Analysis of an educational game

Researching Educational Games

A game that serves its purpose as being informative towards the player, while also being engaging and fun is the main criteria for what I consider educational game. A game can be educational in many ways, with the information that it imparts on the player being based in morality, history or statistics. Civilization, Big Brain Academy, Little Big Planet, Reader Rabbit, Professor Layton are good examples of what I consider to be an educational game.

For the most part, they are on mobile devices tablets and portable consoles. I assume the reasoning behind this is that the games can be more widespread amongst a device that isn’t just brought for gaming at home, but can be taken with you at any time. People who may not have had access to a game will be able to play it without the intention of actually buying a gaming device, in the case of a phone or tablet. Often this can range from parents giving their phones to their children to play, or a person who wants to kill 5 minutes on their phone while they are waiting for something.

I think that Children are the group that use educational games the most and there are several reasons behind this. The primary reason being that parents will often buy the game for their children. Parents may not like their children playing games all day, but may be more open to the idea of a game that keeps the child entertained while also helping them learn something new. Children also have the luxury of being the people with the most amount of time on their hands which probably plays a part into them being the group that plays educational games the most. Regardless of this, there are still a few educational games that have caught on with adults. A good example of this is the Nintendo DS game, Big Brain Academy. Without even disguising itself as anything but an educational game, the game found players from all demographics because of its challenges and activities that it pitted against the player. Educational themes in games range from analysis and memory skills in challenge games to morality themes and decision making in story games.

The target demographic I am aiming at for my game is the demographic of people who will be playing games on their phone, or at the very least on portable devices. This is quite a range of people, but the common factor between these people is that they will all be playing games casually, as they will often not be playing the game as their main interest at the time. Often times, they will be doing something else, and the game on their phone will be a side distraction to what they are doing. Because of this, I understand that the game must be fun, easy to play in small doses, and needs to have an addictive factor for the player to keep coming back to the game in order for it to find an audience for itself.

I feel like games that can be played while on the go have a huge audience that you can approach, with recent successes like Temple Run, Clash of Clans, Candy Crush and Angry Birds all being an example of the addictive nature of these games. Often times, these games will have leader boards or will keep track of the score in a way that allows the game to add a competitive aspect to it. A lot of people will compete with not only their own score, but other people’s scores. This gives the game another reason to played over a period of time and just adds to the addictive factor that a lot of these games have

My game is aimed at different demographics depending on certain factors involving my game. As an example, I feel like a younger audience would benefit from learning about the topics in the game, and they may find it more interactive because of the learning experience as they will be more engaged based on the new topics that they will be learning about. An older audience may find it fun because of the lack of technical skill that they require to play the game as opposed to a lot of modern games, and they may be more accustom with quiz shows and the concept of them.

If I were to take a guess as to what games the demographics would play prior to this game, I'd imagine that younger people are more open to anything, as they are brought up with games being in the mainstream, so it's not a foreign concept. For older people, I feel like a lot of the games that are available are based on phones. An older person may not have the time or the will to actually go out of their way to understand certain things within games, so they will be less likely to go out and buy a console. A game like Angry Birds or Clash of Clans will have an audience that will often not go out of their way to play more conventional games, yet will play games based on their ability to easily download them, play them while on the go and will come back to them due to their lack of connectivity within a story. For instance, a person who only gets a certain amount of time to play every few days may not be willing to play a 10 hour game, with a story that you have to go through. A game like Angry Birds can be played at any time, and can be jumped into without any prior context.

Younger audiences may have an easier time understanding and learning newer games that are coming out because they have a lot less responsibilities so they can commit to the game a lot more than an older person who may have a job and real life problems to worry about. Because of this, there are a lot of games that are longer and perhaps more immersive that are aimed at a younger audience because of their ability and time that they can commit to the game. With this in mind, I feel that a younger audience is inclined to play any time of game as it is one of the main forms of entertainment that younger people are raised with today. A question based game might be useful for a younger audience, as it can maybe help them learn about a subject which they didn't know about.

An older audience may find it harder to make time so that they can actually play the games with a regular consistency, which is why I feel like quick interactive games like Flappy Bird and Angry Birds were such hits. They were fun, addictive and very accessible due to the ease at which they could be played without having to have played anything prior to it. The type of games that an older audience may play may be indirectly linked to other things that lead them to playing the game such as Facebook or apps on their phones.