What's Wrong With Pre-K Game Apps

In this article, game designer Sande Chen explains why some Pre-K educational game apps may actually be disrupting the learning process.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center recently released the report, "Getting a Read on the App Stores: A Market Scan and Analysis of Children's Literacy Apps." Disappointingly, the majority of children's apps, although labeled "educational," didn't have any benchmark of educational quality and moreover, they weren't even game-like, featuring content that had wrong or right answers or actions.  Basically, they were interactive quizzes.

I had suggested in Journal Review: Game-Based Learning in India that perhaps we should be thinking about designing an app for a group of children rather than just one.  It turns out that young children learn best when an app is designed for co-use by a child and another caring individual, like a parent, babysitter, or sibling.  Only 2 of the 170 apps reviewed in the children's literacy report had any support for co-use.

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Have we been designing children's apps wrongly?  An April 2015 study entitled "Putting Education in 'Educational' Apps: Lessons From the Science of Learning" describes what not to do:

"The app began by reading the story to the child, and the narrative was progressing naturally with an introduction of the main characters and a story arc when buttons were suddenly displayed on the screen and children were asked to find things that “begin with the letter C.”

Adding these interactive activities or interactive hotspots, sections of the screen that move or make noise but are not essential to the story, may seem natural to game designers, but it turns out this is detrimental to the child's learning process.  And it's worse when the app is for pre-schoolers.  Older children may be able to focus, but pre-schoolers are especially susceptible to distraction.  Researchers have studied the areas of distraction and attention extensively in children. 

Furthermore, very few Pre-K apps are open-ended enough that the child can direct the play.  I have always heard that children's games should be very directed, with big arrows guiding the child to do the programmed activity, but according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics, "When play is allowed to be child-driven, children practice decision-making skills, move at their own pace, discover their own areas of interest and ultimately engage fully."

This kind of play is so important that neuroscientist Sergio Pellis found in studies of baby rats that the brains of play-deprived rats do not develop normally.

As developers, let's learn to optimize learning rather than destroy it!

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

Want to Write for Video Games? Gameacon 2015 Panel

In this podcast, game writers Sande Chen, Francisco Gonzalez, and Matthue Roth, along with moderator Alexander Bevier, discuss how to break into the game industry as a writer.

Want to Write for Video Games? 
Gameacon November 19-22, 2015

Moderated by video game scholar Alexander Bevier, panelists Sande Chen, Francisco Gonzalez, and Matthue Roth shed light on what writers do in the industry, how newcomers can get their start, and why writers are desperately needed in the video game industry. Learn about the growing field of narrative design and how games are affected by creative narrative design. The panel gives a fascinating look at an often overlooked part of the video game development process.

Games discussed:  Tetris, Half Life 2, The Witcher, Shadow of the Colossus, Gamestar Mechanic, World of Lexica, Terminus, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Monkey Island 2, League of Legends, Assassin's Creed 2, Shardlight, Bioshock Infinite, Mass Effect, 80 Days

Thanks to everyone who came to our panel!

If you weren't able to come to Gameacon this year, check it out next year on October 27-30, 2016 at the Tropicana Casino Resort in Atlantic City, NJ. Here's footage from Gameacon 2015.

A writer and game designer, Sande Chen has over 15 years experience in the industry. Her first game writing credit was on the epic space-combat RPG, Terminus, which won 2 awards at the 1999 Independent Games Festival. She was later nominated for a 2007 Writers Guild of America award in Videogame Writing for the dark fantasy RPG, The Witcher. She runs the WGAE Videogame Writers Caucus and is SIG leader of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

Francisco Gonzalez has been writing and designing point and click adventure games since 2001. His favorite aspect of designing narrative based games is the writing process, and being able to create worlds and make characters come to life. He currently works at Wadjet Eye Games as a designer.

Matthue Roth is a game designer, producer, and writer. From 2012-2015 he was lead game designer at Amplify, an educational games company that won awards from the iTunes Store, BAFTA, and Games for Change. Most recently his games swept the 2015 Serious Play Conference, earning 3 out of 4 gold medals awarded that year. He’s also the author of six novels, and the New Yorker called his writing “eerie and imaginative.” He keeps a secret diary at matthue.com.

Alexander Bevier is a writer, game designer and scholar. He works in narrative design and is an IGDA Committee member for the Game Writing SIG. He is currently an MFA at NYU Game Center working on his thesis about 1970s game designers.

How to be Successful at Game Jams

In this video, game prototyping specialist Bernard François explains the steps for a successful game jam experience: preparation, concept choice, production planning, and execution.
 
