Learning Game: Art Duels Thoughts

It was a very exciting experience to have the game show in school. Overall the experience was really positive. A good way to measure success is by seeing if kids smile, laugh, tease each other, and if they want to win.

Here is the game



My Thoughts:

Positive:
1) Kids really liked the visual questions. Having questions that require attention more than knowledge helped all students get involved and motivated them to participate.
2) Painting reinforcement. Using the same painting but asking different questions helped students form different connections to the painting.
3) Student Interaction: I found out that asking them questions about what they thought of the game ended up giving me great feedback, they were really helpful.


Negative:
1) Points took too long to show up
2) Students didn't use helpers (they just guessed the answer in 5-10 seconds)
3) No incentive to win made them not really care about competition. Students from all teams would answer the questions.

Learning Game: Art Duels Complete

Today I finished Art Duels, the final game had a twist from what was originally planned, I was able to meet up with the art teacher and some students and we decided to move from a pong game to a trivia game. Here is a screenshot of what the game looks like:

The game is a multiple choice trivia, with 3 tools to help students answer the question (look in books, look in cell phone, more time). Each tool will reduce the amount of points the students will get if they answer correctly.

During Arts week we will have a 30 minute window to play the game. The game will have 4 teams and 8 questions for each team.

I will follow up this post with my thoughts on the experience.

Learning Game: Art Duels (Part || Assets)

This post will concentrate on breaking down the Assets part of the game:

First lets Highlight our current list of important elements:
Assets: Stylish, Story line, Congratulate, Motivate, Challenge


Now a look at each element on the list:

Stylish: I am thinking about something like a boxing match publicity, facing off two boxers but in our case, two painters:

I really want to think of something cool for the HUD, something that makes it seem like a sports channel is showcasing the battle:

For the story line I think that the theme is perfect for telling the story with a timeline:

To congratulate the player I really want to have messages like Candy Crush has:

Finally in order to challenge the player I want to add a little personality to the players by adding a little smack talk before the duel, something very similar to Street Fighter:

Obviously sound will be playing on all of these cases, later on I will take a look at sounds.

If you have any more references to the type of art I am talking about please feel free to share them so that I can take a look at them.

for an overview of the project take a look at this post

Learning Game: Art Duels (part I:Introduction)

Art Duels is the name of the first game developed under this blog. I will incorporate all the details noticed from all the previous posts.

Here is a quick summary of all the Thoughts taken from the previous posts:

Assets: Stylish, Story line, Congratulate, Motivate, Challenge

Interactivity: Simple, Variety, Visualize Controls, Intuitive

Education: Focus Student, Repetition, Doing, Solve a problem

Engine: Unique, Time-Based difficulty

Deadline: February 28,2014

Goal: To teach kids about famous painters (their style, their time period, location)

Project Overview:

This game is going to be part of a workshop. Students will be drawing with styles of their favorite painter (ex:Monet, Manet, Picasso, Botero...) and after they are done painting I will place their art inside of a previously build game so that they will end up with a video game created by them. 

The Game: 

A very similar game to the very popular Pong. The goal here is to have a simple, casual and fun game that kids can share and compete with their friends.

here is a screenshot of Pong for anyone that is not familiar with the game:

Feel free to share your thoughts, any advice is very well welcomed. 

Learning Math Engine

This is a small test of how the engine of the game can adapt to the user:

Answer True if the equation is correct and False if it is incorrect. 

As you might have noticed, the more questions you get right the questions get harder....

How does this work?

The code above lets you see some of the logic, basically if they get the question right, then I see how fast they answered it. if they answer the question in about 3 seconds I then increase a streak variable.

Once that variable increases the difficulty increases.


Here is an image of a sample run I made:

As you can see, by the time the timer ran out I was already solving 2 digit questions

I will share a small test I made, playing this game, 20 times with 5 minute runs for each try. 

The colors indicate difficulty, the length of the color represents the amount of time I took for that difficulty.

Notice how the first run i was only able to reach level 6, but right near the end I was able to answer level 8 questions.. 

Obviously this brings many thoughts to mind is this really improving my math skills? 

test it out and maybe you can let me know if you feel you have improved. 

But going back to the subject of this post (Engine) I want to highlight the fact that the interactivity of this game adjusting the difficulty always kept me challenged and it somehow allowed me to reach higher levels than before.

