Upon reading Greg Costikyans article 'I have no words & I must deign: toward a critical vocabulary for games', we used the different areas of games design he discussed in the article as headings and applied what we had learnt to analyzing a KS1 game. We found the KS1 game Shape Lab on the bitesize website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks1bitesize/numeracy/shapes/index.shtml). The first 5 headings look at specific content within the game and the final heading is a general overview of the game.
Interaction - to interact in the game you have to click on the correct shape that is being asked for.
The interaction in the game is simple, making it easy to use and suitable for the target audience. This being the case, the interaction is not very exciting its a simple click on the shape and repeat. This gets very boring after a while however it is suitable for the target audience as they like repetition.
To improve the interaction in the game i would include an exciting rollover when the mouse hovers over the shape of little sparks flying off the shape. Something simple like that wouldn't take the repetition the child likes away from the game, but would add a little more excitement to it. Another way the interaction could be improved would be if the characters were more intractable. By this i mean if the child clicked on the face of one of the two characters they could flinch away or sneeze. It's something silly like that, that would make the target audience laugh and create more of a fun learning environment for the them, especially with the target audience being so young.
Goals - to select the right shape that the professor asks for.
The goal of the game is outlined right away. It's obvious throughout what the aim is and how to go about achieving this goal. Once all the five stages are completed, the reward at the end is to see what the scientist has built at the end as the curtain is pulled up. This gives the feeling of a sense of achievement and this suits the target audience well.
The goals are set clearly out in the game so i wouldn't change the aim of the game at all. However i do feel the reward at the end could be improved with a print out picture of the completed robot at the end. It would just make it that much clearer that this is the reward.
Struggle - to use the scientists hints and select the correct shape out of 3 shapes.
There are three difficulty levels at the start of the game to choose from. They range from medium to really hard. This allows the target audience to constantly learn from the game as they continue learning and means they will still be challenged by the game. There is an element however that takes the struggle away from the game. If you answer a question incorrectly you are simply asked to answer the same question again with the same three options to choose from. If the player repeated this process twice then it would become very clear what the correct answer would be. this therefore takes the learning and struggle element away from the game (i feel anyway).
I would change the struggle element of the game by including a wider range of of questions and give the consequence that the question changes upon the player getting the answer wrong more than once. This would still teach the player as they would learn that the only answer they didn't pick was the right one and give them the chance to try again without this 'cheating' element.
Game structure- moving on at each stage.
During the game you have to choose the right answer to move on to the next stage. This forces the player to complete a stage at a time and in a sense force them to learn.
Endogenous meaning- The shapes
The only thing you can state as having Endogenous meaning in shape lab are the shapes themselves. They have a crucial part in the game, you click on the correct shape and the shapes are then used to build a robot. This gives the shapes a value in the game which they don't have in reality. It could be argued that the shapes have a part in the 'real world' as the shapes exist. players could use what they learn in the game and apply it in reality. However i feel that the player are just meant to take away the skills of what they learn and not the shapes themseleves so this is what is meant to be taken from the game.
Evaluation
Overall i think this revision game suits its target audience. I do however think there are a few little tweaks that could be done to improve this game. Simple subtle things such as rollovers and character options could improve the game drastically. i think the 'cheat' system needs to be changed as well as it's taking the learning element away from the game.
Saturday, 20 November 2010
Monday, 1 November 2010
Making board game blog
When discussing ideas on how to turn 'Mr cheeseys spelling fun' into a board game, we found out that it was going to be hard to make it just as fun to play as the video game version. I was only there for the second session that we spoke about where to take the board game version.
We each had individual ideas on what we could do to turn the game into a board game so we used the Iterative Method to find the best way to go about making the game.
Idea 1
We first discussed a way in which we could make the game a dice game with 2-4 players. We thought about designing a board with rules on certain squares that meant the child would have to pick up a card with a letter on it and then over the process of the game they would build a collection of these cards. Once they had collected enough of these cards to spell a word they won.
We soon discovered that there were many floors to this idea. For example what if a child didn’t collect the right letters and never got the opportunity to spell the word they were aiming for? Or that there was no real aim other than to roll a dice and maybe pick up a card and that didn’t really reflect the game at all or teach the child anything. Also there was the players wouldn’t be able to interact of hinder each other much throughout the game so it wouldn’t be very competitive.
To fix these problems we would of had to place many different rules into the game to ensure that a word would always be able to be spelt (the majority of the time).
We decided to scrap this idea completely.
Idea 2
Our second idea was to have a game that would be similar to 'Shove Halfpenny'.
The game would be for up to four players. Each player would pick a pile of cards and each card would have a word written on the back. The aim of the game would be to push the counter onto the correct space of the board and pick up the letters they need to spell the word on their card.
We made a quick layout of the board to see if it could work and play tested it. The concept did work but there are a few things we need to alter and we plan on doing that next session.
We decided to stick to our second idea (for now anyway) unless another idea surfaces.
We each had individual ideas on what we could do to turn the game into a board game so we used the Iterative Method to find the best way to go about making the game.
Idea 1
We first discussed a way in which we could make the game a dice game with 2-4 players. We thought about designing a board with rules on certain squares that meant the child would have to pick up a card with a letter on it and then over the process of the game they would build a collection of these cards. Once they had collected enough of these cards to spell a word they won.
We soon discovered that there were many floors to this idea. For example what if a child didn’t collect the right letters and never got the opportunity to spell the word they were aiming for? Or that there was no real aim other than to roll a dice and maybe pick up a card and that didn’t really reflect the game at all or teach the child anything. Also there was the players wouldn’t be able to interact of hinder each other much throughout the game so it wouldn’t be very competitive.
To fix these problems we would of had to place many different rules into the game to ensure that a word would always be able to be spelt (the majority of the time).
We decided to scrap this idea completely.
Idea 2
Our second idea was to have a game that would be similar to 'Shove Halfpenny'.
The game would be for up to four players. Each player would pick a pile of cards and each card would have a word written on the back. The aim of the game would be to push the counter onto the correct space of the board and pick up the letters they need to spell the word on their card.
We made a quick layout of the board to see if it could work and play tested it. The concept did work but there are a few things we need to alter and we plan on doing that next session.
We decided to stick to our second idea (for now anyway) unless another idea surfaces.
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