24 replies to this topic

[Panthera Pardus]

I've been working with this idea for a long time now, the business part is ready, the experts is ready to help and the software will soon work.
What we're missing is your game!

Donate-A-Demo
We would like you to donate a demo of your game (or the entire game) to us. Then we will convert it into an educational version and use these in schools. Thereby you get your game actively promoted in the classrooms and you support a good cause since this is a social enterprise. The only ones who will benefit from the profit is the school children in Latin America and Africa.

My name is Aske Sønderby Knudsen and I study Medialogy at Aalborg University Copenhagen. I have this wild idea that we can provide educational games which are of the same quality and just as fun as "normal" games, e.g. They Need To Be Fed, Angry Birds, Call of Duty etc.
And at the same time let users learn whatever they want from the games, they can create their own content.

At NameGames we convert existing games into educational games by implementing a small script into the games. When you play the game you will encounter educational questions from time to time, if you answer correctly you will gain an advantage in the game (e.g. Faster car in a racing game). Thereby the educational goal is combined with the original goal of the game.

See the introduction video to learn how we're gonna do this:


Next stop for NameGames is "Copenhagen Academia Startup Weekend" where we're going to develop the software needed, convert games and display it for jury in the end of the weekend.
To get the best result we need to convert a range of different games to show how this works for any type of game, in the future we will give the game developer a small script to implement themselves. But for this weekend we need the .gmk -files, we need to be able to test it out while developing.
I can only give you my word that I won't use your game for anything else than this concept, we convert it to this kind of educational game and not use the game in it's original state.

We hope that some of you will support the project and donate some games, big or small, new or old

Let me know what you think, if you have questions or would like to "Donate-A-Demo" I suggest you post it here, but you can also write me at aske@namegames.org
We need the games before Friday June 15th at 12:00.

For more information see www.NameGames.org

[Jack Indie Box]

nice concept and i wish you all the best. I dont have anything you could use at the moment but I have a rather large question, Where will you be getting your "knowledge base" from to implement into the games? ie. if your going to do anything that teaches something you first need to have "all" the answers(i dont mean just question and answer games, they are no fun) i mean if you were me(who doesnt know french) you wouldnt be able to implement french into one of the demos or games as you either know nothing or not enough to "teach" it.

I am starting a social game which takes a real life concept(usually taught in science) and bends the truth a little but it could quite easily be made into an educational game by someone that knows more than enough about the topic, which isn't me.(the game is no where near playable, but i am using it as an example)


I hope your answer isnt the internet, as alot of the information can be wrong or not useful for "teaching". I hope you work out a demographic as that will largely depict what amount of information there is to learn in any said game.

[Panthera Pardus]

Hey.

Thanks for a good question, I'll give you a good answer tomorrow evening when I'm done with my exam and work.

[Panthera Pardus]

(i dont mean just question and answer games, they are no fun)

This will be Q&A-games, what will make them fun will be the game around them. The goal with these game is to teach something which is immensely boring, in a fun way.

Taking French as an example, when you want to learn a new language you need to learn a lot of new words, here Q&A-games will become useful. However it will only be an addition to learning the language, you would still need to learn grammar and such.

And I believe there are a lot of quality information on "ze internet" when you know your sources. E.g. There exists translation tools/ebooks which can be trusted.
Fruthermore I would be asking students from different educations to create content relevant for their field.

I'm uncertain whether I understood you question correctly, if you're referring to the one who would use the game, then the answer is that these games will serve as a tool to memorize stuff in addition to normal teaching.

[Jack Indie Box]

oh these is far more over simplified than I thought. Q&A games even bolted around the best game in the world are still not fun, and already exist. Translation tools for an example can create unexpectted effects, like translating into french from english when it thought you wanted US english, as words for shop and store have very different meanings (shop in US is workshop, where shop in uk is what US calll a store) this has messed me up many times. Its very important to have the right teaching matter, not just the right "title" ie. french, you need to know words for different teaching levels, like i learnt colours and object names when i was younger but at older ages you need to learn conversational words

I personally think you can only have success if the person(s) creating the teaching matter has a deep understanding of it and teaching. I for one would not ask most of my friends to help me learn a language even if they have an ok qualification in it, where as some people excell at different topics like me for maths and science.

also getting students to create the questions is a bad idea sorry as even if they are 10% wrong with there question creation that would ruin any learning end users would have.


by demographic i meant, very young children, young, young teens, teens, late teens, college students...(i didnt go naming qualifications as i dont know what country your from). but the type of games they like and the type of questions(even within the same subject, eg. math you need times tables at young but need algebra at older) vary

[NicroGames]

...i didnt go naming qualifications as i dont know what country your from...

