Learning assignment 6
Look at other games documented in the course blog and provide your own feedback. Collect feedback about your game in your blog as well.
Equivalent task for me: Choose three different kinds of learning games.
The Oregon Trail: American Settler (iPad, 2012)
The Oregon Trail is a well known, classic educational game that I'd never heard of before, but stumbled across during my Gamification course research. Having been around in various forms since 1971, the game was originally designed to teach young American children about "the realities of 19th century pioneer life".
Originally it was a board game, but I've caught up with the iOS version on my iPad, though I gather the principles are roughly the same. Free to download, the game included in-app-purchases.
The game itself takes the form of a city builder where you have to add in and manage all kinds of elements, like houses, farms, cattle, decor, and the kinds of high street buildings you'd find in pioneer towns. You have to make sure the people are fed and healthy as well as trying to grow the town by clearing space and putting efforts into building new facilities.
The game itself has, I feel, more noble origins that are apparent in this current iteration. Its more of a game designed to make you spend money on it that, in my opinion, teach players about frontier life. At the start there's some hardship with your daughter falling ill and you needing to get help for her, and when other characters do speak, they talk in a wild west-esque style, saying things like "You've got yourself a Lil' Patch o' Heaven! Invite yer friends to swing on by 'n' take it all in!" when trying to get you to connect on Facebook or Twitter or something.
I find this kind of game quite frustrating as I am only able to play it a little bit before I run out of game energy, meaning I have to pay real money for more (which I won't do), ask friends on social networks to give me some (which I won't do) or wait until my energy builds up again. I think this game teaches more about monetizing games than it does about pioneer life. It's about as educational as Sim City is about city planning.
My guess is that the original video game version released in 1982 was much more educational and a lot less frustrating. It might be that through extended play, the game reveals itself to much more interesting, nuanced and educational, but I worry that I won't have the patience for that.
Stack The Countries (iPad, 2014)
Stack The Countries is a game designed to teach children facts about countries. The game play revolves around answering mutliple-choice questions about flags, capital cities, continents, languages, neighbouring countries and famous landmarks and correct answers are rewarded by having the country to drop on a block, hopefully eventually having enough of them to stack up and cross a line, the height of which depends on your level.
Sure, there are plenty of reasons this game works. It's full of general knowledge information about basic geography and it's pitched in a tone that ought to be fairly easy and fun for a child to pick up and play. However, on it's own, it's not particularly impressive. The way the countries have been personified with googly eyes looks cheap and the mechanism of dropping the countries to make enough to cross a line seems forced and arbitrary.
The best way I can imagine this title to work is within (and in contrast to) a dull primary school geography lesson. It looks like it could distract students for a short time and still remain faithful to the geography subject. I would still imagine that the experience could be further gamified if the teacher awarded a special prize to the student(s) who did best playing the game.
Toca Kitchen Monsters (iPad 2012)
Toca Kitchen Monsters is a game designed to replicate a traditional play experience of cooking that children have, but this time in a video game.
The game is profoundly simple and open ended. There are two monsters who have turned up for dinner, but who seems quite friendly. You are given a choice of ingredients to choose from, such as mushroom, tomato, broccoli, sausage (though there is a vegetarian toggle in the setting) and a few different ways of preparing the food, such as frying, blending, boiling, chopping, even microwaving. You choose your food, prepare it, season it if you want and serve it up to the monsters, who can have a range of responses from loving it to flat out refusing to eat it.
The game is beautifully designed and simple to play. The sound world fits the tone perfectly and the general atmosphere is unhurried and fun. The basic idea is to let young player muck about in the same way they would with plastic food and a toy kitchen set. There are no rules, no scoring, no suspense, just an open playing experience, though designed to educate children about food, cooking and eating habits through their own exploration.
I'm not sure if it's a negative thing that this game works as an almost identical equivalent to the traditional tactile version that children have played for generations. All this game seems to be doing is digitizing and slightly expanding on that original concept (with monsters and a soundtrack) but otherwise it doesn't do much.
But, I liked it. I like the basic concept and feel of the game. The game makers, Toca Boca, have a neat philosophy of no third party adverts, no in app purchasing and no extra distractions of any kind, which means there's a rare, clean playing experience. I feel I would be happy to let a very young child play with this app.