHack, with a bit of Dwarf Fortress (though no where near as scarily deep) and Chaos, as well as dashes of Deus Ex, Planescape Torment and maybe even Masq.

For visual style, I like the retro feel of sprites being based around single colours and distinctive shapes and also think that this could help readibility massively.


Wish list of features so far is:

* Stat-less progression, characters expressed in terms of adjectives, verbs and adverbs instead.

* Innovative combat in the vein of old school Chapionship Manager, perhaps even with quicktime events.

* Human-ish conversation system, talk your way out of sticky situations.

* Level up each contact in your address book. Other contacts may turn up as foes to defeat!

* Funky retro graphics.

* Level editor end-game, store your valuables in your own tower or dungeon to attract adventurers, but make sure they have to fight or be cunning to get the prizes!


Anyway, all I've got so far is a few crappy first attempts at pixel art for some of the characters. I'm wondering how many different kinds I can do before it gets difficult to tell them apart.



Note for some reason, the conversion to png or the image upload has made the background colour less black and blurred some of the pixel-i-ness.  Click to see raw image.

Amanita Design

An awesome independent developer with a very distinctive visual style. They make the Samorost games. Also check out Questionaut (made for the BBC) and their upcoming game, Machinarium.

Thanks, RockPaperShotgun.