Making games in 48 hours is hard. But what can you do to increase your chances of success? How can your prepare yourself for a game programming competition, such as Global Game Jam?  What are some of the strategies you could employ to turn the odds in your favor?

This video tells you all about it.

Bernard François is a game prototyping specialist and founder of PreviewLabs - the only company in the world entirely dedicated to rapid prototyping for projects using game dev technology.

Upcoming Workshops in Game Writing and Genre Fiction

I'm pleased to announce the fourth installment of the Game Writing Portfolio Workout on February 2nd at Microsoft NYC! I'm so amazed by the reception of these workshops.  I even got a standing ovation at the conclusion of the last Workout.  

If you'd thought about writing for video games or even if you are a practicing game writer, come join me in this fun community event.  No experience is required, though it is helpful.  Participation in the earlier workouts are not needed to understand what's going on, but you do get a broader sense of what is the craft of game writing if you have attended the earlier sessions.  I think this may be the last of the series, at least for now, because I want to get back to the genre fiction workshop I first offered back in July 2015.  It's what got the Game Writing Portfolio Workout started but there's still lots to explore in the worlds of science fiction, fantasy, and horror game writing.  Call it a specialization :)

As always, the event is held through Playcrafting NYC, which offers classes and events related to game development.  Early Bird tickets start selling now.

Then, on March 3rd, I'll return to Microsoft NYC for Writing for Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror Game Worlds.  If you're interested in science fiction, fantasy, and/or horror and want to populate your game world with monsters, creatures, aliens, fantastical beasts, and otherworldly cultures, you can benefit from this participatory workshop. Tickets sold here.

About Me

My background is a mixture of theatre, film, journalism, economics, and writing.  I received a S.B. in Writing and Humanistic Studies (now the major of Comparative Media Studies) at MIT and then I specialized in Screenwriting at USC's School of Cinematic Arts.  My first published game as a writer was on the epic space combat RPG, Terminus, which won 2 awards at the 1999 Independent Games Festival.  Afterwards, I worked on the episodic fantasy series Siege of Avalon, MMO Wizard101, and the dark fantasy RPG, The Witcher, for which I was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award in Videogame Writing. I currently head the WGAE Videogame Writers Caucus and am SIG leader of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

Latest Game News Here! Press Any Key Games Podcast

Hi!  I had so much fun with the Geeks World Wide Year in Review podcast that I'll now be appearing semi-regularly on the Press Any Key Games Podcast!  If you don't have a chance to catch up on your daily or weekly game news or just want to get a perspective on what others find important, take a listen to the podcast or watch the livestream at the following places:

When we're livestreaming, it'll be on Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/thegww

If you want to listen, there's GWW Radio on SoundCloud:  https://soundcloud.com/gww-101643494

Or you can subscribe through iTunes:  https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/gww-podcast/id462109667?mt=2

Videos are posted on the GWW Web site:  http://thegww.com/category/podcasts/games-podcast/

Finally, if you want to subscribe on YouTube, there's the Geeks World Wide channel 

Show Notes (if you want to check out some of the news stories yourself)

PSA: Amazon Prime gives 20 percent discount on new/pre-release games. (http://bit.ly/1Q6FUzx)
HTC says Vive preorders to start on February 29, with shipping in April. (http://bit.ly/1Q6Dxg1)
VR sticker shock: How Oculus failed to prepare the world for a $599 Rift. (http://bit.ly/1Q6DEbg)
Will Supreme Court tackle 1st Amendment issue in Madden NFL litigation? (http://bit.ly/1Q6DDEn)
Major piracy group warns games may be crack-proof in two years. ( http://bit.ly/1Q6DIIc)
Analyst thinks the Nintendo NX will ‘cannibalize’ 3DS and Wii U sales. (http://bit.ly/1Q6DX64)
2015 was the Japanese games industry’s worst year on record. (http://bit.ly/1Q6DUXQ)
Norwegian high school puts e-sports and gaming on the timetable. (http://bit.ly/1Q6FQQc)
Sony tried to trademark ‘Let’s Play’. (http://bit.ly/1Q6DQau)   
“I am not a terrorist”: Muslim man barred from playing Paragon beta. (http://bit.ly/1Q6G9dR)

Please Stop Sticking Things To Animals

In this article, game designer Francisco Gonzalez implores adventure game designers to avoid puzzles with sticky animals so that players can have a better gameplay experience.