He's from Denmark. It says that in his profile, but if know the accent, you will never guess wrong anyway.

Edited by NicroGames, 15 June 2012 - 08:41 PM.

[Panthera Pardus]

A lot of these concerns are completely valid (and not new to me). Right now we're working hard to answer them and pitch the final businessmodel as a 4 minute pitch at the startup weekend.

However I've searched and asked around but I've never found a Q&A version of the best games in the world. Please let me know who have done this. I want to know what I'm up against

[Jack Indie Box]

no i havent seen any. i meant that it cant be done well, combining Q&A with non Q&A fun games isnt fun. and will just break up the game and ruin it sorry. Im totally for entertaining educational games but I dont see this being the way

[Jobo]

On the contrary, I do see the potential in this.
Games such as shooters can put up small stations/computers the player can engage and a prompt will appear asking for the answer to a certain question.
As your idea is, if the player inputs the correct answer, he'll benefit. If not, too bad, it was a one-timer.

This way the player will have to manually engage the educational questions in order to gain power-ups, "boosters" or special items.
I personally think it sounds like a lot of fun.

Using your brain is fun, playing games can be fun, why not combine these two?
I'd love to see this in a good game. It definitely won't have any negative result if implemented as I suggested above.

I'll send you a large work in progress I once worked on and maybe it'll suit you perfectly for testing.

[Panthera Pardus]

@Jack Indie Box
It's (off-cause) fair you don't see this as the way, a lot of people don't. Fortunately a lot of people as Jobo does see the potential.
To implement it in a fun way is a tough one but me and my team already have some good ideas for it and we will be working with experts in education games to discover the best ways.

@Jobo
Thank you, this is great Right now it's all about my exam on friday, but next week I will look more into it. As it turned out, the Startup Weekend was much more about the business end, which has also changed radically. But the core concept is the same and I'd be happy to use your game.

[FAAAEBS]

I tried making a game for a history project, where the point was to play the game while learning things, but it wasn't that good. You can look for it in this forum it's called History Man. I can send you the project, and you can change it however you like. The game is free and not hard to make, so there's no need to keep the source code a secret.

[LoudAppleStudios]

Great concept! I can't get my team to involved with this project to heavily but one or two want to try and make the script so if your interested they will be happy to help with that.

[Panthera Pardus]

Hey thanks for the support.
I'll have a look at the game during the beginning of next week.
Regarding help with the script, that sounds great, I'll contact you.

[Mailas]

This is a really interesting idea!
Hope you all the best!

[gamemakerfun300]

I think this is a very good idea. I hope this goes well
I might donate you a game in the future

[gamemakerfun300]

Oops I accedently hit reply again,sorry

Edited by gamemakerfun300, 30 June 2012 - 03:18 PM.

[Panthera Pardus]

Thanks guys, I'm glad to hear it.

Right now I'm working on developing the software to interact with the games and the software to create educational content. I'll let you know when it's working.

[Terrified Virus]

Hope this works out!

[Chris_Devl]

I really like this idea, but I don't think sneaking questions in every now and then is the best way to do it.. In my opinion, it's a lot better if the games designed with being educational from the start. Design the eductational-ness or the game hand in hand with the fun and action. Design the two aspects to compliment eachother and work together well.

I might conjure something up for this, it'd be an example of what I'm talking about.

Also, this might interest you, it's an excellent series (which I absolutely LOVE) about video games and video games development:
http://penny-arcade....ential-learning

[Panthera Pardus]

What you're talking about is also very interesting but for me that is on a later stage. The value for this way is that everyone can create content easily and as a user you can learn whatever you want with whatever game you want. If this can be done meaningfully there will be great quality to it and last but not least, it will be rather easy to implement the function into different games. Only a few lines of code will be sufficient, the rest will be run by our software.

Thanks for the series, have only seen one of the shows before, it's pretty different from what I do at the moment, but it's an interesting idea.