My Thoughts:

-Everyone is different, adapting the difficulty makes the game more the right amount of challenging for players.

-The 8 answer streak seems to work but more testing is needed to proof that it is correct

-The 3 second rule makes the game very challenging but it might also need to be adapted depending on difficulty

-Times seem to be reduced with repetition 

Learning to be Fit

I wanted to start the interactivity element with a great game by Nintendo... Wii Fit.

The reason I chose this game is because I believe this game motivates people to exercise, it teaches them about healthy habits and it does it all while you are having fun.

When I was living in orlando I got a Wii Fit, and for many months it allowed me to track my weight, get on a routine and lose some weight. The only downside was that I would make a lot of noise and I ended up not using it too often in order to not bother my downstairs neighbors.

Important Notes:

-The game controls are very simple to use.

-There is a nice variety of ways to play games.

-You can visualize how good you are using the controls.

My Thoughts:

-The controls are pretty intuitive, this helps anyone start playing and then they can improve over time and learn how to master the controls. Complex controls will easily drive people away from a game, even if it is a great game (this sort of happened to me with Zelda's Skyward Sword)

-The variety in the controls help keep the game interesting, I remember doing some running and then just relaxing with a little game that just required me to hit some soccer balls, and then jumping into an intense boxing workout. This really allowed me to spend more time than I would if it was just one type of control.

-The visual and sound feedback really helps the user adjust and learn little details on how to improve. So for example on a game to teach music, you could visually display the tempo, or perhaps the notes in order for the student to notice immediately a mistake without having some sort of punishment for missing it. 

Learning from Cartoons

Graphics and sounds are the front page of videogames. I do not believe that they define a good game, but they can easily make a good game great.  I wanted to learn a bit more about art, and I thought of a great company that knows a thing or two about entertainment. Check out this video interview of the creators of Hanna-Barbera (Joseph Barbera and William Hanna).

Interesting thoughts:

-"Success came due to a Novelty Look"

- "Good Stories, and Great Voices"

-"We are invoved in the D.A.R.E progam"

-"You have to make it Entertaining or they are not going to watch it, therefore they won't get the message"

-"Don't hit them in the head with it"

My Opinions:

-It is very important to have a nice looking game, not always about higher resolution but maybe if you can have some stylish art it can help attract new users.

-Stories are great tools for engagement, people like to relate to stories, this could easily be replicated in games that teach history, but perhaps a fun challenge could be teaching something like multiplication using a fun storiline that helps kids understand the importance of learning something.

- The voices are something very special, I still remember certain voices from cartoon shows in the 90's, A good voice in a game can be used to congratulate, motivate and challenge the kids to do better, it will also help the games seem more "human" and personal.

-I was pleased to be able to find a connection with what they do and what I want to do. At the point where they talk about teaching children about certaing things and being involved in the D.A.R.E progam. It is important to use something that is fun in order to teach.

-the last two quotes are very important MAKE IT FUN! don't fill the game with facts and tasks, entertain them and they will be able to learn.

Learning about Teamwork

Welcome!

Thank you very much for taking the time to visit the blog. I want  to give you a brief explanation of my goals with this site and how YOU are a key part of it.

I have always have a very strong passion for making fun, educational games. I have developed over 50 games, although most of them are not educational. The reason why I decided to make this blog, and the reason I hope you join my quest, is because I am very aware that the fastest, most effective way to make a good solid game is with TEAMWORK.

You have great skills in a particular area, any area, I am sure you have many things you could teach the rest of us. My goal is to create a blog where very talented people from around the world share their thoughts on how to improve a particular area of an Educational game.

I have broken down the game development of an educational game in the following elements:

Assets: Art and Sounds
Education: The learning component of the game
Engine: The game engine that holds the whole thing
Games: A look at educational games to learn about what works and what needs improvement
Interactivity: Making the game Fun
Market: Analysis of what type of technology is currently available and how teachers adapt to it.
Tests: Testing the games that get created.

I will be posting very often on the blog, but I don't want to be analyzing everything by myself, I want to hear your comments, I want to see your work, share it with the community. If you feel like having a post on the blog, send it over, I will gladly add it for the community to learn from it.

THANK YOU for your time, and hopefully one day we will have great working games at every school.

Daniel Bahamon (danbahamon@gmail.com)