Allow me to go on a bit of a rant, if I may. Adventure games have become infamous for their puzzles. I say “infamous” because when you ask most people what feelings they associate with playing games of this genre, they often respond with “frustration,” “annoyance,” or “hate.” The reason for this is mostly because many early adventure games featured puzzles with logic so obtuse, players wouldn’t be able to proceed unless they called the company-run hint lines (at roughly 75 cents per minute) to get the answers they needed. In fact, the founders of Sierra Online have admitted that at one point, revenue from hint books and hint lines far surpassed that of sales of the actual games. Once the internet became popular, this all went away, since finding solutions was just a Google search away. What didn’t go away, however, was ridiculous puzzle design. What’s worse, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in recent adventure games that have all adopted a common solution: sticking things to animals.

“What on earth are you talking about?” you may be wondering. Allow me to enlighten you, dear reader, on the

intricacies of this terrifying new trope. In what can only be described as “creative desperation,” there are several games which feature this type of puzzle. In the interest of integrity, I will refrain from naming them, but I will describe the puzzles in detail so as to warn you in case you ever encounter them in your gameplay experiences.

We’ll begin with a recent release, which features not one, but TWO instances of the stick things to animals puzzle. In the first case, our protagonist finds himself in a mountaintop cable car station. The villains have stopped the cars from running by sabotaging a fuse box. Our job, as the player, is to repair the broken fuse and get the system running again. If the player attempts to look in the fusebox, they can see that the broken fuse is located at the far end of the box, out of the player’s reach (he doesn’t want to stick his arms in for fear of being electrocuted.)

Now, there are a number of ways this could have been handled, but this is how the game designers chose to go about it in this particular case: in the player’s inventory is a matchbox containing a live cockroach which we have been carrying all game, along with a crumbled tea biscuit, a paper clip, and several other items which serve no current purpose. In the station are a pair of large gears, on top of which is a lunch box. Activating the large gears crushes the lunchbox, which causes a jar of jam inside to explode and leak around the area. The player must then use the paperclip on the jam to make it sticky, then paste it on the back of the cockroach, toss the biscuit inside the fusebox, which then lures the roach to the exact spot where the paperclip on its back makes contact with the ends of the fuse and restarts the mechanism.

Take a moment to recover from that. As long as you need. Now, let’s move on to the second instance.

The second to last puzzle in this game features an ancient temple being guarded by some armed thugs. In the vicinity is a goat. To scare the thugs away, the player must take a piece of old sausage, stick a fuse in it so it resembles dynamite, light it, then tie it around the goat’s neck and lure it over to the guard with some fruit, scaring them away.

One might think this sort of thing was specific to this one game, but another one released in the mid 2000s did something equally ridiculous. In this game, the player is required to spy on a conversation being held inside a house, to which they have no access. Hanging around outside is a cat, and through some exploration the player can notice that the cat’s water dish is inside the house. In order to spy on the people talking inside, the player must tape their cell phone to the back of the cat, then feed it some extra salty tuna so it becomes thirsty and runs inside to drink water from its dish. The player then listens in via another phone.

One more example of this is a rather famous puzzle from a well-known game where the player needs to retrieve a key from some subway tracks. The solution requires you to tie a rope and clamp to an inflatable duck flotation device. The deflating duck causes the clamp to slowly close and grab the key. While technically not a living animal, this should be included for its sheer ridiculousness.

The lesson to be learned here is that animals should not be included as viable solutions to adventure game puzzles. Forcing the player to think up these outlandish and ridiculous solutions only hurts the genre and causes nothing but frustration and anger.

 Francisco Gonzalez has been writing and designing point and click adventure games since 2001. His favorite aspect of designing narrative based games is the writing process, and being able to create worlds and make characters come to life. He currently works at Wadjet Eye Games as a designer.

2015 Gaming Year In Review Podcast

It's that time of the year for wrap-ups, top ten lists, and remembrance. What were your top gaming stories of the year? I participated in the Geeks World Wide 2015 Gaming Year in Review Podcast where we discussed upcoming trends in VR, open worlds vs. linear narrative experiences, and of course, awesome games.

Show Notes (if you want to check out some of the news stories yourself)

Confirmed: Kojima leaves Konami to work on PS4 console exclusive [Updated]. (http://bit.ly/1Oi4HuF)
Survey: “Gamers” are poorer, more male, less white than “game players”. (http://bit.ly/1Oi4F5Z)
Nintendo touchscreen controller patent offers clues about upcoming NX. (http://bit.ly/1Oi4HuP)
BioShock creator: ‘gamers want an experience that lasts more than 10-12 hours’. (http://bit.ly/1Oi4Iip)